Mandarin Immersion Parents Council

Information for parents of kids in Mandarin immersion education

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  • Immersion expands in Delaware

    Friday, January 9, 2015 – 6:39am
    World Language Immersion Expands for 2015-16 School Year

    By Kelli Steele

    Next fall, more than 2,300 kindergarten through third grade students will be enrolled in Governor Jack Markell’s World Language Expansion Initiative, as six more schools across the state begin offering students the opportunity to participate in an elementary immersion program studying either Mandarin Chinese or Spanish.

    The initiative was launched in the 2012-13 school year with four programs in three elementary schools. An annual investment of $1.9 million will support programs reaching nearly 10,000 students in K-8 immersion programs by 2022.

    Schools already participating in the initiative include: Caesar Rodney School District’s McIlvaine Early Childhood Center, Frear Elementary and Simpson Elementary (all Mandarin Chinese); Capital School District’s South Dover Elementary (Spanish); Christina School District’s Downes (Mandarin Chinese) and Pulaski (Spanish) elementary schools; Indian River School District’s Clayton and East Millsboro elementary schools (both Spanish); Red Clay Consolidated School District’s Lewis Elementary (Spanish); and Seaford School District’s Blades and West Seaford elementary schools (both Spanish).

    Please read more here.

  • Mandarin immersion in North Carolina

    At Stough Elementary in Raleigh, students learn in Mandarin

    BY SARAH BARR

    sbarr@newsobserver.comJanuary 30, 2015

    • The Wake County school system is accepting magnet applications through Thursday. For details, go to wcpss.net.

    RALEIGH — Kindergartner Ava Fletcher has been learning Mandarin for just a few months in her classroom at Stough Elementary School. But already she can write her name in Chinese characters, sing songs such as “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” and chatter confidently in Mandarin about the books she loves and the friends she plays with.

    “I like that I get to learn and that I get to sing,” said Ava, 6, of her class.

    Eighteen students are enrolled in the Mandarin immersion program at Stough Elementary on Edwards Mill Road in Raleigh. The program began this year with students from the school’s neighborhood attendance area and will become a magnet next year, so students from across the county can apply to attend.

    The magnet application period for Wake County schools runs through Thursday.

    At Stough, kindergartners spend almost all of their day learning in Mandarin. The class has one English literacy class each day and also takes specials such as physical education and art in English.

  • Palo Alto Mandarin immersion program to expand to middle school

    Currently students just go through 5th grade and then have to wait until high school to take Mandarin again, when they enter into the same non-immerson system used for students not coming from immersion. Not ideal.

    Palo Alto school board backs Mandarin immersion program expansion

    Jordan Middle School could host new pilot program

    by Elena Kadvany / Palo Alto Weekly

    Palo Alto school board members agreed Tuesday night that expanding an elementary school Mandarin immersion program to Jordan Middle School – filling a hole in the district in Mandarin instruction between elementary and high schools — is a common-sense decision that they support.

    Staff brought a proposal to the board to begin a pilot expansion of Ohlone Elementary School’s popular Mandarin immersion program at Jordan this fall. The Ohlone program began in the fall of 2008 with 40 students and steadily grew to its targeted size of 124 by the 2012-2013 school year.

    “We have all these kids, our warm bodies, in elementary school,” said board vice president Heidi Emberling. “A bridge is needed.”

    Please read more here.

  • Mandarin immersion teachers really are like gold-precious and rare

    FEBRUARY 10, 2015

    In Delaware, looking for language teachers who ‘don’t really exist’

    The Home2 Suites in Dover, Delaware isn’t exactly the Ritz, but it made a strong impression on David Schultz.

    “I mean, teachers, We’re not used to this.” Schultz says, eyebrow arched.

    “This” refers to five nights spent at a hotel chain that Wikipedia calls “mid-tier.” It also refers to a level of special treatment rarely afford to teachers—much less aspiring ones.

    Schultz and three of his colleagues spent a week recently in Central Delaware as guests of the Delaware Department of Education. They’re all fluent in Mandarin Chinese. They’re all studying to be teachers at the University of Maryland. And they’re all willing to teach elementary school students, or at least consider it.

    That rare combination makes them valuable—enough so that Delaware asked them up for a recruiting visit more than a year before they’ll be ready to teach.

    “We want them to feel like this is the place they want to be,” says Gregory Fulkerson, who oversees world languages and international education at the Delaware Department of Education. “They want to be in Delaware. They want to live here. They want to work in our schools. They want to make sure our students are the best in the world.”

    Please read more here.

  • Immersion charter rejected because it wouldn’t enroll monoglots past 2nd grade

    One of the reasons this was rejected was because the school’s proposed charterl said that after 2nd grade it would only admit students who were proficient in Mandarin.

    Claire Cunningham, a legal counsel to the Office of Education, found fault with the proposed charter’s language proficiency requirement for children who want to enroll after second grade. “All public schools, including charter schools … have to admit all students who seek to attend. And [if] a public school wishes to exclude portions of students who may wish to attend, that’s not permissible under the [California] education code,” she said.

    That’s odd, as every Mandarin immersion (and Spanish immersion and French immersion) program I’m aware of doesn’t allow students who aren’t proficient in both languages after a certain point, usually first grade. There’s simply no other way you can run an immersion school. In fact College Park Elementary, in the San Mateo/Foster City School District, just 14 miles away in, is example of such a school.

    It’s also the rule at all the public immersion schools in San Francisco Unified School District.

    It’s a puzzler, to be sure…

    ===

    County rejects bid to open a Mandarin immersion charter school in Menlo Park

    By Rhea Mahbubani Daily News Staff Writer

    POSTED: 02/06/15, 12:01 AM PST | UPDATED: 1 DAY AGO

    Backers of the proposed Menlo Mandarin Immersion Charter School are down to their final strike.

    The San Mateo County Board of Education on Wednesday denied their petition to open a charter within the Menlo Park City School District.

    In November, the school district’s board of trustees threw the first strike by rejecting the Mandarin immersion charter’s petition — a month after holding a public hearing where many teachers and others spoke against the school. Now that the county threw a second strike, supporters’ last chance for a charter lies with the state if they pursue it.

    Please read more here.

  • San Mateo, Calif. rejects Mandarin immersion charter

    One board member was especially concerned that it wouldn’t meet the needs of special education students.

    ===

    County board unanimously denies Mandarin immersion charter school proposal
    by Barbara Wood / Almanac

    The San Mateo County Board of Education on Wednesday night, Feb. 4, unanimously denied the Menlo Mandarin Immersion Charter School’s proposal to open a new school in the Menlo Park City School District.

    The county board used as its grounds for denying the petition a report by county staff analyzing the petition to open a Mandarin immersion charter school next fall.

    Board members said they found that the charter petition had too many flaws to be approved. The petition, if approved, becomes the governing blueprint for a charter school and can only be changed by a vote of the group originally granting it.

    “I can only vote to deny this appeal,” said board member Joe Ross, who represents the Menlo Park district area. “I don’t think it would do the public, or the community, or the parents, any good to move forward with this petition. He pointed to a requirement in the school’s petition that all students in second grade and beyond must pass a Mandarin proficiency test to be admitted to the school. County staff said that requirement violates a state law that says all students who want to attend a charter must be admitted if there is room for them.

    “I am afraid that this assumes that all students beyond second grade who do not speak Mandarin actually can not learn at this school,” Mr. Ross said.

    Board member Susan Alvaro said she was concerned about the lack of specifics about how the school would deal with special education students. “I am really concerned about the students in our county who are struggling and not making it,” she said.

    Please read more here.

  • Which languages are hardest to learn for English speakers?

    A nice info graphic.

    I speak Swedish, which is in the easy category. Oh well.

    See the story and graphic here.