Sp or Ch language?
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Anonymous
| OP, here's my advice. Don't go to YY unless you're ready to face a continuous barrage of insults and vitriol both towards the school and you as a parent. If you can bear it though it's worth it. You will be giving your child something unique, something not even the best private schools in the city can give. Is it perfect? No. Does it satisfy everyone? What school does? Keep in mind that there are 5000 Chinese people in this city. We are hearing from maybe 4 of them. They do not speak for the community as a whole nor for the satisfied Chinese families at the school. |
Anonymous
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My kid just completed 3rd.
I'd like to see more Asian kids, with Asian parents, for one key reason - they're among the brightest and most disciplined students. True for English, true for math in both languages. There's a reason that the student bodies of so many top universities (e.g. Berkeley and UCLA, we're from Cal) are heavily Asian and it's not because these parents and kids lack drive. I feel like the English instruction at YY works reasonably well as much because so many of the parents are well-educated and on top of things more than because the teachers are. Too many teachers are young and inexperienced, but they're not lazy or lacking in creativity. The kids do some fun projects and the emphasis on writing is good. But ongoing discipline problems tend to get swept under the rug. English at YY is a mixed bag but overall more positive than negative. If your IB alternatives aren't great, as a parent, you're more likely to make the best of the instruction than not. We stay mainly because of the Mandarin--we have a Chinese au pair--although our IB option isn't bad. |
Anonymous
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I don't know about English instruction simply b/c our child was in PreK which was full immersion Mandarin. I'll admit, however, that DC gets tutoring in English, Math, and Mandarin. English and math b/c we would be doing it anyway no matter which school DC attended including the pricy private we turned down for YY and Mandarin b/c it's important to us.
I only mention this b/c I meet LOTS of immersion kids at our tutors. Not only Mandarin, mostly from Maryland public immersion schools not YY, Spanish and French from all over. Most if not all of the parents are 1st gen or immigrants themselves and highly educated professionals. Looks like many people feel their kids may need a boost if they attend an immersion program. |
Anonymous
Talk about whining; if you had the good sense to stay off these threads you surely wouldn't hear from any of them. There aren't many at YY and those who stay like the place. Nobody speaks for the DC Chinese community as a whole. And we've established that community outreach is not a school priortiy. |
Anonymous
My kids are at WIS, and I only know a few kids who do Kumon math (probably the same number as from any DC private school, none of which have fantastic math programs), and none who have private tutoring. The exception is weekend language school in a third or fourth language not covered at WIS (Swedish, German, Japanese, etc.), which is done by many families so that their children can keep up with the home or parent's/parents' language. |
Anonymous
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Anonymous
| To the PP who thinks the PA hasn't tried to do outreach: they tried in years 1 and 2 and were rebuffed, too. The outreach now is on the national and international levels. Trying to get some of the few thousand people native Chinese in the city to be open didn't seem to be the most useful way to spend precious energy. |
Anonymous
NP here. No, what we have established is that YY reached out to the Chinese community in DC and was turned away because they were annoyed with the Black and white faces. |
Anonymous
Yes. How many exchange students from China are coming to YY this summer. And has not YY been approached by the government of China as well as other Chinese communities. Some times people receive more love from strangers than from their own family. So, if the local Chinese community has decided that they are too good for YY, other Chinese communities are beginning to step in the gap. |
Anonymous
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Interesting thread on the MoCo forum about what happens in their Mandarin immersion programs. There they allow students to test in giving native speakers preference:
http://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/152416.page#1379452 |
Anonymous
Does your child have a learning difficulty? Otherwise I can't think of any circumstance in which I would consider tutoring for a preK kid. |
Anonymous
Just read that thread. Basically, children from non-Mandarin speaking households are shunted in the upper grades for mandarin speaking households. Perhaps, the DC charter board was aware of what happened in MoCO and had a legitimate reason for not allowing preferential treatment to a subgroup of people. |
Anonymous
Excuse your ignorance, but there is China, Singapore, Taiwan, Macau, hong kong. |
Anonymous
There is also a long history of Chinese being spoken in this country. I'm a Cantonese-speaking ABC whose children are too young for YY, and who hasn't made a decision about entering the lottery. My spouse and I are simply collecting impressions for now. I thought that posters might be interested in a blurb from the Chinese Immersion School of De Avila in San Francisco, which my brother's children attend. The school, which started up just three years ago, has been enthusiastically embraced by both the Bay Area Chinese community and native English speakers. The blurb offers great insight into why this is the case. What this wonderful school tries hard to do (see para 4 of the blurb below), is ensure that both the admin team and each class is comprised of a mix of native Chinese speakers, ABC Cantonese speakers, and English speakers. I point out that the small DC Chinese community's make-up is similar to that of the Bay Area. If anything, the percentage of native Chinese speakers is higher here, with local Chinese being less assimilated overall, and, hence, more inclined to seek out their own kind in suburban heritage language schools than W. Coast counterparts. It is my understanding that the professional class of ethnic Chinese attracted to YY in small numbers, which might include us, isn't actually terribly representative of the community as a whole. CHINESE IMMERSION SCHOOL (CIS) OF DE AVILA SAN FRANCISCO: Many people ask why the CIS curriculum begins with Cantonese rather than Mandarin. After all, Mandarin is the official language of China, and with more than a billion people speaking it, it is by far the most spoken language in the world. Cantonese, with just 71 million speakers may seem like an unusual starting point. To understand why CIS begins with Cantonese it is important to understand a few things about dual immersion language learning, the city of San Francisco, and the nature of Cantonese. CIS employs dual language immersion in which native English speakers and native speakers of the target language learn and play side by side. In an ideal case, a third of the class would consist of native English speakers, a third would be native Chinese speakers, and a third would be bilingual Chinese and English speakers. This model allows students to learn from each other and become bilingual and bi-literate (able to read both languages). While most Chinese speakers in the world speak Mandarin, most Chinese speakers in San Francisco speak Cantonese, and well over 75% of the Chinese speakers in the SFUSD use Cantonese as the home language. Cantonese is the language of Hong Kong and the southern coastal region of Guangdong in China. Since the middle of the 19th century, Chinese immigrants from the Cantonese speaking parts of China have been immigrating to San Francisco, and while Mandarin speakers are on the rise, they still comprise a minority of the Chinese speakers in the city. Rather than asking Cantonese speaking children to set aside their primary language and learn English, dual language immersion allows those children to further develop their Cantonese and become literate in Chinese. This in turn provides the children of Cantonese speaking immigrants with a better foundation for learning English and other languages. English speaking students benefit as well. By teaching Cantonese in the primary grades CIS is a more attractive school to immigrant families, and the presence of native Cantonese speakers in the classroom enhances the learning of the non-Chinese speaking students. |
Anonymous
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I'm another parent trying to choose between "Sp and Ch."
After reading the posts here, and on other YY threads, we're going for Spanish for our 3 year-old, if we can get into one of the immersion programs. Listening to YY parents talk about wanting to avoid weak IB schools as their primary motivation for most getting involved, calling those who live the culture and language names, and "just another sub-group" in DC that shouldn't be catered to, doesn't do it for me. If parents at the Spanish immersion schools were describing Mexican-Americans, the dominant Spanish-speaking immigrant group in the country, in similar terms, I'd also be concerned. And if many parents were defending principals who don't speak Spanish, I'd be worried. Finally, if Spanish-speaking parents were posting about feeling like token ethnics at schools offering "Spanish for white people. (19:13) I wouldn't be impressed either. Ech! YY doesn't sound "fabulous," it sounds phony and hostile to most native speakers of the language in the city, the length of the wait list not withstanding. |