International trip for 5th graders?
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Anonymous
++1,000,000! 5th Grade YY Parents: Those of you opting to take the trip, we respect your decision and your commitment to the school. Please don't take offense this discussion. However, as the rest of the school is being asked to get involved in this by fund raising and other means, understand that there will be a lot of opinions. There are also a lot of changes and improvements that will be made to this trip, if it is taken at all, in future years. To those in the 5th grade opting NOT to send your kids on this trip: You have my full support. It is an abomination how much time, money and effort is being spent on the small number of kids to take a tourist trip during the school year. We must demand the school do better by ALL its students. |
Anonymous
You say that as though there was a concurrence of what "better" means. Obviously there isn't. Some people clearly feel that a couple of weeks in China - including tourist visits, homestays, and everything in between - is worthwhile to a group of students who've been studying Chinese in an immersion environment. You don't have to agree with them, but that doesn't mean that they are wrong. If a picture is worth a thousand words, and these kids are going to have thousands of pictures in their heads, then there is worthwhile knowledge being imparted, or so some might say. |
Anonymous
| Stop. People. Just. Stop. |
Anonymous
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The whole point is that there will never be agreement on this topic. What age is the right age? What is appropriate in terms of parental participation/travel? There were complaints when the cost per student was going to be too high (resulting in families not being able to afford to send their kids), now there are complaints that the Board has contributed money). There were complaints that not enough kids were going (only 1/3)... nobody seems to be happy now that the number has increased significantly. Complaints that it is during the school year but if it were during the summer, I'm sure people would say it interferes with their family's summer plans, etc. The bottom line is that the school is trying its best. There will never be total agreement on what is best though. Give the administrators and teachers the benefit of the doubt, though. And also, I totally agree with the pps who have pointed out that the leading edge class always has it the hardest. All subsequent classes (especially the ones further and further behind) benefit from the leading edge class as the school got to see through their experience with these kids, and others in the first few years, what works best. One teacher friend when i was considering a brand new charter totally warned me away saying that my kid would be a "guinea pig." Pioneer is probably a better term, and appropriate in most of the ways. Those who follow those who trailblaze and go first are indebted to that first wave. I can't believe the number of complaints about a program that is designed to enhance the educational experience, mainly for the class that goes but for all in the sense that all will go at some point and the fact that this class has gone will generate excitement for the classes behind. I am sure that there will be a program for sharing info about the experiences with the lower level classes. I was an exchange student as well as a volunteer for my exchange program after I became an alum. As the former, I learned from previous exchange students about their experiences (both informally as well as a formal orientation). As the latter, I helped to prepare and make future exchange students excited about their experience.
And in terms of discussion about the length, that will never be an argument that can be won. Too short, not enough time to experience, accusations that there won't be a real benefit. Too long, kids are too young, too much time out of school, away from family/home. I personally think two weeks is ideal and hope that the subsequent trips would be longer, perhaps with the culminating one being a summer. They will get so much out of this trip... I've done short and long-term experiences (10 days and one year) and I have a ton of vivid memories of the short trip - almost as much as the one-year one. With something short, everything is intense and stays with you. |
Anonymous
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I have great faith in the Yu Ying community and in my fellow parents that things improve; evolve; and change at Yu Ying. The "class trip" will be the same way. For example--while I won't begrudge or complain if parents who can afford it take their kids to China in 5th (I won't be when my child is in that class), I will ask the school to explore and think about other options in the "menu" of available choices for cultural experiences that are not just a two week tour in 5th grade.
5th Grade: Like: Trip to NYC or other bigger Chinatowns on East Coast in 5th grade. Local home exchanges with Chinese families. 8th grade: summer home exchange programs in China (sans parents) 11th grade: semester or year exchange programs in China. The choices and models we have aren't set in stone, and fortunately I have great faith in the administration to work with parents on the options and ways to expose our kids to Chinese culture. |
Anonymous
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09:20,
I like your ideas. |
Anonymous
I agree. This would be a reasonable and sustainable path to follow, vs. three separate, potentially overlapping trips. Nicely done. Have you thought about sending it to Maquita? I think this plan would get a LOT of support from the parents. |
Anonymous
Said like a parent who is signed up for the trip and doesn't give a damn about anyone who isn't. |
Anonymous
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5th grade ideas are stupid. Cantonese (and Vietnamese) is the language spoken in NYC Chinatown (San Fran, too). Home stays with Chinese families in DC most of whom don't speak mandarin but a dialect - Cantonese, etc. no thanks.
If you don't want to send your 5th grader to China than that's your choice, but please don't suggests cultural exchanges that will do nothing and are a poor substitute to actually visiting a country and culture. |
Anonymous
| agreed. and let's let the school make the decision and either decide to go along with it or not, but parents need to stop trying to run the school. |
Anonymous
| Seriously? The demographic shift to Mandarin in Chinatown has been pretty swift, especially in the past decade. The old folks still speak Cantonese, but all of the recent immigrants and kids in school are speaking and learning Mandarin. Hell, go out to Montgomery county and you can find native Mandarin speaking families. |
Anonymous
| Seriously. If you think it's hard to get a group of immersion kids to speak Mandarin in China, see how much mandarin they'll be exposed to in NYC's Chinatown where even the immigrant Native speaking mandarin speaking kids prefer to speak English. |
Anonymous
| Yes, seriously. We aren't trying to turn the kids Chinese. It seems like the PP is just trying to think of ways to expose them to some culture and experience that is reasonable and logical for 10 and 11 year olds. |
Anonymous
| I like the idea of local immersion and home stay programs but a trip to China for a 10-11 yo is reasonable in my eyes. And that is my point - there will always be differences of opinion of what is reasonable. As another pp pointed out, let the administrators run the school. Parental involvement is great and I think offering ideas and opinions is desirable but the buck has to end somewhere. |
Anonymous
"In Chinatown, Sound of the Future Is Mandarin" He grew up playing in the narrow, crowded streets of Manhattan’s Chinatown. He has lived and worked there for all his 61 years. But as Wee Wong walks the neighborhood these days, he cannot understand half the Chinese conversations he hears. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/22/nyregion/22chinese.html?pagewanted=all |