Mandarin Immersion Parents Council

Like many Mandarin immersion programs (and immersion programs overall), Sacramento, California’s seven dual-language immersion programs do a great job through fifth grade. The district offers one Mandarin program, one in Cantonese, one in Hmong and four in Spanish.

As this Sacramento Bee article says, everything stops in middle school:

“While the elementary school programs are a “great experience,” kids are left unsupported once they graduate, parents said. With no higher level Chinese or Hmong classes in middle school, parents are left to figure out themselves how to continue supporting their kids’ language learning, bridging the gap to high school classes or an AP test.”

[Note that the linked article above requires a subscription. Sorry about that, but it is a good thing to pay journalists for their work….)

Sacramento parents there are trying to fundraise and advocate for program expansion to offer some middle school immersion classes but it’s not clear the money will be forthcoming from the district.

This isn’t just a problem in Sacramento. In San Francisco, students in the district’s two Mandarin immersion K-5 schools get a 6th grade Social Studies class taught in Mandarin and then are offered “intermediate Mandarin world language” in 7th and 8th grade. Then when they get to high school, they can take the AP Chinese test in 9th grade. In a few of the district’s 17 high schools, there are more advanced Mandarin classes available. Unfortunately, access to high school is by lottery, so a Mandarin immersion student has no certainty that they’ll be assigned a school that offers Mandarin at the appropriate level.

These are just two of many examples. Our K-5 programs do an excellent job, but then there’s nothing for far too many Mandarin immersion students when they get to middle school. And then four years later, when they get to high school, they’ve had time to forget a fair amount and, at best, they’re offered an AP Chinese course and nothing more.

Granted, there are districts that do a great job of articulation (education jargon for a program that progresses in a logical and reasonable sequence. Delaware and Utah do this quite well for their entire state.

And northeast of San Francisco in Contra Costa county, the school district just voted to extend its very popular K – 5 program through middle school.

But for too many schools and too many families, immersion is a road to oblivion. There’s no follow-through after fifth grade and school districts act as if it’s a surprise that anyone who’s kid has worked hard for six years to master a new language would want something that builds on that, rather than wasting all their effort until they can get to high school – where only a year’s worth of classes are available to them because they’re too advanced for Mandarin 1, 2 and 3.

Tell me your stories – what does your district do for middle and high school? How well does it work? What do students do when they get to college?

I’ll report back when I hear more.

There are two national conferences of interest to Mandarin immersion teachers and administrators and both are taking place this year.

One is the Asia Society’s National Chinese Language Conference, which this year is happening on May 2, 2024, in Mountain View, California. It’s the 17th annual conference this year and registration is open.

The other is the International Conference on Dual Language and Immersion Education, which is hosted by the University of Utah in Salt Lake City and takes place every other year.

Utah is the hotbed of K-12 immersion education, with more programs than any state and one of the best built-out systems anywhere (with the possible exception of the city of Edmonton in Canada.)

Registration just opened for the Utah conference, which is their ninth. So tell your teachers and administrators.

Note that while I have on occasion attended these as a total immersion nerd, they’re probably not of that much interest to parents unless you’re really interested in the minutia of immersion and what the latest research and techniques are.

Lake Oswego Review, By Mia Ryder-Marks, Jan. 7, 2023

Starting in September 2023, students at Palisades World Language School will be walking the hallways and chatting with their friends in English, Spanish and Mandarin Chinese.

This fall, Palisades will add a Mandarin Chinese language program to its roster, which already includes Spanish, for kindergarten and first grade students. Christy Appleberry and Vicki Yang are teachers and immersion program facilitation partners who are developing and constructing the new language program. They said the textbooks for students just arrived and they are excited for students to finally crack them open come next fall.

“I’m very excited that our school is going to be a super diverse community. We can’t wait to hear kids in the hallways speak not only Spanish (but) Chinese, English and other different languages. It will be a very unique place for kids to grow up surrounded by so many languages,” Appleberry said.

The new language program will mirror its Spanish counterpart. Students will take their core classes — math, English, history and science — with Mandarin Chinese incorporated. Students will also take Chinese language literacy courses.

Please read more here.

New England Public Media

On a late afternoon in Hadley, Massachusetts, a small crowd of kids and their grown-ups are in the children’s room at the public library, listening to sixth grader Emma Barrett and Belley Barrett, in second grade, read from their new, bilingual book, Sister Detectives.

The two sisters illustrated and wrote the Chinese and English story. The girls, dressed as matching sleuths in houndstooth capes and caps, began to read. Emma took the lead on the English, Belley read in Chinese.

“For hobbies, Belley and I are little detectives who solve cases when we are not busy doing schoolwork,” Emma read in English.

“我們的愛好是當個小偵探， 在課余閑暇解決棘手案件,” Belley read in Chinese.

The tale is about two sisters (who the authors named after themselves) hired to find the thief who stole all the strawberry ice cream bars from the Neverending Ice Cream Store.

Please read more here.

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From: The Spectrum, St. George Utah

LAURA GERSONY   USA TODAY NETWORK17 hours ago

Jill Landes-Lee is one of the nominees for USA TODAY’s Women of the Year program, a recognition of women who have made a significant impact in their communities and across the country. The program launched in 2022 as a continuation of Women of the Century, which commemorated the 100th anniversary of women gaining the right to vote. Meet this year’s honorees at womenoftheyear.usatoday.com.

It is becoming more common for U.S. public schools to offer language immersion classes in which the regular school curriculum and literacy are taught in English and a second language.

For example, students at Utah’s Aspen Elementary School can apply to spend half of each school day in English, and the other half in Chinese. Nearby Cherry Hill Elementary offers the same programming in English and Spanish.

Please read more here.