FEBRUARY 10, 2015

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.

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…

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

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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.

A nice info graphic.

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

See the story and graphic here.

Encourage your principal/teachers to fill out the survey listed below. It’s crazy that so many of our programs struggle to reinvent the wheel so sharing curriculum that’s been developed for Chinese and Common Core only makes sense.

Though those of you from schools that are part of the national Flagship-Chinese Acquisition Pipeline are ahead of the game here and don’t need to, F-CAP is already doing that sharing and it’s a beautiful thing.

The Chinese Early Language and Immersion Network CELIN and F-CAP both support immersion programs and are huge helps as we move forward. Encourage your teachers and staff to find out about what these networks offer and make use of their expertise!

–Beth

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CELIN Connection

• Important resources on early Chinese language learning and immersion programs.
• Four presentations given at the 2014 ACTFL Convention and World Languages Expo in San Antonio, November 21–23. Presenters discuss key issues in the field of Chinese language education: lessons learned by experts in the field, the vitality and sustainability of Chinese heritage language schools, and uses of digital technologies and selection of instructional materials to promote student engagement and learning.

Also take a look at the Study Abroad pages in Ask the Experts, where you’ll find detail-rich student and teacher testimonials, and inspiring photographs (such as this image to the right—courtesy of the Chinese American International School in San Francisco).

CELIN has received numerous requests for information about curricula used in Chinese language education. Therefore, we decided that this will be one area of our focus this year. We’re conducting a survey of curricula that are used in Chinese language education and that educators need. Can you please take five minutes to complete this survey? This is an ongoing project, and we will be sending out information as we proceed. Stay tuned to find out what we are learning!  –Shuhan Wang and Joy Peyton

Utah language immersion teachers in short supply
WEDNESDAY , JANUARY 28, 2015 – 1:45 PM
“Elise Taylor and Jake Beus, from the U.S. Institute of languages, pack software into boxes for…

By Dana Rimington

Standard-Examiner correspondent

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It is no easy task getting dual immersion teachers for the Spanish, Chinese, or French programs for the 11 elementary schools in Davis School District, four elementary schools in Weber School District, and two elementary schools in Ogden School District with immersion programs.

It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there says Davis School District Elementary World Language Supervisor Rita Stevenson as immersion programs across the state vie for the few teachers who do graduate from local universities with majors in Spanish, French, or Chinese, or education graduates who are native speakers of those languages.

“It is nice when we can find them, but the biggest problem is that local universities are not producing enough teachers through the education program to fill our needs,” Stevenson said, so they find guest teachers from host countries through the state office of Education.

However, for teachers coming from other countries, it is a long process. Nereida Lõpez, who is from Spain teaching kindergarten dual immersion at Lincoln Elementary, began the process a year before she began working in the U.S. in the fall of 2013. Lõpez had to go through a series of paperwork and interviews with her host country, all using her own funds.

Please read more here.