Yu Ying - advice please

[Anonymous]

Shunning. LMAO (at you)

Non YY parent.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yu Ying parent here.

We love the school. No Chinese at home. No extra support. That was never the idea for us, as I think that nobody will ever learn a language by just going to an immersion school. But being at Yu Ying gives the kids the opportunity to develop an ear for Chinese (tonal language -- completely different from Spanish!). If they want to really learn it later, they will have an easier time and will be able to speak it like a native. Plus a second (or third or fourth) language is good for brain development.

Also: don't ask on DCUM for advice on enrolling. You don't know their agenda when they answer. A lot of people saying "Don't" could be on the waiting list waiting for a spot to become available..

+1. Same. Our kid does fine in Mandarin without supports and we feel any "holes" will be filled by a year or two abroad in China when DS is older and not in elementary school.

YY is a great school with a close, nurturing community. We love it too and all the parents and kids we know in an upper grade love it also. Most of DS's classmates have been there since prek4, fun to see these kids grow up together!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yu Ying parent here.

We love the school. No Chinese at home. No extra support. That was never the idea for us, as I think that nobody will ever learn a language by just going to an immersion school. But being at Yu Ying gives the kids the opportunity to develop an ear for Chinese (tonal language -- completely different from Spanish!). If they want to really learn it later, they will have an easier time and will be able to speak it like a native. Plus a second (or third or fourth) language is good for brain development.

Also: don't ask on DCUM for advice on enrolling. You don't know their agenda when they answer. A lot of people saying "Don't" could be on the waiting list waiting for a spot to become available..

+1. Same. Our kid does fine in Mandarin without supports and we feel any "holes" will be filled by a year or two abroad in China when DS is older and not in elementary school.

YY is a great school with a close, nurturing community. We love it too and all the parents and kids we know in an upper grade love it also. Most of DS's classmates have been there since prek4, fun to see these kids grow up together!

this is a big consideration. Look at retention numbers for students at your two schools. It sucks to lose friends year after year.

[Anonymous]

Yea, but it's still a fake immersion school, cozy and stable, but phony. Ten years in, there are still only a handful of truly bilingual Chinese-speaking kids enrolled, of more than 500 students. If YY were so hot at teaching Mandarin (or English or math), DC native speakers who don't speak English to their kids would be trying desperately to lottery in. Not the case. Having non-Chinese speaking admins Chinese teachers openly run down (in their dialects) and gang up on didn't work for us. Solid admins, right, right.

-Naturalized US citizen father who bailed on YY (although kids were the best Chinese speaker in the lower grades, by a long shot) and never looked back.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yea, but it's still a fake immersion school, cozy and stable, but phony. Ten years in, there are still only a handful of truly bilingual Chinese-speaking kids enrolled, of more than 500 students. If YY were so hot at teaching Mandarin (or English or math), DC native speakers who don't speak English to their kids would be trying desperately to lottery in. Not the case. Having non-Chinese speaking admins Chinese teachers openly run down (in their dialects) and gang up on didn't work for us. Solid admins, right, right.

-Naturalized US citizen father who bailed on YY (although kids were the best Chinese speaker in the lower grades, by a long shot) and never looked back.

Good riddance! Enjoy living in Maryland.

[Anonymous]

Sheesh! Fangs are out. Some PPs have some good points and it sounds like you're happy and it's certainly scary to rock the boat, even more so if you're uncertain about the Mandarin aspect. My DD got a PreK4 spot at YY. She'll take it and I'm not looking back. I don't know that I'm "committed to the Mandarin" but I'm sure are heck to committed to my kid getting a good elementary education and having a potential middle and high school option in DC. YY gives her that. She don't have that right now since we're enrolled in a so-so EOTP DCPS. Now DH and I can keep our short commutes, don't need to sell and move to the suburbs, can save more for college, etc, etc, I don't expect my kid to be fluent--that's somewhat up to her in terms of overall interest and I'm happy to provide the support either way. But for the overall best interests of my entire family, YY makes sense for us. And if it doesn't after awile, we'll reevaluate.So, think big picture about what your family needs/wants and decide.

[Anonymous]

Our kids are at yy. It's a lovely school. They teach kids how to be a good person, not only about mandarin. My child Loves going to school there. Huge change from his private daycare. Good luck.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yea, but it's still a fake immersion school, cozy and stable, but phony. Ten years in, there are still only a handful of truly bilingual Chinese-speaking kids enrolled, of more than 500 students. If YY were so hot at teaching Mandarin (or English or math), DC native speakers who don't speak English to their kids would be trying desperately to lottery in. Not the case. Having non-Chinese speaking admins Chinese teachers openly run down (in their dialects) and gang up on didn't work for us. Solid admins, right, right.

-Naturalized US citizen father who bailed on YY (although kids were the best Chinese speaker in the lower grades, by a long shot) and never looked back.

Good riddance! Enjoy living in Maryland.

Still in DC. Joke is on you, mate. You think your kid's Mandarin is good. It's not, not even close, partly because my children are no longer at YY (along with almost all the other DC kids who speak Chinese well).

[Anonymous]

We visited half a dozen immersion PS immersion programs over the winter, the most popular charters + DCPS programs. We observed classes in session and walked around. We discovered that Sela and Yu Ying aren't true immersion programs, not in the way the Spanish programs are. The kids don't speak the language being taught on the playground, in hallways, the cafeteria etc. They speak it in response to teachers asking questions, or in making prepared presentations. FYI, OP in the Spanish programs, you hear the language outside classroom settings a lot, particularly at Oyster. If you're mainly looking for a solid PreS-12th grade path YY will work great as long as you don't mind that half the families aren't too serious about the language or cultural aspects. SOunds like you wouldn't. I'd go for it.

[Anonymous]

I would ask a different question.

How committed to you to Montessori in the long-run? Do you expect to send your kid there through 5/6th grade?

If you're only committed to Montessori at the primary level, I'd make the switch now, as you're unlikely to get as good of a lottery spot in the future. If you are committed to Montessori through lower and upper elementary, then stay.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would ask a different question.

How committed to you to Montessori in the long-run? Do you expect to send your kid there through 5/6th grade?

If you're only committed to Montessori at the primary level, I'd make the switch now, as you're unlikely to get as good of a lottery spot in the future. If you are committed to Montessori through lower and upper elementary, then stay.

The real magic of Montessori happens in elementary. Being committed only for primary is shortsighted.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would ask a different question.

How committed to you to Montessori in the long-run? Do you expect to send your kid there through 5/6th grade?

If you're only committed to Montessori at the primary level, I'd make the switch now, as you're unlikely to get as good of a lottery spot in the future. If you are committed to Montessori through lower and upper elementary, then stay.

The real magic of Montessori happens in elementary. Being committed only for primary is shortsighted.

I'm PP. I agree. We're committed to Montessori in elementary, but it isn't clear that OP is. She just says she loves the school now. I wanted to raise the questions to try and get a better sense if she's truly committed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is what charter critics call a barrier to entry. Pull up that drawbridge when you go into that castle, why don't you?

What a load of hooey. An actual "barrier to entry" comes when you can NOT GET IN because of some policy or attitude. If OP actually has a spot or is likely to get one and then gets in, nothing said on DCUM can stop her/him from taking their spot.

Nice try, but learn a little about what you pretend to know about before trying to make people feel bad about the very real advice they're giving. OP can ignore it or take it, although from all the families I know at YY I'd say it's great advice and anyone not committed in a big way to that language should pass.

I would say shunning a family because they're ambivalent about Mandarin is an attitude. IF the 'acceptable' pool for YY is the say 25% of families in DC who would be really interested in Chinese language / culture, then you're selecting for a pretty elite group.

There are a lot of bad things said about YY, but no one has ever reported going there and then being "shunned" or having anyone quiz them on how badly they wanted Mandarin before they accepted their spot. So stop making up stuff about YY, because at the end of the day attitudes on DCUM do not equal the school's policy or application process or even actual parent experiences sometimes. That said, it's absolutely fine and legit for some parents at YY to feel that anyone with cold feet because they're not sure they want to go, it's fine for those parents to say "No, don't come if you're not sure and Mandarin isn't a priority for you". Parents are entitled to their opinions, but that doesn't mean that all parents feel one way either way, or that the school itself is somehow filtering out would-be attendees based on some test of commitment.

If you get a slot through the lottery, you have an ability to accept it. No attitudes anywhere will prevent you from accepting if you want to, yet if you ask on DCUM what people think, you don't get to only get responses from those who enthusiastically want ambivalent, non-committed-to-Mandarin parents. You get what you get in terms of attitudes, and you really can't tell who really is a parent there or not here, so consider that too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yea, but it's still a fake immersion school, cozy and stable, but phony. Ten years in, there are still only a handful of truly bilingual Chinese-speaking kids enrolled, of more than 500 students. If YY were so hot at teaching Mandarin (or English or math), DC native speakers who don't speak English to their kids would be trying desperately to lottery in. Not the case. Having non-Chinese speaking admins Chinese teachers openly run down (in their dialects) and gang up on didn't work for us. Solid admins, right, right.

-Naturalized US citizen father who bailed on YY (although kids were the best Chinese speaker in the lower grades, by a long shot) and never looked back.

LOL! You're funny!

But hey, since you seem to want to be taken seriously, please do us all a favor and cite that official definition of "real immersion school" that you obviously are privy to and share with us the official criteria by which a school is assessed as either "real" or "phony/fake".

Or else we'll all know you are sharing your opinion - which you have every right to do - but that it's ONLY an opinion and not based on any legitimate measure that you can point to that proves your point. You don't even have any data about graduating student performance in Mandarin assessment tests because I don't think any of that is available yet.

But you do sound like you love the sound of your own opinions which you state as fact, so please, do share the actual source for this official definition of "real vs. phony immersion schools". We'll just be sitting here holding our collective breath...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We visited half a dozen immersion PS immersion programs over the winter, the most popular charters + DCPS programs. We observed classes in session and walked around. We discovered that Sela and Yu Ying aren't true immersion programs, not in the way the Spanish programs are. The kids don't speak the language being taught on the playground, in hallways, the cafeteria etc. They speak it in response to teachers asking questions, or in making prepared presentations. FYI, OP in the Spanish programs, you hear the language outside classroom settings a lot, particularly at Oyster. If you're mainly looking for a solid PreS-12th grade path YY will work great as long as you don't mind that half the families aren't too serious about the language or cultural aspects. SOunds like you wouldn't. I'd go for it.

What's your source on "half the families aren't too serious about the language"? I haven't found that to be true at all and I'm a YY parent who finds most parents are serious about their kids learning the language. How did you arrive at "half the parents aren't serious"?