Yu Ying

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not the person who posted about connecting with heritage schools, just a parent high on the PRS3 WL.

I don't get what would be in it for the heritage schools to connect with Yu Ying. Their students already speak Chinese! It's YY students that would benefit. The should reach out.

I just went through the whole thread and don't hear many posters denigrating YY. We're looking at MoCo real estate. The DC school system is starting to seem unserious about immersion, and a lot of other important things.

NP - We're a heritage family starting at YY this fall for K. People have already reached out to us about leading mandarin play groups. While it's nice to think DC will start school with some friends, it also seems like a lot of work to "carry" language learners along. Carry is too harsh of a word, but I'm not sure what word is better. I hope you know what I mean.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not the person who posted about connecting with heritage schools, just a parent high on the PRS3 WL.

I don't get what would be in it for the heritage schools to connect with Yu Ying. Their students already speak Chinese! It's YY students that would benefit. The should reach out.

I just went through the whole thread and don't hear many posters denigrating YY. We're looking at MoCo real estate. The DC school system is starting to seem unserious about immersion, and a lot of other important things.

NP - We're a heritage family starting at YY this fall for K. People have already reached out to us about leading mandarin play groups. While it's nice to think DC will start school with some friends, it also seems like a lot of work to "carry" language learners along. Carry is too harsh of a word, but I'm not sure what word is better. I hope you know what I mean.

No connection with the school here. However, assuming there aren't many heritage families with a kid starting in K, you've said a lot that may identify your family here. You may want to delete the post.

[Anonymous]

Huh? PP didn't say that his/her kid attends a heritage school. Poster questioned why a heritage school would want to link up with YY.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not the person who posted about connecting with heritage schools, just a parent high on the PRS3 WL.

I don't get what would be in it for the heritage schools to connect with Yu Ying. Their students already speak Chinese! It's YY students that would benefit. The should reach out.

I just went through the whole thread and don't hear many posters denigrating YY. We're looking at MoCo real estate. The DC school system is starting to seem unserious about immersion, and a lot of other important things.

NP - We're a heritage family starting at YY this fall for K. People have already reached out to us about leading mandarin play groups. While it's nice to think DC will start school with some friends, it also seems like a lot of work to "carry" language learners along. Carry is too harsh of a word, but I'm not sure what word is better. I hope you know what I mean.

No connection with the school here. However, assuming there aren't many heritage families with a kid starting in K, you've said a lot that may identify your family here. You may want to delete the post.

We know what you mean. No, carry isn't too harsh a word. We were in the same situation a few years ago, before moving on to a JKLM and weekend program in Rockville. We felt like a token bilingual family and grew weary of being asked how we celebrate Chinese holidays. There seem to be more bilingual Chinese speaking families at our DCPS than YY, some from embassies of Chinese speaking countries, international organizations etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Totally agree with above. Defending YY on DCUM is a losing battle and has been since the year it started. You can look at it as an amazing FREE opportunity to expose your kids to Chinese, one that is accessible equally to every family in DC. Or you can be outraged at the fact that it doesn't design its program to meet the needs of the small percentage of native speakers that are able to win the lottery, or the privileged families that can afford to supplement. The fact is, it is a public school. No one is entitled to have their particular needs prioritized above everyone else's.

+1

[Anonymous]

YY is bad b/c not enough native speakers and does not reach out to community enough to foster bonds. Non native families at YY are bad if they do reach out to native speakers at the school in an attempt to foster bonds as its inappropriate/pressuring.

I'm clocking out of this thread it devolved early on and is now eating itself.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For things to change, YY's admins and parent leaders would need to recognize that ethnic bilingual family/peer inputs are important in language immersion. Not happening.

+1. At YY language fluency is a nice bonus. But the real benefit is that it is a sufficiently intimidating language to keep lower SES families from applying in large numbers. The secondary benefit is that provides a justification for many gentrfiers to avoid their neighborhood IB schools.

YES! And the best way to encourage lower SES families to apply in larger numbers is to fire the AA head of school and replace her with a Chinese head of school!

Right. YY serves the diverse children and families of DC, not just the tiny native Chinese community, and I 100% understand why they've chosen a school head to reflect that mission.

Honestly, it sounds like most of the gripes about YY come down to native speakers wanting preferential treatment, such as a way to circumvent the lottery system and more easily gain admission to YY, and increased attention (and likely extra funding/resources) for heritage programs. Sorry, but these are just not very serious problems for the school and the majority of its families.

It's off-putting how hyperbolic the advocates for this niche interest are. Frankly, the posters pushing for special treatment at YY on DCUM for years have been so relentless, condescending, and dramatic that I can see why the school and other parents don't want to work with you.

You don't get it. Immersion without the support of a local ethnic community isn't immersion. You want to meet a local community of native speakers, however small, halfway, or the joke won't be on them, it will be on your children and their long-term commitment to their language and cultural studies.

The DC native speakers we know don't care about the school, not these days. They still wonder why many parents choose Chinese immersion when they don't seem to like, or want to know, basic realities of Chinese culture. The YY teachers, and the hired help coming in to provide enrichment, are paid to sell you a product. The native speakers are the acid test of YY commitment to the project because they're not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Totally agree with above. Defending YY on DCUM is a losing battle and has been since the year it started. You can look at it as an amazing FREE opportunity to expose your kids to Chinese, one that is accessible equally to every family in DC. Or you can be outraged at the fact that it doesn't design its program to meet the needs of the small percentage of native speakers that are able to win the lottery, or the privileged families that can afford to supplement. The fact is, it is a public school. No one is entitled to have their particular needs prioritized above everyone else's.

+1

Defend YY all you want, but defending the DCI Chinese program with enthusiasm presents real challenges. Not long ago, I attend a DCI Chinese track event. I came away unimpressed with the momentum the program has built. The parents I talked to didn't sound happy with the Chinese instruction. Resistance to drawing native speakers to YY and retaining them sounds reasonable until you talk to DCI parents and Chinese teachers. Fact is, with no native speakers of Chinese (that's right, none) at DCI, and hardly any Asian parents, the program is struggling.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Totally agree with above. Defending YY on DCUM is a losing battle and has been since the year it started. You can look at it as an amazing FREE opportunity to expose your kids to Chinese, one that is accessible equally to every family in DC. Or you can be outraged at the fact that it doesn't design its program to meet the needs of the small percentage of native speakers that are able to win the lottery, or the privileged families that can afford to supplement. The fact is, it is a public school. No one is entitled to have their particular needs prioritized above everyone else's.

+1

Defend YY all you want, but defending the DCI Chinese program with enthusiasm presents real challenges. Not long ago, I attend a DCI Chinese track event. I came away unimpressed with the momentum the program has built. The parents I talked to didn't sound happy with the Chinese instruction. Resistance to drawing native speakers to YY and retaining them sounds reasonable until you talk to DCI parents and Chinese teachers. Fact is, with no native speakers of Chinese (that's right, none) at DCI, and hardly any Asian parents, the program is struggling.

Sure, but they are two different schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:YY is bad b/c not enough native speakers and does not reach out to community enough to foster bonds. Non native families at YY are bad if they do reach out to native speakers at the school in an attempt to foster bonds as its inappropriate/pressuring.

I'm clocking out of this thread it devolved early on and is now eating itself.

How odd. I have a DC in an upper grade at YY with several Chinese friends. Makes me wonder how long ago bitter parent above was there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Totally agree with above. Defending YY on DCUM is a losing battle and has been since the year it started. You can look at it as an amazing FREE opportunity to expose your kids to Chinese, one that is accessible equally to every family in DC. Or you can be outraged at the fact that it doesn't design its program to meet the needs of the small percentage of native speakers that are able to win the lottery, or the privileged families that can afford to supplement. The fact is, it is a public school. No one is entitled to have their particular needs prioritized above everyone else's.

+1

Defend YY all you want, but defending the DCI Chinese program with enthusiasm presents real challenges. Not long ago, I attend a DCI Chinese track event. I came away unimpressed with the momentum the program has built. The parents I talked to didn't sound happy with the Chinese instruction. Resistance to drawing native speakers to YY and retaining them sounds reasonable until you talk to DCI parents and Chinese teachers. Fact is, with no native speakers of Chinese (that's right, none) at DCI, and hardly any Asian parents, the program is struggling.

By what measure is YY struggling? You might wish the law was different and they could stack the classes with native speakers, but that's a legal problem, not an administrative one. The reality is that YY is the unparalleled best Chinese School in the District. It is ALSO one of the best Math and ELA schools in the District.

This is demonstrably true.

[Anonymous]

You're putting words in people's mouths, PP.

A giant corpus of academic research teaches us that, all things being equal, two-way immersion, or anything between two-way and one-way, works better than one-way immersion in teaching kids languages. The story is that the more native speakers the better, short of 50%.

I'm not a native speaker, but from time to time I speak the Mandarin I learned from living in China for almost a decade to YY upper grades kids I know in NE. I mainly know them from church and a baseball league. These kids could obviously use some, or more, native-speaking peers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You're putting words in people's mouths, PP.

A giant corpus of academic research teaches us that, all things being equal, two-way immersion, or anything between two-way and one-way, works better than one-way immersion in teaching kids languages. The story is that the more native speakers the better, short of 50%.

I'm not a native speaker, but from time to time I speak the Mandarin I learned from living in China for almost a decade to YY upper grades kids I know in NE. I mainly know them from church and a baseball league. These kids could obviously use some, or more, native-speaking peers.

Nobody is debating the value of two-way immersion. It's a question of how to get it with a vanishingly small DC population of Chinese-speaking elementary students. In this area, Chinese families overwhelmingly choose MoCo for the established schools and larger Chinese community.

[Anonymous]

We know four families at our DCPS who mostly speak Chinese at home with ES age kids. We come together to organize Chinese New Year celebrations at the school. The kids' Chinese sounds terrific to me (though they use a lot of slang), the PP who spent a decade working in China.

We've asked, and none of these families has ever applied to YY. The parents say they're not interested in becoming token bilingual families there, and don't like how they've never been able to find a senior admin who speaks good Chinese or is ethnic.

You can claim that the tiny, and dwindling size of the Chinese bilingual community (it's actually growing steadily) is all that keeps the numbers down. It's obviously not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You're putting words in people's mouths, PP.

A giant corpus of academic research teaches us that, all things being equal, two-way immersion, or anything between two-way and one-way, works better than one-way immersion in teaching kids languages. The story is that the more native speakers the better, short of 50%.

I'm not a native speaker, but from time to time I speak the Mandarin I learned from living in China for almost a decade to YY upper grades kids I know in NE. I mainly know them from church and a baseball league. These kids could obviously use some, or more, native-speaking peers.

Nobody is debating the value of two-way immersion. It's a question of how to get it with a vanishingly small DC population of Chinese-speaking elementary students. In this area, Chinese families overwhelmingly choose MoCo for the established schools and larger Chinese community.

Clueless PPs always debate the value of 2-way immersion on YY threads. They say they don't need it, don't want it, things are close to perfect without it.