Sp or Ch language?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:First you amen need to stop in regards to no mandarin speaking administrators. YY has a Mandarin speaking administrator. She happens to be biracial, as in Chinese and Black. But, that might not be Chinese enough fro some people on this thread.

I'm the PP who was bullied relentlessly an immigrant kid, so thanks very much to those who've offered reassurances that this wouldn't happen to my child at YY. I know that there's a Mandarin-speaking administrator (actually, I thought there were two, one white and one biracial).

As I've said, I've been on the fence about accepting a spot. The impression I'm getting, and not just from perusing this thread, is that YY could be a psychological headache for my child and me. It just doesn't sound like we're assimilated enough to fit in. The term ABC is actually somewhat derogatory in Chinese-American circles - it implies that you're more white than Chinese, and I don't like to be referred to as such. I'd really rather not have to prove how ethnic I am when I'm around the school, to be put on the spot to explain or defend the negative aspects of a culture (oh yes, there are many!) I grew up with, or to seek off-the-record conversations with Cantonese-speaking teachers to find out what's really going on. It sounds like most of the parents don't so much as understand that Mandarin is just another dialect to the Chinese, the one that got the upper-hand politically half a century ago, but just another dialect.

Traditionally, the Chinese are herd animals. You see them coming as tourists to DC now the way the Japanese did in an earlier generation, in packs off tour buses. When non-Chinese argue that "YY is for everybody, that's why we love it!" what you're saying in a sense is that it isn't for most Chinese, because Chinese like their kids to learn Chinese with other Chinese. That's why we've started sending our daughter to the lovely Rockville Cantonese school on Sun afternoons.

It's not that we're against having our children learn with others, not at all, we'd simply like to see the sort of ratios you get at the Spanish immersion schools, maybe 1/3 of the kids of Chinese heritage/bilingual and the rest not. I'm not sure that we'd be happy with our child as one of only a dozen or so bilingual kids in the school, with the Americans generally thinking that she doesn't speak Chinese anyway because she doesn't know Mandarin yet. YY sounds emotionally complicated for us, if you see what I'm saying (probably not).

[Anonymous]

For what it's worth, your child wouldn't be one of only a handful of bilingual kids in the school, just one of only a handful of Cantonese speaking kids. In my child's pre-K class of 18, one-third of the kids have at least one parent who grew up speaking a language other than English, and four of those six kids speak a foreign language at home at least some of the time. (These 4 don't include kids whose parents are American but know Mandarin and use it with their kids at least sometimes.) I don't know that this 1/3 bilingual parent, 2/9 bilingual kid ratio is common across the school--I sort of doubt it is, although I'm certainly aware of several other bilingual kids in PK.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:YY parent here. Chinese for White and Black people? Great!!!! That's the way we like it..

You mean almost exclusively for white/black people? Only for them? I'm a LAMB parent not understanding why many YY parents don't grasp the the critical importance of having a decent-sized group of ethnic families involved, even if the language teaching is great. 2% bilingual yet fantastic, pleez.

I don't meet LAMB parents who talk/think like you guys. Sounds hopelessly parochial. For my tax dollar, the city shouldn't be in the business of granting charters to groups w/out strong cultural ties to a language. People setting up a 1-way immersion program when a better quality 2-way was possible. At this rate, sounds like YY's growing popularity/fame could prove a paper tiger in the upper grades.

Anybody else unhappy with the idea of DCI being so far up, by Walter Reed? That's more than 10 miles for the Hill families, and there are many at most of the immersion schools.



You got lucky. If LAMB started it's charter today it would not have the luxury of two lotteries. LAMB two-charter exception was granthfathered in under the old charter laws. So it is mighty fine of you to sit on your high horse and say what you would and should do when not faced with the same circumstances and rules. In addition, I would say that the combined Hispanic community with it's multiple ethnicities quadruple the small DC Chinese community. There are more hispanics to go around, even if the only thing they may have in common is a shared language with varying dialects.

Cantonese and Mandarin are not different dialects, but different languages used in the same country. Sort of like Oroma and Amharic, or Farsi and Arabic, or French Canadian and English. Same countries with citizens speaking two different languages. People keep saying Chinese dialects, but it is not Chinese dialects, but languages spoke in China.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For what it's worth, your child wouldn't be one of only a handful of bilingual kids in the school, just one of only a handful of Cantonese speaking kids. In my child's pre-K class of 18, one-third of the kids have at least one parent who grew up speaking a language other than English, and four of those six kids speak a foreign language at home at least some of the time. (These 4 don't include kids whose parents are American but know Mandarin and use it with their kids at least sometimes.) I don't know that this 1/3 bilingual parent, 2/9 bilingual kid ratio is common across the school--I sort of doubt it is, although I'm certainly aware of several other bilingual kids in PK.

I'm the PP who posted earlier about the relief I felt after we returned WOP. It's true that there are plenty of bilingual kids, just not many at all who're conversant in a dialect of Chinese spoken at home. I know just what you're saying, PP, about not feeling assimilated enough for the community. We ended up at YY mainly because my mom, who lives with us, didn't want our kid speaking Mandarin with a strong "Canton accent." She thought the accent would give him problems if he worked in China, outside the South, as an adult.

If you're IB for one of the best schools, WOP or Brent on the Hill, and feel you can do a good job teaching a dialect at home, my recommendation would be to stay local. You have all the time in the world to add Mandarin later if you don't mind the accent. The weekend school in Rockville offers nice Mandarin-for-Cantonese-speakers classes for MS and HS age kids. We have a wonderful au pair from Guangdong through one of the State Dept. licensed au pair agencies, GoAuPair, who really helps at home. Or you can move to MoCo, where you would be welcomed into one of the fine immersion schools there.

Staying IB means avoiding the hassle of the YY commute and walking on eggshells around parents, and even kids, who may be quick to slam your family for not being "open-minded" enough if you don't watch it. You can just be yourself in an environment where you aren't under pressure to celebrate diversity over ethnicity. For example, one day my child came home in tears because a group of kids had given him a hard time at lunch about how he doesn't eat raw vegetables or cheese. Other kids, including those adopted from China, had laughed at him and called him "stupid" when he told them that these foods were dangerous. These foods are not part of any regional Chinese cuisine. No big deal, but these little incidents added up for us, and it was all draining. Not every Chinese-American or Chinese YY parent feels the say way of course, but I noticed that the happier ones did tend to be more assimilated, and didn't tend to have stellar IB options.

I don't see YY getting the numbers of bilingual Chinese speakers up in the future - the school pays lip service to wanting us, but probably doesn't care if we're involved or not. OK, that's their deal, the founders started the school, not me. I feel more valued WOP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: Cantonese and Mandarin are not different dialects, but different languages used in the same country. Sort of like Oroma and Amharic, or Farsi and Arabic, or French Canadian and English. Same countries with citizens speaking two different languages. People keep saying Chinese dialects, but it is not Chinese dialects, but languages spoke in China.

I've studied Arabic and Farsi, and my spouse speaks Cantonese. Things are not that cut and dried. Cantonese and Mandarin and written almost the same way, and are virtually identical grammatically. Cantonese is essentially between a language and a dialect when compared to Mandarin. It's called both the Cantonese language and the Yue dialect of Chinese. Wikipedia explains it well:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantonese

[Anonymous]

oh this thread is really making me sad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:oh this thread is really making me sad.

and angry. and sick of those who persist in armchair quarter-backing. wish they would move on....

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:oh this thread is really making me sad.

and angry. and sick of those who persist in armchair quarter-backing. wish they would move on....

move on from what? tring to draw in actual bilingual chinese kids? bigger fish to fry, right? like launching DCI?

I think it's really sad that chinese who aren't super assimilated don't sound like they feel welcome, unlike in such schools around the country. But maybe that's just the way it goes in DC, where parents have to fight even for a playground.

[Anonymous]

I think the criticism of armchair commentators relates to the fact that not all Chinese families at YY are including their voices, and lots of folks whose knowledge of the school is limited to what they've read on this board are happy to judge what's wrong and propose solutions based on one or two articles.

I'm a YY parent and from this thread I've definitely gained a deeper understanding of why more folks from DC's Chinese community don't choose the school. Over the next few years, I'll encourage some changes that folks here have said might make a difference. There's

[Anonymous]

Whoops, submitted too soon.

I've learned some important stuff in this thread. But on these boards YY seems to be some strange kind of Rorshach test, with individual complaints pointing not to things that the school should tweak, but to a rotteness at the very core. It's strange and offputting, and sometimes means that parents (of all races) who are happy there avoid all YY threads. And so such threads create their own vicious cycle.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: You got lucky. If LAMB started it's charter today it would not have the luxury of two lotteries. LAMB two-charter exception was granthfathered in under the old charter laws. So it is mighty fine of you to sit on your high horse and say what you would and should do when not faced with the same circumstances and rules. In addition, I would say that the combined Hispanic community with it's multiple ethnicities quadruple the small DC Chinese community. There are more hispanics to go around, even if the only thing they may have in common is a shared language with varying dialects.

LAMB guy here. So your school doesn't have an administrator who can speak to the local community and the parents association isn't asking for one because they have "no power." You don't do outreach because you're focused on building a playground and a middle school. You drive out bilinguals you get by making their kids feel rotten for eating their ethnic food. But you just want your children to learn Mandarin right, never mind all this Chinese culture and community crap.

We don't have a lot of Spanish speakers because we have a lottery for them, we have them because we understand that they add value and treat 'em right, on their terms. You people are pathetic and need your heads examined.

[Anonymous]

This thread makes me sad too. Mainly because I wish more kids anywhere in the US were encouraged to learn Chinese or Spanish. I came back from a recent trip where I attended a function that included a large number of Latinos. Protesting the function was a group that carried signs saying, "SPEAK ENGLISH". Xenophobia is alive and well all over the US, and this thread is about as myopic as it is depressing. The white, black, and other non ethnic, non Mandarin kids at Yu Ying (or ANYWHERE!) are taking a step that many American people think is useless--why learn a language at all. In China, as in many other countries in Asia, there are whole industries of private language schools teaching English. Parents in these countries are trying to add a skill to their children's lives in a decidedly "non-two way immersion environment". Yu Ying parents of any race are trying to do the same.

Ironically, Yu Ying may end up being more of a skill based school (learning Mandarin) like Asian language schools teaching English, than a cultural immersion school. Regardless, I hope the city tries to support all the immersion schools trying to make a difference, trying to build bridges, and see the forest through the trees.

[Anonymous]

11:37 think you are missing the point. YY does have an administrator that speaks Mandarin. The Chinese community (of any variety) in DC is much smaller than the Spanish-speaking community. It's just a different kettle of fish. I think most YY parents do wish there were more native speakers. As an earlier poster said, hopefully the school will learn from this thread what it can do better, despite the smaller population and lack of success so far.

- Not a YY parent but know many.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: You got lucky. If LAMB started it's charter today it would not have the luxury of two lotteries. LAMB two-charter exception was granthfathered in under the old charter laws. So it is mighty fine of you to sit on your high horse and say what you would and should do when not faced with the same circumstances and rules. In addition, I would say that the combined Hispanic community with it's multiple ethnicities quadruple the small DC Chinese community. There are more hispanics to go around, even if the only thing they may have in common is a shared language with varying dialects.

LAMB guy here. So your school doesn't have an administrator who can speak to the local community and the parents association isn't asking for one because they have "no power." You don't do outreach because you're focused on building a playground and a middle school. You drive out bilinguals you get by making their kids feel rotten for eating their ethnic food. But you just want your children to learn Mandarin right, never mind all this Chinese culture and community crap.

We don't have a lot of Spanish speakers because we have a lottery for them, we have them because we understand that they add value and treat 'em right, on their terms. You people are pathetic and need your heads examined.

Lamb guy--I'll state respectfully that every single part of your paragraph is factually incorrect. The administration does have two people who speak Mandarin. It sounds like that is not enough because the principal is black and one of the Mandarin speakers is bi-racial. The school is also a plurality of black students. The parent association has spent money on outreach and has a whole committee dedicated to the effort. No one drives out bilinguals by making them feel rotten--my kid got picked on because her pasta smelled funny. I understand the point the poster was making--when you aren't part of the dominant [American] culture of a school there are incidents that make you feel like an outsider, but we are talking about children here. Are you really stating that you think that American YY children are ganging up on bilingual children to make them feel rotten?

[Anonymous]

This thread isn't sad, it's silly.

The immersion schools are all friends: send your child to one, and you'll eventually end up with the others anyway. They're all trying to educate their students to be bilingual, widely-informed, intellectually curious individuals, with ownership of their educations. They will be highly-competitive students who can graduate HS with fluency in 2 (or possibly 3) languages, and with more college credits than some university freshmen have at the end of their first semester.

Quit fighting amongst yourselves, it's counterproductive. All (DC charter immersion) students ultimately have the pathway to the best MS/HS model in DC.

http://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/243568.page