Yu Ying - Do/Can Non-Native Kids Actually SPEAK Chinese?
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Anonymous
NP. Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Stanford ALL offer credit, not just placement, for 5 on the AP Spanish Language and Culture. You can search here. https://apstudent.collegeboard.org/creditandplacement/search-credit-policies |
Anonymous
The only "ABC threat" is in your mind. Nobody is jealous of you. We are laughing at 18 pages of your huffing and puffing about your kids and their PARCC scores and your gloom and doom about a middle and high school that is just getting started. You don't know us, and you don't know our plans for our children and their education. |
Anonymous
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Who are you railing at? We're not all ABCs on this thread. Your target seems to have departed half a dozen pages back.
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Anonymous
OK I'm sure this is horribly racist but why am I reading this and picturing the mom on Fresh off the Boat saying/typing this while being a drama queen? (not a YY parent, don't want to give the school a bad name) |
Anonymous
No problem waiting. As a parent who earned the IB Diploma, taught in an IB World School, and bailed on YY, I can say with confidence that DCI scores are going to hit high SES families hard for many years. BASIS isn't pretending in the same way, they're meticulously building their AP success. Their facilities are weak, but their planning prowess and work ethic merits a little respect. Washington Latin, too. Kids can't go on to score in the 30s and 40s on IB exams on the strength of DCI feeder and DCI academics unless perhaps parents supplement like mad for a lot of dough. I truly don't think most high SES families currently enrolled at DCI care about the IB Diploma scores all that much. If they were the kinds of parents who did, they would not be in a start-up charter school to begin with; they would have bailed along the way for a more sure thing. Now that may not be true for younger families whose students are in one of the feeder schools now. But the first few classes at any charter school are made up of people who are a little more risk tolerant. That can certainly be said of the parents of the oldest students at BASIS now and the first 2-3 years of Washington Latin high school graduates. I bet you're right, but demographics change fast in the DC public ed universe. Hundreds of high SES parents of little kids are getting on the DCI train for a path to 12th, never mind if the middle and high school kids can really speak the languages being taught in the feeders. Expectations seem much higher on the part of the early childhood and lower elementary grades crowd than the current DCI parents. Feeder and DCI admins would be smart to plan to manage expectations. Cmon - the first graduating class of Washington Latin went to school in six different locations. We should all be thankful to those families who stuck with it. It's not until the class of 2021 that a graduating Latin class will have only spent time in its current location. That's a lot of families who made do and figured it out so that now all the rest of us can benefit (that is those who get in - and no, we're not one of the lucky ones). There is no way the school in its early years is the same as the school now. Let's cut some of the current DCI families a break and show them some gratitude and compassion - because of them, future students will have a stronger school to go to - will it be as strong as you like? Maybe not, but without them, there's no chance. This is DCI's 3rd year. The principal has shown remarkable leadership in the face of the tragic student death, and I'm looking forward to seeing how the school unfolds. |
Anonymous
Also an IB grad and we are not bailing our DCI feeder. But then I have a real job, not just a sad sack talking about my brief experience as an IB teacher. |
Anonymous
It's a guy who continually refers to his sad self as "Heritage dad". |
Anonymous
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Right, but Latin's HS still has a very tough time hanging onto its strongest MS students - they run off to Wilson, Banneker, Walls, privates and the burbs. The difference in MS and HS demographics there remains pronounced. It took parents ten years of concerted pushing for advanced middle school math classes to be created, just last year. Change has been slow and hard won.
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Anonymous
If these people are calling you distasteful, you might need to rethink what you've been posting. |
Anonymous
Get a life. Some of the posts criticizing YY have come from current YY parents. |
Anonymous
I really like that actress. She's not like that in real life. |
Anonymous
Yes but most are from you, "mate". Also- your dumb HL mandarin idea is still dumb. |
Anonymous
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This conversation is already 21 pages long so I haven't read (and probably won't read) all that came before, just gonna give my experience.
My child is a 3rd grader now, so been at YY for 4 full years (PreK4 through 2nd), and now early in his 3rd grade year. None of us are of Chinese origin, and none of us spoke Chinese before he started at YY. He also gets no supplementary Chinese instruction or tutoring, we don't go to any weekend classes or other classes outside of his regular work at YY, and we don't have any nanny or au pair. My experience with his Mandarin language skills is very positive. Because this is DC, we have sought out and found several ways to throw him into situations where he's speaking Mandarin with natives, to see how it goes and what they have to say about his skills. First of all, as early as the end of 1st grade there were very few things that anyone would say to him in Chinese that he didn't understand. He wasn't always able to find the best words to answer, but even that early there was abundant back and forth and the people he was speaking to ALWAYS commented on how good his comprehension was, how great his tones are, and they can't believe he can converse like that. And it's just gotten better since 1st grade. Also, on playdates with other YY kids they will often on their own start speaking Chinese, although more often it's by a parent suggesting it. But they really do do it on their own as well. While I understand (according to many native speakers) that Chinese people are gracious and unlikely to say anything super-negative about a child's language skills in these kinds of contexts, it always annoys me when people dismiss the positive feedback some of us get as if NO ONE Chinese is capable of being sincere or clear about their impressions. There is almost always clear surprise and clear appreciation for his skills, most people are very specific about what impresses them. And most importantly, to the original question, his conversations are real conversations. Not just broken "What you say when ordering at a restaurant". At this point I can't remember the last time somoene said something to him in Mandarin and he didn't understand and answer, on his own, with no prompting. So I don't know what's in these pages, but our experience at YY is far from unusual- it's very common. I don't know any kids in his grade with poor or really incomplete Mandarin skills, although I obviously also don't know every single kid in his grade. But the ones we do know, and the ones we see out and about in contexts where there are adult native speakers, do very very well and are always highly praised and we get lots of great feedback. And it's not always the same - sometimes kids get different feedback on specific things, like tones. But overall it's far far more advanced than cute little phrases or canned exchanges. |
Anonymous
This. The road ahead for DCI, whatever childish names you're calling one another. |
Anonymous
We hope you're on the mark, but since you don't speak Chinese, who knows. |