CHARTERS MAY MERGE AT WALTER REED (The DC International School, IB Diploma Programme)

[Anonymous]

Does anyone think about logistics when making such sweeping suggestions? Limited resources and reality of limited choices make it really unrealistic to think the school should do pull-out dialect support to maybe a dozen kids per dialect spread over 6 grades (I'm just guessing about the representation of the different dialects- I really have no idea). It could POSSIBLY help attract more families in the long run, but in the immediate timeframe it would pull resources from the existing student population. Sorry, but I can't see the benefit to supporting Cantonese at a Mandarin school in the elementary level. What would the kids need to give up and how would it help them learn English and Mandarin?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Does anyone think about logistics when making such sweeping suggestions? Limited resources and reality of limited choices make it really unrealistic to think the school should do pull-out dialect support to maybe a dozen kids per dialect spread over 6 grades (I'm just guessing about the representation of the different dialects- I really have no idea). It could POSSIBLY help attract more families in the long run, but in the immediate timeframe it would pull resources from the existing student population. Sorry, but I can't see the benefit to supporting Cantonese at a Mandarin school in the elementary level. What would the kids need to give up and how would it help them learn English and Mandarin?

Not a dozen per dialect, around a dozen fully bilingual dialect speakers total (not just Cantonese speakers). There is no systemic approach to building on dialect skills as a bridge to Mandarin, which doesn't help attract DC bilingual families. Many strategies, some lost cost, could be explored (e.g.using community volunteers, my MIL, fluent in Mandarin and Cantonese, would be glad to help). Chinese immersion schools elsewhere build these bridges systematically on less funding per capita than DC charter offers. YY could be talking to their administrators. A mentality needs to change before structures can. Not sure if YY really wants more bilingual families anyway, but if it does, cost effective changes need to be considered.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: Less assimilated families do seem to avoid YY. Anybody disagree? Can't see this changing without a change in administration.

Don't disagree. I'm Chinese, at YY, and speak a dialect crappily. YY, friendly and supportive school though it is, acts like low & medium-SES DC Chinese don't exist. The school caters to high-SES Asians and whites, and AA families all over the map.

Chinese immersion schools elsewhere are different. I have family in Honolulu involved in a dual-immersion program (which provides targetted "dialect transition" support) and they don't think much of our kid's Mandarin, in an upper grade. We're getting a chinese au pair to try to catch up.

[Anonymous]

The obvious future competitor to YY would be a dual-immersion DCPS Chinese school, like Oyster. I hope that the dialect speakers will lobby via this route eventually.

A DCPS Chinese school could start out with a Chinese-speaking principal (of whatever background), at least one ethnic administrator, at least 1/4, and maybe even as many as 1/2, bilingual kids coming in through a separate lottery and benefitting from targetted dialect transition support, and lots of DC Chinese community input.

It could also have better paid and trained teachers, probably resulting in stronger Mandarin and English instruction for the kids. I don't think it's impossible that such a school will emerge within 5-10 years, or that its graduates will end up at DCI.

"Diversity" in DC Charter is code for high-SES whites sending their kids to school with lots of AA kids, or maybe Latino kids. It's not what logic dictates works best for a Chinese immersion school. But since DC Charter has chosen the one-way immersion model, where it's not necessary to involve bilingual families, YY will stay on its current development trajectory, and parents will be fine with that, or leave.

[Anonymous]

Isn't Thompson a DCPS Chinese immersion school. How many Chinese speaking families send their children to Thompson. What's the percentage?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Isn't Thompson a DCPS Chinese immersion school. How many Chinese speaking families send their children to Thompson. What's the percentage?

Thomson isn't an immersion school. It's a DCPS whose boundary includes historic Chinatown and whose pre-Rhee mission was serving ESL kids. When I considered the school 3 years ago for my child, there was about one hour a week of Mandarin for all students K & above.

[Anonymous]

Thomson offered 2.5 hours of Chinese weekly and had 20% Asian students when my child attended, prior to Rhee gutting the school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Many strategies, some lost cost, could be explored (e.g.using community volunteers, my MIL, fluent in Mandarin and Cantonese, would be glad to help).

Who would advocate for a child to be pulled out of a classroom with a teacher (or two) to receive instruction from someone's mother in law? And why aren't these kids that you speak of getting language support from home? My children are. They have a Chinese tutor and I tutor them in English.
I agree that something might be able to be done to lure in more Cantonese applicants, but we are still talking about a couple hundred kids CITY-WIDE who will still have to go through the lottery process like everyone else. If less than 1% of the city's children are native speakers of Chinese it would be lucky to net more than 20 additional students with whatever outreach is used.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: Less assimilated families do seem to avoid YY. Anybody disagree? Can't see this changing without a change in administration.

Don't disagree. I'm Chinese, at YY, and speak a dialect crappily. YY, friendly and supportive school though it is, acts like low & medium-SES DC Chinese don't exist. The school caters to high-SES Asians and whites, and AA families all over the map.

Chinese immersion schools elsewhere are different. I have family in Honolulu involved in a dual-immersion program (which provides targetted "dialect transition" support) and they don't think much of our kid's Mandarin, in an upper grade. We're getting a chinese au pair to try to catch up.

How large is the targeted population in Honolulu. I am just wondering if it is greater than the >1% Chinese American population in DC.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: Less assimilated families do seem to avoid YY. Anybody disagree? Can't see this changing without a change in administration.

Don't disagree. I'm Chinese, at YY, and speak a dialect crappily. YY, friendly and supportive school though it is, acts like low & medium-SES DC Chinese don't exist. The school caters to high-SES Asians and whites, and AA families all over the map.

Chinese immersion schools elsewhere are different. I have family in Honolulu involved in a dual-immersion program (which provides targetted "dialect transition" support) and they don't think much of our kid's Mandarin, in an upper grade. We're getting a chinese au pair to try to catch up.

Why would less assimilated families be interested in a Chinese immersion school? Recent immigrants want their kids to learn English. It does not matter if the school is dual-immersion with targeted "dialect transition" or a school like YY. The native speakers who move to the U.S. want their kids to learn English and go to Harvard like other Asian immigrant parents. Immersion schools by their very design attracts native English speakers who want their children to learn another language usually this means higher SES families who care about such things thus the high number of higher SES families at YY.

[Anonymous]

Why would less assimilated families be interested in a Chinese immersion school? Recent immigrants want their kids to learn English. It does not matter if the school is dual-immersion with targeted "dialect transition" or a school like YY. The native speakers who move to the U.S. want their kids to learn English and go to Harvard like other Asian immigrant parents. Immersion schools by their very design attracts native English speakers who want their children to learn another language usually this means higher SES families who care about such things thus the high number of higher SES families at YY.

[Anonymous]

^ +1

[Anonymous]

13:47's idea of a DCPS Chinese immersion school is an excellent one. There seem to be many local parents on both sides of the aisle, those staunchly in favor of the one-way immersion model and those who strongly prefer dual-immersion. So much better if there was a choice.

These days, Chinese immigrant families often want their kids to learn Mandarin and to read/write Chinese characters. In New York City's Chinatown, dual-immersion public school programs are very popular with low and medium-income ethnic parents, as are weekend classes at private language schools in Manhattan and Queens. This wasn't true when I was growing up there in the 80s.

Chinese immigrant and ABC parents all over the country, and the socioeconomic spectrum, enroll their kids in Mandarin classes because they want them to do well in AP Chinese classes later, and possibly to make money doing business or professional work related to China as adults.

More locally, plenty of DC Chinese from low and medium-SES families scrape together the tuition to get their kids to MoCo weekend Mandarin classes. Mandarin instruction for kids is not a high-SES phenomenon with 1st and 2nd generation Chinese families, like attending YY.

[Anonymous]

Plenty of immigrant kids attend cultural language weekend camp and always have but it makes no sense why any child who is ESL would goto an immersion language school. Immersion language school only makes sense if your kid already knows English.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Many strategies, some lost cost, could be explored (e.g.using community volunteers, my MIL, fluent in Mandarin and Cantonese, would be glad to help).

Who would advocate for a child to be pulled out of a classroom with a teacher (or two) to receive instruction from someone's mother in law? And why aren't these kids that you speak of getting language support from home? My children are. They have a Chinese tutor and I tutor them in English.
I agree that something might be able to be done to lure in more Cantonese applicants, but we are still talking about a couple hundred kids CITY-WIDE who will still have to go through the lottery process like everyone else. If less than 1% of the city's children are native speakers of Chinese it would be lucky to net more than 20 additional students with whatever outreach is used.

ITA. Although the MIL maybe a perfectly nice lady . All the posts about how the Mandarin immersion schools are in NY and San Fran are ridiculous in comparison to DC b/c DC is not NYC or San Francisco with their large Chinese populations, with many Cantonese speakers, etc. These schools obviously serves their populations and communities well. It is certainly arguable YY does the same given what it has, the district of columbia with <1% Chinese.