Bilingual Kids in Language Immersion ES Programs, Which Programs Have Many & Strive to Attract Them?

[Anonymous]

This is probably true. YY is not interested in dialect speakers. They are a Mandarin immersion school so unless the admin is proficient in Mandarin, they won't be interested. Unlike the W. Coast school probably, YY has no Cantonese population to speak of (or if they do, they all speak English) so a Cantonese speaker would not be hired unless they also spoke Mandarin.

College friend has blue chip MA in East Asian studies. Perfect Mandarin, learned from a young age and years of experience in China. Also speaks a dialect and has lovely personality, could do outreach locally. No chance of being hired at in-bred YY.

Why won't YY parents admit that you don't want dialect speaking little kids who can pick up Mandarin much faster than yours, and model the culture for the others? Why continue to claim this when it's clear that hardly anybody wants more bilingual families involved? Ech, I quit. Amen for MV (and I speak both Spanish and Mandarin).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^ Because the Asian kids in DC basically have the same background/socioeconomic level as the White kids in DC. Hard to find a FARM White kid in DC at any school: Are there FARM Asian kids in DC? I wouldn't be surprised if really low to nonexistent given the # of Chinese in DC.

Yes, they go to Thomson. They live with their grandparents in the Wah Luck house in Chinatown while their parents work multiple jobs. YY focuses strictly on "embassy" Chinese and pretends these children don't exist. The parents of these children find the academics (both English and Mandarin) at Yu Ying to be weak, not to mention the attitude of the administration.

I think you are mistaken to think that YY focuses on any Chinese at all. YY does not aspire to becoming a destination school for the Chinese-origin DC residents, a home away from home, so to speak. It aspires to catch DC's growing ranks of middle-class parents who want decent schooling for their kids. Currently bilingualism is a fashionable trend in the concept of decent schooling. That this language is Mandarin is irrelevant. It may as well be Portuguese. The underlying frustration you see in YY-focused threads is that Chinese-origin families come to this school with an expectation of finding somewhat of a "home", a special place for the Chinese, and the school was never designed to be that. That's the only reason you see these threads.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

This is probably true. YY is not interested in dialect speakers. They are a Mandarin immersion school so unless the admin is proficient in Mandarin, they won't be interested. Unlike the W. Coast school probably, YY has no Cantonese population to speak of (or if they do, they all speak English) so a Cantonese speaker would not be hired unless they also spoke Mandarin.

College friend has blue chip MA in East Asian studies. Perfect Mandarin, learned from a young age and years of experience in China. Also speaks a dialect and has lovely personality, could do outreach locally. No chance of being hired at in-bred YY.

Why won't YY parents admit that you don't want dialect speaking little kids who can pick up Mandarin much faster than yours, and model the culture for the others? Why continue to claim this when it's clear that hardly anybody wants more bilingual families involved? Ech, I quit. Amen for MV (and I speak both Spanish and Mandarin).

B/c preferences in the lottery are not allowed by the charter board. Many YY parents want more native speakers, some don't, most I suspect don't really care one way or another at this point: They are already in the school and the class demographics are already set for their kids.

The people who really care whether their dialect speaking native speakers get preference are not at the school b/c they have to enter the lottery with the many who don't know and aren't Chinese.

[Anonymous]

can someone dumb this dialect discussion down a bit. Mandarin is a different language than cantonese, right. people keep using "dialect" like it's the difference between American English or British English. from what I've learned the comparison is actually akin to portuguese and spanish- different LANGUAGES. So, if this is the case, why could cantonese speakers get preference? They don't speak the target. They may be able to pick it up "easier", but how is that a boon to the other kids. They're all non-native then.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Why won't YY parents admit that you don't want dialect speaking little kids who can pick up Mandarin much faster than yours, and model the culture for the others? Why continue to claim this when it's clear that hardly anybody wants more bilingual families involved? Ech, I quit. Amen for MV (and I speak both Spanish and Mandarin).

I don't admit things that aren't true.

(Re MV: You realize, don't you, that YY's administration gave huge amounts of help to MV's founders as the school was being set up?)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:can someone dumb this dialect discussion down a bit. Mandarin is a different language than cantonese, right. people keep using "dialect" like it's the difference between American English or British English. from what I've learned the comparison is actually akin to portuguese and spanish- different LANGUAGES. So, if this is the case, why could cantonese speakers get preference? They don't speak the target. They may be able to pick it up "easier", but how is that a boon to the other kids. They're all non-native then.

Oh, I'd be careful about calling an ethnic Cantonese speaker a non-native Chinese, or describing Cantonese and Mandarin (or any other dialect) as different languages. Remember to duck. Han Chinese culture encompasses all dialects.

I did the transition from Cantonese to Mandarin at my government school in China in first grade, after K as a bridge year. Schools in Guangdong and Guanxi Provinces (where the Cantonese-speaking communities are located) now do it in K, in accordance with the law. They can because kids arrive at school with enough exposure to Mandarin (mainly from TV) unlike in my day. I'd be surprised if you could transition entirely from Portuguese to Spanish in K, maybe. If you speak Cantonese and learn Mandarin, you have an accent identifying you as a Southerner. It's OK though, everybody understands you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
I think you are mistaken to think that YY focuses on any Chinese at all. YY does not aspire to becoming a destination school for the Chinese-origin DC residents, a home away from home, so to speak. It aspires to catch DC's growing ranks of middle-class parents who want decent schooling for their kids. Currently bilingualism is a fashionable trend in the concept of decent schooling. That this language is Mandarin is irrelevant. It may as well be Portuguese. The underlying frustration you see in YY-focused threads is that Chinese-origin families come to this school with an expectation of finding somewhat of a "home", a special place for the Chinese, and the school was never designed to be that. That's the only reason you see these threads.

Thank you. That explains a lot.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am a YY parent and also want the school to serve all children. In fact, I wanted my child there and not in our fairly homogeneous IB school.

But as 00:11 notes, the school gives off a very weird vibe when the tour guides, administrators, parents at Open Houses are so defensive when asked basic questions about Chinese language and cultural issues surrounding the school that you don't see at Spanish immersion schools -- governed by the same laws. It is really frustrating and I think does not serve our school well.

Um, could it be that the school is weird? I, single mom, went with MV after being offered a PreK YY slot. Knowing zilch beyond web site info before a visit, I assumed that a small bilingual community had been involved all along. An open house disabused me of the notion.

MV has a bilingual Latino community firmly behind it, which serves our school well.

Wow, I can only hope I'm as lucky as all these parents who ALLEGEDLY applied and got into both MV and YY for pre-K. The odds of that have to be off the charts (even including getting in off the waitlist). And interesting how DCUM has so many of these lucky parents... Does that mean the more I post here on DCUM, the better my odds are of getting into at least 2 uber popular charters? Cuz the odds seem to improve drastically here!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am a YY parent and also want the school to serve all children. In fact, I wanted my child there and not in our fairly homogeneous IB school.

But as 00:11 notes, the school gives off a very weird vibe when the tour guides, administrators, parents at Open Houses are so defensive when asked basic questions about Chinese language and cultural issues surrounding the school that you don't see at Spanish immersion schools -- governed by the same laws. It is really frustrating and I think does not serve our school well.

Um, could it be that the school is weird? I, single mom, went with MV after being offered a PreK YY slot. Knowing zilch beyond web site info before a visit, I assumed that a small bilingual community had been involved all along. An open house disabused me of the notion.

MV has a bilingual Latino community firmly behind it, which serves our school well.

Wow, I can only hope I'm as lucky as all these parents who ALLEGEDLY applied and got into both MV and YY for pre-K. The odds of that have to be off the charts (even including getting in off the waitlist). And interesting how DCUM has so many of these lucky parents... Does that mean the more I post here on DCUM, the better my odds are of getting into at least 2 uber popular charters? Cuz the odds seem to improve drastically here!

+1!!! Thank goodness I'm on here all day. My odds should be like a 100%. Some might say I should get a life, but getting my kid a life is way more important!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Why won't YY parents admit that you don't want dialect speaking little kids who can pick up Mandarin much faster than yours, and model the culture for the others? Why continue to claim this when it's clear that hardly anybody wants more bilingual families involved? Ech, I quit. Amen for MV (and I speak both Spanish and Mandarin).

I don't admit things that aren't true.

(Re MV: You realize, don't you, that YY's administration gave huge amounts of help to MV's founders as the school was being set up?)

I had heard this too about YY (and obviously EL Haynes) being key in the supporting and assisting MV's founders in getting the school going. I realize that doesn't mean MV has done or should do everything YY did, but interesting that some parents like PP are setting up a contrast as if they are wholly different models and everything about the Administrations is different, when some of the roots of both schools are exactly the same.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
This is such BS. A college friend, a kick ass admin at a W. Coast Mandarin immersion school, and a dialect speaker, has responded to YY's advertisements for admins several times. S/he has family in the MD burbs Chinese community and is eager to relocate. S/he gets nowhere. Just an anecdote,right, but where's the evidence that YY does its damdest to find Chinese-speaking admins, let alone an ethnic one?

I don't doubt this in the least. All of the applications funnel through one very young woman who, amongst other things, typically doesn't even entertain applicants with US degrees. If the applications do not pass her review then they never see the light of day on the admin desks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I think you are mistaken to think that YY focuses on any Chinese at all. YY does not aspire to becoming a destination school for the Chinese-origin DC residents, a home away from home, so to speak. It aspires to catch DC's growing ranks of middle-class parents who want decent schooling for their kids. Currently bilingualism is a fashionable trend in the concept of decent schooling. That this language is Mandarin is irrelevant. It may as well be Portuguese. The underlying frustration you see in YY-focused threads is that Chinese-origin families come to this school with an expectation of finding somewhat of a "home", a special place for the Chinese, and the school was never designed to be that. That's the only reason you see these threads.

Er, Mandarin isn't a language, but you're onto something, if in a somewhat dated way. As time marches forward, fewer and fewer DC bilingual Chinese have illusions about YY. Learning that our culture is explored in the school community via hired help has been a small wake up call. We were shy about asserting ourselves culturally growing up, a time when China was an economic basketcase and you hardly saw a non-Asian face in a US Chinatown. You stop by DCUM and think, wow, we've come so far as immigrants and ABCs that we can provide our kids with a marketable commodity, one that others are left praying for down a wait list stretching to hundreds of names, or paying through the nose for at Sidwell. YY is a reminder of how our cultural and linguistic stock has shot up in our lifetimes. We have our weekend heritage schools as homes away from home.

[Anonymous]

+1. Cool.

[Anonymous]

I know of at least two chinese kids who attended thomson and now attend yy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
This is such BS. A college friend, a kick ass admin at a W. Coast Mandarin immersion school, and a dialect speaker, has responded to YY's advertisements for admins several times. S/he has family in the MD burbs Chinese community and is eager to relocate. S/he gets nowhere. Just an anecdote,right, but where's the evidence that YY does its damdest to find Chinese-speaking admins, let alone an ethnic one?

I don't doubt this in the least. All of the applications funnel through one very young woman who, amongst other things, typically doesn't even entertain applicants with US degrees. If the applications do not pass her review then they never see the light of day on the admin desks.

Interesting. I know a Mandarin speaker, an excellent teacher with 12 plus years teaching in the US, who was offered a classroom assistant position.

Do you think this is a way to keep power over all these young, inexperienced teachers who need the YY job to stay in the country? Of course the track record for hiring English teachers is equally bizarre. It's as if they only consider teachers with zero experience. The leading class has never had a teacher with more than 2 or 3 years of experience. Oh how it shows!