Mandarin Immersion Parents Council

Talk about immersion support: Washington DC has a Language Immersion Project non-profit

Sun, 18 Oct 2020 18:18:37 GMT

From: The DC Line Feb. 3, 2020 When Vanessa Bertelli moved with her family from Shanghai to Washington in 2010, she was sure her children would have access to dual language education. It is, after all, the nation’s capital. A child of a bilingual family, Bertelli grew up in Switzerland speaking English and Italian, surrounded […]

Happy Moon Festival

Wed, 30 Sep 2020 03:03:27 GMT

Whether your students are in school or doing school from home, the Moon Festival is almost upon us. For folks who didn’t grow up in families that celebrated what’s properly called the Mid-Autumn Festival, here’s a little background. The Moon Festival is a traditional celebration held on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month […]

A second Mandarin immersion school proposed for Washington D.C.

Wed, 16 Sep 2020 21:27:48 GMT

Washington D.C.’s Washington Yu Ying Public Charter School is an extraordinarily popular Mandarin immersion charter school in the city. For the 2020-2021 school year it had 62 seats available for 3-year-olds entering its preschool. The waitlist was 423 students long. By Kindergarten there are no seats available as they’re all taken up with the school’s […]

The Economist says studying Chinese is in decline in the U.K.

Thu, 10 Sep 2020 21:58:21 GMT

Learning languagesWhy studying Chinese is in decline Mandarin is out of fashionAugust 29, 2020 The article is behind a paywall, so the link below might not work for most folks. The two most salient points are below. Which makes me curious — have your feelings about Mandarin immersion changed in the past few years? Feel […]

Sky Kids Mandarin program for the fall

Mon, 31 Aug 2020 02:15:23 GMT

Full disclosure: My daughter worked as a counselor at the Sky Kids camp in Taiwan last year.

First class of seniors graduates from Minnesota’s XinXing Academy program

Sat, 29 Aug 2020 15:09:01 GMT

XinXing Academy is a Chinese immersion program in Hopkins, Minnesota. It opened at Eisenhower Elementary School in 2007. XinXing (新星) means New Star in Chinese. The XinXing Chinese immersion program is part of Eisenhower Elementary School and is K-6. XinXing students move on to Chinese immersion course offerings for grades 7-12 at Hopkins West Junior […]

Baton Rouge District finally agrees to middle school for Mandarin immersion students

Sat, 22 Aug 2020 03:20:52 GMT

From: The Advocate Dec. 23, 2019 BR FLAIM — short for Baton Rouge Foreign Language Academic Immersion Magnet — started with only French and Spanish. But the popular magnet school added Mandarin Chinese in fall 2013 with an initial class of just 12 kindergartners. Six years later, that class shrank to eight fifth graders. Theresa Porter, director of […]

Savanna, GA Mandarin immersion program launched

Tue, 11 Aug 2020 17:55:31 GMT

By Ann Meyer ameyer@savannahnow.com Sep 14, 2019 In Miss Xuechen Liu’s kindergarten classroom at Haven Elementary in Savannah, the children practice their numbers in Chinese by singing a song. They introduce themselves to one another with the help of a fuzzy lion puppet. In first grade, they count by twos in Chinese and recite the numbers to […]

In Taiwan, getting immersed in Amis, not Mandarin

Tue, 04 Aug 2020 17:20:32 GMT

Established last September, Luma Association Amis-language immersion preschool in Hualien teaches Aboriginal children traditional skills in their mother tongue in a bid to preserve their culture By Han Cheung / Staff reporter With most of his village preferring to converse in Mandarin, opportunities are scant for 81-year-old Kacaw to use his mother language of Amis. […]

Catholic schools increasingly adding immersion

Wed, 29 Jul 2020 19:52:47 GMT

For many years, there were three kinds of immersion schools — public, charter and private. Add parochial to that list. There are now at least 19 language immersion Catholic schools in the United States, and a network for them has been created at Boston College’s Roche Center for Catholic Education. The Two-Way Immersion Network for […]

Utah gets exemption to President Trump’s order suspending work visas that would have hurt ...

Thu, 23 Jul 2020 15:50:11 GMT

On June 22, 2020, President Trump issued a sweeping order that temporarily suspended new work visas and barred tens of thousands of foreign workers from employment in the United States. The order blocked visas for skilled workers entering the United States under H-1B visas. It will be in place at least until the end of […]

In 20 years, California wants 75% of students to be proficient in at least two languages

Sun, 19 Jul 2020 21:59:26 GMT

Just over 40% of California’s students speak a language other than English at home. You can think of that two ways — 41% of the state’s students need to learn English. Or, 59% of the state’s students need to get cracking to learn a second language. As Gregg Roberts, of the American Councils for International […]

School long on Austin’s closure list could become Mandarin Immersion magnet

Tue, 14 Jul 2020 15:16:35 GMT

Austin’s Joslin Elementary School, is one of 12 schools named as a possible closure in the district’s ongoing school changes plan. From the Austin Independent School District: October 21, 2019 Austin ISD’s Joslin Elementary School located in south Austin received a $284,000 School Action Fund Grant from the Texas Education Agency to reimagine the school through […]

Chatting in Chinese for your kids through USChinaKidsClub

Wed, 08 Jul 2020 00:49:42 GMT

This is an interesting program. It sets up chats between kids in the United States (and elsewhere) and China, half in Mandarin and half in Chinese. What seems useful about it is that there’s a facilitator, to keep the kids talking. We did some “video pen pal” like tries in our grade school and mostly […]

2020 Mandarin Immersion School Update — 327 schools, up 22 from last year

Tue, 30 Jun 2020 00:06:54 GMT

There will be 327 Mandarin immersion schools in the United States in the fall of 2020. That’s 22 more than last year and a remarkable increase from the 235 of just three years ago. The increase comes from school districts building out from grade school in to middle and high school, a small but growing […]

How Fremont, Calif. got its Mandarin immersion program

Fri, 26 Jun 2020 23:55:18 GMT

Fremont, California is a northern suburb of San Jose with a population of about 240,000, many of whom work in Silicon Valley. The city is 57% Asian. All of which made it a natural for a Mandarin immersion program in its public schools. In 2008 a group of extremely determined parents made that happen. Today […]

Fundraising in the time of COVID-19, an example from Ohio

Wed, 24 Jun 2020 16:02:18 GMT

As schools look at a new and as yet unclear future, here’s a nice example from an immersion charter school in Ohio of how to do online fundraising. The GALA gala each year always sounded like a lot of fun (from seeing their emails). It’s impressive how they managed to capture some of their excitement […]

The National Chinese Language Conference is online next week — and it’s free!

Thu, 18 Jun 2020 19:40:59 GMT

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the annual National Chinese Language Conference is happening online this year, Wednesday through Friday June 24-26, and it’s free. Of course the online version will be much diminished from the usual rich mix of interactions, school visits and presentations that bring educators up to date on the latest in Chinese […]

Principal who brought Mandarin immersion to Hawaii moving to Mainland

Wed, 17 Jun 2020 16:44:43 GMT

An example of how a principal with a vision and totally transform a school — and create the only Mandarin immersion program in Hawai’i. Which, thankfully, will continue on. Aloha, President Perry Martin 05/13/2020 BY HAWAII CATHOLIC HERALD The outgoing Maryknoll president’s vision for the school parallels the founding sisters’ mission and charism By the Maryknoll Sisters […]

Mandarin program saved in Delaware after referendum win

Fri, 12 Jun 2020 19:04:53 GMT

Good news from Delaware. I posted about the difficult decisions they were facing there last week here. Christina School Board moves to restore teacher jobs, sports and more after referendum win Natalia Alamdari Delaware News Journal Following a successful referendum on Tuesday, the Christina School Board took the initial steps Wednesday night to restore program […]