Mandarin Immersion Parents Council

CLEARFIELD, UTAH —Speaking in Mandarin Chinese, Lisa Reed asked her fourth graders to calculate what to charge their customers for a bottle of Ramune soda.

And they answered in Mandarin.

Reed’s students are just a few of the 2,000 students in Davis School District learning the challenging language.

In four elementary immersion schools, four junior high schools and all eight high schools in the district, students are learning to speak with the help of instructors – the majority of whom are native speakers.

In four elementary immersion schools, four junior high schools and all eight high schools in the district, students are learning to speak Mandarin

Please read more here.

From our friends at the Asian Society.

Seattle Mandarin Immersion Programs include programs at Beacon Hill International School, Dearborn Park International School, Mercer International Middle School Seattle, Washington. These programs are serving students in grades K-7 (and expanding),

In 1995, a visionary leader, General John Stanford, took the helm of Seattle Public Schools. As he became familiar with the diversity and multicultural “challenges” in the district, he viewed them as assets and envisioned a school where all students would learn languages and discover how to work together and understand the world. He asked Karen Kodama to be the principal of this yet-to-be-invented “international” school. Karen organized a group of parents and educators to work with local businesses, large and small—the future employers of Seattle Public Schools graduates—to understand the knowledge and skills needed to serve the local and global market. They identified the need to create pipelines of international K-12 schools and develop students with strong language skills beyond English.

Seattle opened its first language immersion program in Spanish in 2000, at John Stanford International School. The next year, Japanese was added as a second language option in the school. The business community had also identified Mandarin as a future high-need language to be developed, and the district added that to the plan for future expansion.

Read more here.

Startup Oakland charter Yu Ming is flourishing
By Maya Mirsky

OAKLAND — What started as a simple phone call has now turned into a new job for Sue Park, the new head of school at Yu Ming, an Oakland elementary charter school.

It’s exciting times for the Mandarin immersion school as it welcomes a new head of school and prepares for its entree into middle school next year. But for the school community, change is part of how the school functions, and nothing to be scared of. “It’s a startup school,” said Rodrigo Prudencio, a Yu Ming parent and former board chairman. “We’re constantly going to be working and refining.”

Park originally moved to Oakland’s Montclair neighborhood when her husband got a job in the Bay Area. She was going to start looking for job opportunities, but first, she called Yu Ming to find out about enrollment for her three children, who had already been in a Mandarin educational environment. Finding the head of school job open seemed providential.

“Just the timing was really fortuitous,” she said.

Please read more here.

Dual-Language Programs Are on the Rise, Even for Native English Speakers
By ELIZABETH A. HARRISOCT. 8, 2015

On one of the first days of class at Dos Puentes Elementary School in Upper Manhattan last month, a new student named Michelle peered up through pale blue glasses and took a deep breath.

“Can I drink water?” Michelle, 6, said.

“Diga en Español,” her first-grade teacher, Rebeca Madrigal, answered.

Michelle paused.

“Can I drink agua?” she replied.

It was a start.

Dos Puentes, a three-year-old school in the Washington Heights neighborhood, is a dual-language program, which means that subjects, like reading and math, are taught in two languages with the goal of making students bilingual. Once seen as a novelty, dual-language programs are now coming into favor as a boon to both native and nonnative English speakers, and in areas around the country their numbers have been exploding.

Please read more here.

I’m looking forward to speaking at Washington Yu Ying in Washington D.C. on October 7.  I had the pleasure of touring the school several years ago during the Asia Society’s National Chinese Language Conference and then wrote about it in my book, A Parent’s Guide to Mandarin Immersion.

Tonight I’ll be reading from my book and talking with parents about how they can support their children as they learn Chinese. I’m very excited to hear their stories and learn from them.

Here’s their website.

This is great research to support and I highly encourage families to take Ted’s survey (it took me all of 6 minutes.) Send it out to your schools, put it in your school newsletter and on your blog, get the word out. We need more data about family motivation’s and here we’ve got a motivated young Ph.D. student to do the work for us!

Beth

Hello Parents!

My name is Edward Watson and I am a graduate student in the Sociology PhD program at University of California – Irvine.  My research is focusing on parental motivations for Mandarin Immersion programs.  I left for China in 2006 and ended up staying over four years, having been back twice on visits.  I did not know any Chinese upon arrival, but through continued hard work, I have achieved near fluency.  My experience with the Chinese language and Its culture has changed my life for the better, giving me the desire to use what I have learned to act as a resource for other students and families.

I am happy to see the recent increase in the popularity of Mandarin Immersion programs.  I am curious as to why parents are choosing this style of education for their children, and whether the reasons behind this choice differ between parents’ experiences and backgrounds.  In order to better examine the rising demand for Mandarin programs, I am asking parents to complete an anonymous online survey by clicking on the link at the bottom.  The 25-question survey should not take more than 15 minutes to complete and your answers will provide substantial data for this project.  My ultimate goal is to strengthen the educational and cultural bonds between America and China while increasing an understanding for our global society.  Whenever possible, I would also like to offer a small compensation provided through my email as a token of my appreciation.

Thanks so much for you time!

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/mandarin-immersion

Edward Watson

watsonel@uci.edu

Note the bit about creating a curriculum. Presumably it’s not focused on K-12 immersion but rather high school, but even so, perhaps some will trickle down to our Mandarin immersion programs. – Beth

Beth

When U.S. President Barack Obama announced the 100,000 Strong Initiative in November 2009, setting the goal of sending 100,000 American students to study in China by 2014, it seemed like a lofty aspiration. In the 2008-2009 academic year, only 13,674 American students studied abroad in China. But that number rose steadily over the next five years, with help from private donations and Chinese government scholarships, and in July 2014 Secretary of State John Kerry announced that the goal had been met.

Now the American president’s back with an even bigger goal and one closer to home. On Sept. 25, in a joint press conference with Chinese President Xi Jinping, who is wrapping up an official state visit, Obama announced the launch of “1 Million Strong,” an initiative that aims to bring the total number of stateside learners of Mandarin Chinese to 1 million by the year 2020. “If our countries are going to do more together around the world,” said Obama, “then speaking each other’s language, truly understanding each other, is a good place to start.”

Please read more here.