What’s going on at DCI?

[Anonymous]

What’s wrong with high suspension rates? Although DCIs seems really high. It’s not ok to have disruptive kids in class day after day. I’m surprised by how many parents are ok with for their kids.

[Anonymous]

DCI's special education services are AMAZING!!!!! We've been served better here than at our feeder.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DCI's special education services are AMAZING!!!!! We've been served better here than at our feeder.

Really? That is awesome to hear! Have a fifth grader w ADHD and ASD (highly verbal and gifted) at a geese. Big class sizes and school size is a concern with executive functioning deficits. Any ideas how they handle that? I am an NP in this thread.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DCI's special education services are AMAZING!!!!! We've been served better here than at our feeder.

Really? That is awesome to hear! Have a fifth grader w ADHD and ASD (highly verbal and gifted) at a geese. Big class sizes and school size is a concern with executive functioning deficits. Any ideas how they handle that? I am an NP in this thread.

What's a "geese"?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DCI's special education services are AMAZING!!!!! We've been served better here than at our feeder.

Really? That is awesome to hear! Have a fifth grader w ADHD and ASD (highly verbal and gifted) at a geese. Big class sizes and school size is a concern with executive functioning deficits. Any ideas how they handle that? I am an NP in this thread.

What's a "geese"?

really bad auto-correct for "feeder" ??

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe my head is in the sand but we are loving it at DCI. Second year there with a 7th grader from Spanish language feeder. Our DC is challenged and interested, making friends, likes school for the most part. DC is a high achiever, rule follower type. Advanced academically (math and English), we are happy with how things are going. A few hiccups with what seem to be mediocre teachers, or ones who struggle to connect. Anyway, we aren’t supplementing, aren’t playing lottery for other options. Even if Language immersion isn’t top notch, it is better than no immersion, and it is important to maintain the learning in the second language. We also do not have the resources to even consider private, so folks that have that option, I can understand looking into it. But we feel good about it, it is absolutely a good choice to have!

You must be on the Spanish track, or on the Mandarin or French track but don't speak either language. Disagree that 2nd rate "immersion" is better than no immersion. That's not what the research says. Strong immersion is better than no immersion. Half-baked immersion can be worse, because you risk having the kid turn out so-so in two languages.

We're at a DCI feeder and this is exactly our concern. We invested years for DC to become fluent in Mandarin and were so excited about this prospect. We're realizing too late that not only is the school not doing a great job with Mandarin fluency, but the ELA and Math teaching is pretty abysmal. We feel like we sacrificed a lot (i.e. ELA) to get the fluent Mandarin, but then we didn't get the fluent Mandarin. DC gets good grades in Chinese, but we can tell the fluency isn't there, especially with Chinese writing.

Now we're struggling with the decision whether to send DC to DCI or cut bait. It would be hard to just end the Chinese education after so much sacrifice, but we don't want to waste DC's MS and HS education just because we made a poor choice for ES education. And we also don't know enough about DCI to gauge whether it's better than the feeder school or just more of the same.

Thanks to those previous posters who have been honest about the challenges. It's very helpful.

Before somebody calls you a troll, good for you, mom. Impressed that you're coming out of YY with your eyes wide open, even if you didn't start or proceed that way.

Some of us in the DC bilingual ethnic community don't get why parents fall for the common sense-defying YY hard sell at their open houses. Even if parents who don't speak Chinese host Mandarin-speaking au pairs during all the YY years, and require the babysitters to speak only Chinese to the kids, and accept it in return, the kids aren't fluent by MS. It can't happen in a program where a dozen kids mainly speak the target language at home. How there are just a dozen? Because we're close friends with longtime YY Chinese teachers who keep us posted.

We speak at least 80% Chinese with family, and are strict about requiring our upper grades kids to answer Chinese with Chinese. Yet our kids aren't quite fluent either. We supplement the thin humanities curriculum at our DCPS.

DCI is worse than YY for Chinese. Ask around. You don't have to bail on Chinese education if you don't bother with DCI but have some resources to keep the Chinese afloat. There are good weekend programs in MoCo you could enroll in, Concordia summer camps, good tutors to be hired etc. Good luck.

Where can one find information on the weekend programs in MoCo? Thx

[Anonymous]

Hope Chinese School - Rockville, Potomac, Gaithersburg etc. Largest and Best Established Program

Chinese Now! Bethesda

Dragon's World Chinese School, Rockville

Confucius Institute Youth Classes, College Park

These programs have a very different feel than YY and DCI. You need to be prepared to deal with Tiger parents of various races who push kids to speak well (emphasis not on promoting racial and socioeconomic diversity, emphasis on speaking Chinese as well as possible). Many native speakers involved, little sugar coating of Chinese culture. Same with the Concordia sleepover Mandarin Village camp (many West Coast and NY participants who speak Chinese at home).

[Anonymous]

The best thing about DCI is that PP won’t be there and isn’t there now.

[Anonymous]

Sounds like OP won't be there either. She's had it. They'll leave lame DCI academics to rest of you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The best thing about DCI is that PP won’t be there and isn’t there now.

The joke 's still on you, hon. Come on, be a sport this year, hold your nose and tolerate obnoxious parents of kids who speak fluently if you want yours to have the ethnic inputs needed to really speak the language. Sorry, no way around it.

[Anonymous]

I imagine all your kids are obnoxious in at least two languages?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The best thing about DCI is that PP won’t be there and isn’t there now.

The joke 's still on you, hon. Come on, be a sport this year, hold your nose and tolerate obnoxious parents of kids who speak fluently if you want yours to have the ethnic inputs needed to really speak the language. Sorry, no way around it.

My children speak three languages fluently honey. We just don’t waste our time on Chinese or posting and reposting advertisements for Concordia camps.

Enjoy living in polluted China. Yuck.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hope Chinese School - Rockville, Potomac, Gaithersburg etc. Largest and Best Established Program

Chinese Now! Bethesda

Dragon's World Chinese School, Rockville

Confucius Institute Youth Classes, College Park

These programs have a very different feel than YY and DCI. You need to be prepared to deal with Tiger parents of various races who push kids to speak well (emphasis not on promoting racial and socioeconomic diversity, emphasis on speaking Chinese as well as possible). Many native speakers involved, little sugar coating of Chinese culture. Same with the Concordia sleepover Mandarin Village camp (many West Coast and NY participants who speak Chinese at home).

For another source take a look at acsdc.us

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The best thing about DCI is that PP won’t be there and isn’t there now.

The joke 's still on you, hon. Come on, be a sport this year, hold your nose and tolerate obnoxious parents of kids who speak fluently if you want yours to have the ethnic inputs needed to really speak the language. Sorry, no way around it.

My children speak three languages fluently honey. We just don’t waste our time on Chinese or posting and reposting advertisements for Concordia camps.

Enjoy living in polluted China. Yuck.

Has anybody here at DCI actually sent their kid to a Concordia camp? Looks good on their web site but I wonder.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I imagine all your kids are obnoxious in at least two languages?

Not the PP you're responding to. My kids are sweet in two languages. We bailed on DCI, where the only fluent kids seemed to be on the Spanish tracks.