3rd Grade vocabulary example

As promised, here is an example of vocabulary and homework. This was distributed in January, so about the middle of 3rd grade. As you can see if you can read somewhat, there is a mix of easy to mid-level vocabulary. But more challenging sentence/expression structures are appearing.

These weekly vocabularies and such are not the whole of the vocabulary that the students are acquiring. They are introduced as embedded in a story from their textbook. They are studied with focus each week - a lot of writing and skill development goes into these characters/expressions. They are required comprehend their usage in the textbook and demonstrate that comprehension through various exercises, including building their own sentences. Stroke order and pinyin are also emphasized for these characters/vocabularies.

These exercises do not include the math vocabulary, nor any vocabulary that comes from reading and book report or essay or poetry assignments.

Below, this worksheet asks that the vocabulary are filled in. Comprehension is supported further because the sentences are not from the story, but show the vocabulary used in another situation.

Vocabulary:
安慰
落
笑脸
穿
挂
头发
不如
藏
头顶
飘
年
手指

1. 今天是二零一二年一月八日。
2. 我写字写得不如姐姐那么快。
3. 复活节的时候，我们要把鸡蛋藏起来，让别人去找。
4. 我不开心的时候，妈妈会安慰我，告诉我： “没关系。”
5. 我喜欢穿红颜色的衣服。
6. 我和妹妹把手拿出来比一比，发现她的手指比我的长。
7. 我今天早上没梳头发，所以看起来乱七八糟的。
8. 我房间的门口挂着一串风铃。有风吹来的时候，会发出叮叮叮的声音。
9. 下雪了，雪花从天上落下，一片一片地掉在我的头顶上。
10. 昨天下午风很大，很多树叶在天空中飘。
11. 在我难过的时候，只要看到妈妈的笑脸就会开心起来。

Mandarin Immersion - 4th grade Update

Now that we have settled into the start of 4th grade, an overview of what the school work is looking like... Our days are still half day in English and half day in Chinese. Each day begins with the alternate language of the previous day. Specialty classes like Science, Visual Arts and P.E. are taught in English. Science and P.E. happen twice a week, while Visual Arts happens once a week. Music is taught in English this year. (During K-2 it is taught in Chinese at this school.) It happens once a week and includes some movement-based performance, as well.

The Writing Workshop model out of Columbia Teachers College continues to be employed, with increased levels of sophistication. Like the previous 2 years, the language arts units are broken down by writing styles: personal narrative, informational, persuasive/opinion, and historical or historical fiction. The Writing Workshop writing process dictates the tasks which engage them to progress through cycles of brainstorming, drafting, and editing to get to the final product.

Meanwhile, something called "Word Study" continues to be the way through which kids learn phonics and spelling, and even vocabulary acquisition.

Reading is more independent, I think. I haven't heard of any reading partners this year. The focus seems to be on logging progress and a stepped-up move toward engagement and reflection by writing "Reading Responses" - which is basically using journaling as a way to further engage the student in the material. The kids receive a list of prompts to help them think of something they would like to journal about in response to the reading they did for that day on the book of their choice.

The class, meanwhile, does have a few books they plan to read together which is selected to be just above the majority of the kids' reading levels.

Math continues to be the UChicago Everyday Math curriculum, while adding a worksheet of advanced math reasoning problems which the kids are required to do over the course of the week and turn it in at the end. These problems are more abstract and take a lot of thinking and talking through. They are not problem sets.

The Chinese language arts development aims to mimic the English framework. There continues to be character practice and sentence structures delivered through worksheets. Quizlet, as mentioned prior, is used as an additional drilling tool to check for comprehension, as well as to deliver the drill in a quiz form.

The textbook is a curated selection done by the teaching faculty over the years. The topics connect with Social Studies and Health Science themes that have been identified by the faculty as the slate of content.

Daily reading is expected, whether it be repeating the class reading from the textbook or reading your own selection.

My opinion is that the textbook readings are just at my child's level without being a challenge. So I don't make her repeat read at home, unless I notice that it is more challenging. Meanwhile, we have returned to reading one short story or one chapter per day from our own collection.

Weekly book reports have begun. So far, all the kids in the class are supposed to write from the same story. The first one was not challenging in vocabulary, but more challenging in the forms of expression. This was reassuring to me - this is part of why you send your child to school. Because professional teachers can teach your child a literary or academic form of the language that you, the parent, probably could not (unless you are a professional educator and have expert levels in the language).

The form of the book reports have regressed a bit - back to using storyboarding as a tool. But I don't mind, as I see this time as also giving my child a break and allowing her to find moments of mastery. Always making things hard can have negative blowbacks.

The school has developed its own math in Chinese that follows the Everyday Math curriculum directly translated. They have also been mapping this material to the Common Core, which is labeled in the math workbooks. It makes me wonder if some of the Everyday Math is not exactly mapped to Common Core - likely. So what we get delivered to us is just that.

The Chinese teacher said that she will give students advanced math in Chinese from another curriculum, should some of the students show that they are ready for it. My child does not seem ready - the math reasoning of the language expressions in Chinese and English are different enough, in my opinion, that this is challenge enough. I am not looking for her to master math in Chinese. By 6th grade, math will be taught all in English. I have some additional thoughts on this that ought to go in a separate post...

The plus for having it now is the Chinese literacy support that happens. All the instructions for the worksheets are in Chinese, as are all the story problems. Most of the characters do not have pinyin over them. So if they did not learn them during class, then they have to look them up.

Overall, however, I am grateful for the levels and the quality of teaching. When we were in K and at another MI school, it was very hard to see what laid ahead, to know what to expect. Now, I see very clearly that there is no way that the 4th graders at our previous school would have ever been able to reach the level we are at now. Not for anything happening in English, not for anything happening in Chinese. These last 2 years of hard work are paying off, are the foundation for my child to continue the hard work that lays ahead.

When I have a chance, I will post more concrete examples...

Don't keep blaming the teachers - “Language and culture are linked ... and families should know what they are getting into.”

Heather Clydesdale has written an updated perspective on the state of Chinese immersion programs in America in this article for Asia Society:

Destination: Immersion - As recognition of language immersion’s wide-ranging benefits increase, and schools across the United States establish new programs, many are finding that the journey is rewarding, but also has hurdles.

She highlights insights from leading Mandarin Immersion educators, notably from Chinese American International School (CAIS), Yu Ying Charter, Yinghua Academy, and Pioneer Valley Charter.

They all concur that sustaining ongoing professional develop support for Chinese teachers is no easy task. A few years ago, this issue of "adequate" training for teachers was an oft-cited pain point for the success or failure of a Mandarin Immersion program. These teachers were having to bear the brunt of much undue blame. I think Asia Society bears some of the responsibility for over-simplifying the issues back then, and broadcasting the training challenge as a crisis of the teachers, rather than one of institutions and leadership.

Many of us who grew up bilingual and bicultural - as parents, we protested at the grassroots - we were in shock, really. How could it be this absurd? Haven't "we" (us ABC's) been around for quite some time for the obvious stereotyping blunders and the most unproductive assumptions to have been long dispelled? What, exactly, were we dealing with here? Because it could not be as obvious as saying that the divide between Chinese and English (languages) and the divide between Chinese and American cultures were vast. Hasn't everyone read/seen The Joy Luck Club already? And read most of Maxine Hong Kingston's books, or watched Bill Moyers' "Becoming Chinese American"... or any number of pop cultural forms of identity musings and whatnot? Aren't we in the post-post-post-cultural-modernist era, already? Identities have already morphed to triple and quadruple states, forget the age of the Hyphenated Someone...! So why did it feel so 1980s?

But who was going to believe us when such a viewpoint was not only being articulated by so-called leaders in the field, but also feeding into the general Blame-the-Teacher milieu generated by the likes of Bill Gates lately... Society continues to put all of its motley ills upon the doorstep of the poor, unsuspecting classroom teacher. Every learning, medical, socio-economic, and emotional disorder has been deposited before her with demands that they be fixed with a pile of worksheets and crayons. Now, it seems, Americans' chronic monolingualism would be cured by her solitary efforts, as well. At once heroic, yet maligned for expecting to be ordinary - that is, as ordinary as being available in your friendly neighborhood idyllically situated elementary school that everyone has the right to access upon any given day because this is America, land of the free... because every friendly neighborhood deserves an outstanding teacher who works magic as the true gatekeeper for opportunity in this land of freedom. As absurd as it has been, I do believe there have been these underlying assumptions at work.

Bridging Chinese and American cultures is no casual matter. Demanding that sole, lonely Mandarin teachers navigate this terrain without proper support... especially when some are being placed in outlying areas of the country where few Chinese people even exist in the first place... It was hard enough for the likes of us who grew up in far-flung American Suburbia over the last 20-30 years, but at least we began as kids and could grow with American culture more organically. And then look at how our Mandarin turned out.

We watched how our parents struggled with English. Even the most highly educated (and my parents had PhD's from Berkeley) still spoke English with accents and occasional grammatical errors, and a constant feeling of not really speaking their own language. So you want these full-fledged adults who have perfect Mandarin, but you want them to know everything else.

I would like to see some school adopt the model of taking a fully functioning adult American teacher who knows no Mandarin and teach her how to speak and teach Mandarin, while she also serves as the normal English-speaking elementary teacher that she already is. At least there won't be any complaints by the parent community about having "American style" cultural competence. I know, pure fantasy. But I think doing the reverse mental model is good for people to attain better perspective on any current enterprise.

These days, I look at the scene of Mandarin Immersion with a degree of constant anxiety. When is the other shoe going to drop? Will it ever cross the line? Will Americans ever get it? That is, will Americans who grew up monolingual and complacent in their "American" identity, rather than the ones who are aware of their "immigrant" identity - will these Americans ever get it?

Or will it be constant unspoken subtle ways of demanding that "the foreigner" pony up and get with their program? Just like American foreign policy is always first and foremost about America's agenda, rather than something that looks more equal and global...

I look at French and German immersion programs - they never experience the blowback that Americans "don't need to" learn the culture. If you said that to someone who was French or German, they would think you were crazy and look down on you. But people say that about Chinese culture all the time, that it's unnecessary to learn, but they want their kids to learn Mandarin... All I can do is look at them askance, with a degree of horror...

Nonetheless, I was glad to read that Kevin Chang, Director of CAIS' Chinese Program, was being quoted as standing tall and saying, "Language and culture are linked... and families should know what they are getting into."

In other words, don't expect the Chinese teachers to cater to your little Johnny's each and every sniffle. If you sign up for this cross-cultural and cross-linguistic experience, the whole point is that Little Johnny will have to make the crossing -- to the "other" side. He'll have a much better time of it if you, the parent, can figure out how to be supportive.

Finding age-appropriate material - 哲学鸟飞罗系列

It is true, what other parents in MI programs have said, that the 4th-5th grade period is tricky. Cute bunnies are on their way out, but Chinese language reading ability is lagging... and increasingly lagging behind the English that races ahead like a jack rabbit.

I see glimmers of the pre-teen brain that does not want to cooperate with the enticements I've learned in prior years.

So I'm trying this one - 哲学鸟飞罗系列 "Philosophy Bird Series"

Meanwhile, Book 5 in the Jinan University ZhongWen series just took a massive jump in vocabulary style with the lesson on China's first manned satellite. Then it eased up with the next story about weighing an elephant.

And still, my child enjoys the tales of the mischievous "Xiao Pi" - a great series, but hard to find from American dealers (someone, please stock it). But you can find it on DangDang.com. Not the translation of Diary of a Wimpy Kid, but the Chinese one "小屁孩子日记." You can find his years in Kindergarten at some of the American dealers, but the series continues up through 6th grade. My 4th grader is reveling in his escapades at 2nd grade. I hope she'll continue to find him interesting when both of them are a little older.

I know that once high school starts, the content expectation will become a lot more focused on history, geography, science, and everyday public affairs stuff. But to get there, her brain needs a foundation of solid storytelling and conversation.

"Some kids are not cut out for immersion..." or "My kid just doesn't like the French language"

I would like to put it out there that this myth needs serious busting. But who has the resources to do it? How would you design a longitudinal education study that would properly do this?

One of the biggest problems is having a proper control group. You simply can't.

Anecdotally, I would say that the biggest problem for kids not being able to stay in a language immersion program is that they don't have parents who are willing to meet their own kids' needs. That is more the problem than that "some kids" are not cut out for this.

But sure, most language immersion programs do not have the full slate of resources to meet each and every need or desire that the kid has. For example, it would be very progressive and cutting edge if a school was designed to have all of the following:

1. very high academic targets across all subjects (assuming elite college prep here, too),
2. a high proficiency outcomes Mandarin language program,
3. a high achieving soccer program with coaches who taught in Mandarin and English.

Soccer and Mandarin? A total fantasy come true for some dads out there. But first, pull back and notice that the Academics + Soccer model, itself, in English, is not terribly common here in America.

So when parents complain that their program is missing things, it is often an unrealistic slate. And when they say someone's kids or their own just aren't "cut out for language immersion," I think that it is because they, the parents, do not want to invest in the resources to help their kids achieve and succeed on the language front.

Why don't parents want to do this? Your guess is as good as mine. I think some don't really understand what it takes to "get there" in an English-dominant society when they simply lack the bilingual experience, themselves. I think others are too enamored of social status activities that keep them from focusing on something like language proficiency. For example, I see a lot of parents work really hard to support their kids for soccer, skiing, gymnastics, and piano. But they will not work as hard for the second language. Then they sit around and wonder why their kid doesn't have better proficiency outcomes for their language skills. Furthermore, if you challenge them on why they are investing so much time and energy on these other activities, usually without the expectation that their kids will reach professional levels, they say things like "it's good for them" in very general and vague ways.

I don't disagree that investing in anything is "good for" any kid. But that is the point. If you invest, then you will see outcomes. If you don't, then why do you expect better outcomes for not having invested, when you are clearly more invested in all these other things? Just admit you are not invested in the language outcomes and you would rather your child turn out to be a professional skier. (Even if global warming is negatively impacting the entire industry...)

And others, still - I think there are still too many people who think that their kids will do "just fine" if they "pick up" the language at a later point in their education. But all these perspectives goes back to a very shallow understanding of the 3B's.

Then there is a fringe minority out there who don't understand that being part of a low-performing language immersion program is not the goal at all. So when parents opt out of such a program, it has nothing to do with the characteristic of the program having such a strong language component, but that the targets are too low to constitute a "real" or "normal" or even "good" education. That is an entirely different thing. But I have heard parents out there use this as an excuse - that language immersion is not for everyone - therefore, no need to look at attrition rates as an indication that you might be in a low-performing program. These parents point the finger at those who leave, suggesting that the kids and parents who leave such a program are, themselves, deficient in talent and inclinations, while those who remain in such a program keep ignorantly strutting around in their chicken suits.

I believe that all kids are able to learn a second language through a good immersion program. But the kids need the right supports for their own learning styles, patterns, and mix of strengths and weaknesses. There is no one program that can meet all the needs of every learner out there. That is where parents need to figure out what their own kids need and be their kids' best advocates and sources of support. I think this is generally true for other types of learning, not just language.

But language is different - it is the vehicle of thought, not just thought, itself. It is one thing for someone to express a preference for a subject like math or science, or history or literature. But it's another thing to say, "Oh, my kid just doesn't like the French language." What does that even mean?

Imagine a French person saying that. Then, what? What would that child do? Not speak French? And therefore, not speak or write or think? Would that parent be okay with allowing their kid to halt all language faculties altogether simply because the kid had decided that s/he didn't like the French language?

Of course, this is a total absurdity. But these are the kinds of things I hear parents in Mandarin Immersion programs say. Or, some who perhaps aspire to be in them are saying such nonsense.

The bottom line is that every kid can do a language immersion program. But not all programs are good fits for every kid, nor are all programs even good at what they say they are supposed to do for the kids who would be good fits for their model. Then it is up to the grownups - no the kids - to figure out how to make the program good. And if the program can only be adjusted to meet the needs of the middle of the group, then the parents must do the extra that their own kids need.

Word of warning - some inappropriate content in CCTV's "快乐汉语"

We had this problem with the ”西样样“ (Xi YangYang) cartoon series, as well. It seems that material for kids coming out of the Mainland is still behind some of the values we are trying to promote here in America or Europe.

Xi YangYang is a very popular cartoon series, one that you can find in the U.S. on YouTube or easily from online and Chinese video/dvd stores, or even in the public libraries. But the characters behave more like Spongebob Square Pants and the Road Runner and Wiley Coyote, than the likes of Caillou or Curious George, or any material that one finds on PBS Kids.

I suppose it is a matter of parenting values - not just the divide between China and America. After all, if you watch the material on the popular Cartoon Network here in America, you will find all the snark (disrespectful sarcasm) and violence that exists in Xi YangYang.

For my own taste and values, this is not appropriate material for my young child. And as she gets older, I hope that she gravitates toward more sophisticated forms of storytelling. Snark and violence are cheap tools. I only tolerate snark in the form of political satire, and that's not interesting to young kids, anyway.

“快乐汉语” has some episodes wherein the father ends up getting drunk - not because he wants to, but because he finds it impolite to refuse the well-meaning offers of the family's "foreign" guest Susan, who is an American student. While she is practicing her “祝福” statements at dinner one evening, she gets carried away and keeps pouring a bit of alcohol for the dad, while trying out her new-found language skills. The dad, meanwhile, doesn't want to hurt her feelings or disrespect the moment, and culturally, must finish the glass each time it is poured as he is being praised.

The intention is to illustrate the cultural divide - which is great. It is great for high school or college kids. Not necessarily okay for your elementary aged child. ;)

The thing is, too, that since Americans don't get to experience the full range of language and culture here in the United States, this bit of consumption can cause problems. It can create a false impression about what is actually real or not real when it comes to Chinese culture. The humor makes the moment memorable, but it makes me wonder if that goes on to create an imbalanced view of what it is to be American and what it is to be Chinese.

I had a similar experience with a children's storybook, “生日飞球“ by 范锡林. One wants to support Chinese writers and illustrators. There is a lot of potential to consume modern children's stories, not just versions of the Classical Canon or stories translated from Western writers. But when suddenly towards the end there is a gun being pulled within a tale that seemed to have a lot of color and imagination - and even innocence - well, I fully understand that Chinese writers have a hard time discerning what is going on in America when things like Star Wars are so revered. But I would hope more and more of them could look to some of the alternative non-blockbuster productions that Disney is doing these days, in addition to PBS Kids.

The Science of Smart - radio/podcast by American RadioWorks

This was just broadcast in August 2014:
http://www.americanradioworks.org/documentaries/the-science-of-smart/

Two areas of key insights for Mandarin Immersion programs -

1. A study on bilingual brains
2. Utah's Mandarin Immersion programs

I have often said that the stuff being purveyed about "bilingual kids" being smarter is a bit of a fallacy. This reasoning is being used to promote enrollment into language immersion programs. But one of the really big problems is that "the studies" can only look at people who actually turn out to be bilingual, not kids who later became adults but do not have actual bilingual skills as adults.

So there is nothing out there that "proves" that your kid, with low levels of engagement and skill building while attending a language immersion program, will then turn out to be "smarter" just like those bilingual individuals that have, in fact, been studied.

As for the Utah programs, listen carefully to what they say. Utah is doing 50% of the day, not a dual immersion design. They know that they must be One-Way immersion, not Two-Way, because of their student population. But also, look into what and how they are teaching. They have a curriculum. They know what it looks like. They have native English speaking teachers teaching in English, and native Chinese speaking teachers teaching in Chinese. They do not need to force teachers to be fluent in both languages. This is not the case with the politics of every school district. Plus, the Utah programs have carefully and thoughtfully chosen content to be their guide in designing the curriculum, not the ACTFL standards. They may be mapping to ACTFL, and even to Common Core, but they are using the Common Core Content as their guides for the "what," not ACTFL.

There are more resources out there for Utah's MI programs. I will try to post here another day.

The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker

I've mentioned this book to many parents. No joke, it is worth reading.

All kids are capable of understanding and creating language. Read what he says. Now that I am 9 years into my own experiment of raising a trilingual child, I can attest to the insights as being valid and true.

The thing about language acquisition is that I think "the studies" are still in their infancy around the world. Sure, there is a lot that is true, a lot that has been figured out. But it is very difficult for any adult to track progress in a language that they do not know. So when you read something like "Studies show..." or "Researchers have found...," it is hard to know what they knew beforehand and what they really were able to discern throughout the process.

I had to do my own experiment, so I tried to learn as much as I could. Several of the themes Pinker discusses became phenomena we witnessed in our own child's development. Pretty exciting.

And how would it pan out for her overall intellectual development? Well, so far, so good. I've met a few other bilingual and trilingual households out there who have also taken similar approaches as we have.

So if you are a bilingual or trilingual household about to become new parnets, I highly recommend reading Pinker and then doing the early immersion work at home. Don't worry about the "mixing up" in the early years. It will figure itself out. And by all means, keep working, keep moving forward. Someday, we'll have more multilingual grownups out there who just might change the world for the better with their ability to literally understand more people. Then we will all be able to say that it really, really, really was worth it!

More on motivation challenges while approaching adolescence

I met another parent of kids in an MI program who faced disappointment with outcomes during the middle school years. It seems that there is quite a lot of anecdotal evidence that problems really become apparent at that time.

This parent said, "Well, my son just didn't like learning the language...Some kids don't take to learning language is readily as others do..."

I felt sad for this parent. The kids are at least part ethnically Chinese, too. But without a more holistic approach, they found "learning just the language" to be dry and meaningless.

I've heard this response from parents of students who have studied Chinese who come from non-Chinese, Chinese, and native-speaking Chinese backgrounds. The problem remains learning the language in a vacuum, a bubble, disconnected from the things they feel connected with. For that, learning all different aspects of the culture and dynamic ways of interacting with and in the language are critical.

There are plenty of methods and resources out there to support kids growing up in an English-dominant society. But parents have to be proactive in searching them out, plus getting their kids engaged early enough. At the right developmental age, kids are open and curious. But that openness and curiosity start to shut down as they approach adolescence, making it harder and harder to help them understand what is in front of them, and to light that spark that can carry the rest.

If kids learn to approach the "dry" and "boring" in a different way - then it will not be "dry" and "boring." But no doubt, there is the difference between "hard work" and doing "boring" things. Make sure you, as the parent, understand the difference and how your own values may stand in the way of knowing that difference.

All kids can learn another language. It just means accessing the right mix of approaches for that kid. But parents have to work with the teacher in figuring out what the best triggers might be. Being passive won't get results.

Quizlet as a resource

As I have repeatedly said, I am against the flashcard model of language learning. I believe fully in the fully immersive immersion model. (yes, I purposely was redundant)

That means eliminating "learning in translation" which flashcards often offer.

Our teacher this year, however, did something really fabulous. She set us up to use Quizlet, which, although not only about flashcards, but its main product offering is that - but the definitions for the weekly vocabulary are all in Chinese, as well. There are built-in sound buttons that recite the vocabulary and definitions for you.

The site then lets the teacher set up testing or "quiz" features. So first, the vocabulary with definitions can be set up as flashcards. Then, those definitions can be posted to require being matched in reverse. Moreover, all the characters can be posted as buttons wherein the student must input the right mix of characters in order to match it to a picture plus a written definition which they must learn to read on their own. The order of the list can remain the same, then it can be scrambled or even timed. There is additional feedback in that students can set up accounts so the teacher can see who completed what and how much of it, the rates of errors, how much time it took, etc.

The units can be set up as totally open links, as well, with no required account created in order to engage.

I have mixed feelings about the role of technology in education. But to me, this does not seem totally mindless, passive matching, so I guess I am okay with it. Moreover, my child is asking to do it. Our teacher is not requiring it. Especially if parents have other ways to help our kids master the vocabulary. It is a good option for parents without those skills or additional resources, however, especially if the teacher does it by using Chinese definitions, not English ones.

Still, it is not a replacement to good old fashioned independent reading and writing skills. At our stage, I am confident that my child will not be handicapped by exposure to this resource. Her writing abilities are very strong for her stage of development. She has a lot of brain and muscle memory built up, as well as having become acculturated to the writing in terms of habit and purpose (experiencing the beauty of the writing, as well as having learned structural meaning aspects like radicals and positioning).

So here is the link to Quizlet. If your teacher has the time, or if you have a parent in your community who can do this, then it can be a great resource on behalf of true Mandarin Immersion. (or any language immersion program)

“快乐汉语” （KuaiLe HanYu）CCTV episodes on YouTube

Our 4th grade teacher introduced us to this series, here is a link to Episode 01:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTLmiD17mc0

There are tons of episodes - thank you, YouTube! We love it. YouTube continues to be an amazing innovation, an amazing portal to access a lot of things that used to be so hard to get.

There is also a "cool" or "hip" quality built into the show. Here is a promo to give you an idea:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBmAi21Tub4

While at the start of 4th grade my child still seems more "innocent" and open to "cute" in the form of bunnies and pandas, I do realize pre-teenhood and adolescence are just around the corner. These KuaiLe HanYu episodes include a range of characters, but the main ones are teens or young adults. That may make it automatically more appealing to that know-it-all-brimming-with-attitude creature who has possessed your previously sweet natured child.

Mandarin Immersion Reflections - the public v. private option

I realize I have been remiss in finishing "a typical week's homework" for 3rd grade. My apologies. The summer was chock full of too much fun, I suppose... ;)

Meanwhile, we are starting 4th grade and I have a moment to reflect on where we've been and where we're going in this giant experiment of being in Mandarin Immersion for the elementary years. This is not to dismiss the experience of families who have done the experiment in the years past, whether in the 30+ years of private school history in America, or the 10+ years of public school experience that exists for either Mandarin or Cantonese immersion programs. But there is very little in the blogosphere from which parents can learn. So my input is to contribute to that gap.

To review for new readers - we spent K-1 and a couple months of 2nd grade in public at what is called a Dual Immersion or Two-Way program. These programs are designed as 90 to 60% of the day in Mandarin until it becomes 50% of the day for 4th and 5th grades, while the student population is supposed to be mixed as 1/3 native speakers from English, 1/3 native speakers from Mandarin, and 1/3 bilingual speakers.

Since that mix of demographics did not happen, then the District was supposed to tolerate a mix of 1/2 kids from English speaking families and 1/2 from Mandarin speaking families.

But since even that mix did not happen in the school we were at, then we saw how the program was failing with the other resources it had and resources it did not have. So we moved to private where the program design is entirely different.

How is it different? First, the instruction time is split 50/50 between English and Mandarin from the beginning through 5th grade. Half the day is in English, the other half is in Mandarin. Teachers who teach in English do not teach in Mandarin. They are native speakers of English and expertly trained as you would expect to find in most high-performing private schools in America. I haven't noticed any of these teachers knowing much Mandarin, but the Head of School is expertly trained in Mandarin and Chinese literature and history.

The Mandarin teachers are all native speakers of Mandarin from Taiwan or the Mainland. They are all generally fairly competent in English, although not expected to be able to teach in English nor expected to have perfect skills in communicating with parents in English. The teachers we have had have all been amazing. Even the assistant teachers have been really great.

Meanwhile, the student mix does not seem to be required to be anything. No formula for X number of kids from Mandarin or English speaking backgrounds. This is an area that could use improvement, I think. I think if the student population would increase to more Chinese proficient (regardless of home dialect, Mandarin, Cantonese, Shanghainese, etc.), then all the students would reach higher proficiency levels in both languages. As it stands, everyone is pretty much guaranteed to reach very high levels of proficiency in English for all subject areas, but the Chinese/Mandarin proficiency levels remain mixed.

Generally, those parents who can perceive these gaps then go on to interpret the state of things as "political." It is unfortunate. As with our experience of public school, there remains a group of parents who believe they are in control of the outcomes. They believe in their "formula" of "getting" Mandarin as "enrichment," rather than buying into the true point of "immersion" outcomes, which is to achieve what we sometimes characterize as "academic" level of language proficiency. That is a level that even native speakers running heritage schools are challenged to achieve. Hence the increased popularity of "immersion." But this level of the discussion seems to have been missed by the parents who only perceive the "enrichment" model and just don't get it.

I suppose the pushback on that is that they feel entitled to not "get it." After all, they are "getting" what they want, which is a lower level of Mandarin language proficiency as "enrichment."

While this "political" condition can translate into poor performance and outcomes across the board for everyone in the public school context (after all, we see how parents with low expectations chronically translate into low performing schools across the country, especially in the poorest and disadvantaged districts because the parents themselves are so disadvantaged having chronically been without the resources to envision a different outcome), this set up has not gotten in my way in the private context. Indeed, even the other parents I speak with who expect more from their own kids and more from themselves, we have agreed that this has translated well with the teachers.

Why does this happen? It is because the teachers are so well supported. The resources - financial, books, having assistant teachers, not having to teach in both languages, having a well-stocked administrative staff who deal with discipline and behavior - all of this allows the teachers to focus on teaching, to focus on their relationship with the kids. They have time to scaffold for kids who need more help on what they are learning, and more time and energy to give more advanced material to the kids who need and qualify for it.

All of the focus is on the curriculum - what can the kid do with the curriculum or what the kid needs help with doing. But if the issue is behavioral or social, then the teacher has support from administrative leadership or learning and behavioral counselors to consult and intervene.

This is vitally important. Sadly, in the public context, too many social workers, educational psychologists and administrative staff have been cut so that public school teachers are left doing all this work. As many of us in public had noticed, the volume of resources was so scarce that parents had to take up the mantle and make up the difference. But in the public school we were at, too many of the parents did not realize how bad the resource set up was, how poorly resourced the classrooms were, because they did not know the language to know how bad things were. And when some of us illuminated the problems, the cogs of denial kicked in hard. We hurt their pride - because somehow "Mandarin" has acquired notions like "elite" and "privileged" and "achievement" in ways that it didn't automatically deserve.

In a well-resourced environment, "the professionals" are able to take control. In a poorly-resourced environment, madness and mayhem rule. This rule is true of many areas of life, not just education or the giant experiment that is Mandarin Immersion.