Chinese Immersion school

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:MoCo is only good for Chinese kids - many threads on how white kids are not welcome.

If that's true I can only imagine how unwelcoming it is for non-white, non-Chinese kids.

Where are you getting this? You talk to the AA and Latino families at College Gardens, Potomac and Herbert Hoover? The ones we rub shoulders with seem to appreciate the fact that having a good many bilingual children in the program advances the programs' mission. The MoCo Chinese immersion schools aren't insular communities, they're dual immersion programs using the method language acquisition experts commonly recommend that second languages be taught to children. This is the way DCPS teachers Spanish at Oyster. But as we all know, DC politicians, along with charter leaders, admins and parents mostly reject this method because they value racial and socioeconomic diversity more highly than language acquisition. Fine, so different strokes for different folks.

Actually the reason charter school admissions are the way they are is because of how CONGRESS wrote the law authorizing charter schools in DC.

Would literally take an act of Congress to change it. Not happening so charters play the hand they are dealt.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:MoCo is only good for Chinese kids - many threads on how white kids are not welcome.

If that's true I can only imagine how unwelcoming it is for non-white, non-Chinese kids.

Where are you getting this? You talk to the AA and Latino families at College Gardens, Potomac and Herbert Hoover? The ones we rub shoulders with seem to appreciate the fact that having a good many bilingual children in the program advances the programs' mission. The MoCo Chinese immersion schools aren't insular communities, they're dual immersion programs using the method language acquisition experts commonly recommend that second languages be taught to children. This is the way DCPS teachers Spanish at Oyster. But as we all know, DC politicians, along with charter leaders, admins and parents mostly reject this method because they value racial and socioeconomic diversity more highly than language acquisition. Fine, so different strokes for different folks.

Actually the reason charter school admissions are the way they are is because of how CONGRESS wrote the law authorizing charter schools in DC.

Would literally take an act of Congress to change it. Not happening so charters play the hand they are dealt.

They play the hand different ways. The Spanish immersion charters invest in outreach to native speaking communities in the District, partly to convince parents to put their names in the lottery hat. Spanish-speaking admins and parent leaders are very involved. We've long volunteered at the Chinatown Community Cultural Center and Chinese Community Church, hangouts for Chinese speakers downtown. Nobody from YY ever seems to turn up unless the school's gearing up to participate in lunar new year festivities. The disconnect has really grown over time.

[Anonymous]

YY tried outreach in those areas, but they have been snubbed so they gave up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:YY tried outreach in those areas, but they have been snubbed so they gave up.

It's what happens when no school or parent leader speaks the principle dialect of the North American Chinese immigrant community. By the same token local community has given up on YY, feeling snubbed. I'm guessing that the issue will be revisited thoughtfully eventually, after several years of DCI IB Diploma Chinese examination scores have become common knowledge, and a college admissions track record has been established. Things could change if a new principal spoke good English, Mandarin and Cantonese. There would be no shortage of qualified applicants if a serious search was done, particularly from Canada. As you may know, the excellent Maury principal of six years is Canadian/Quebecois, and the former head of the Fairfax Co. French immersion ES.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:YY tried outreach in those areas, but they have been snubbed so they gave up.

It's what happens when no school or parent leader speaks the principle dialect of the North American Chinese immigrant community. By the same token local community has given up on YY, feeling snubbed. I'm guessing that the issue will be revisited thoughtfully eventually, after several years of DCI IB Diploma Chinese examination scores have become common knowledge, and a college admissions track record has been established. Things could change if a new principal spoke good English, Mandarin and Cantonese. There would be no shortage of qualified applicants if a serious search was done, particularly from Canada. As you may know, the excellent Maury principal of six years is Canadian/Quebecois, and the former head of the Fairfax Co. French immersion ES.

NP: If your bolded statement is true, that right there is a huge problem. This is a public charter school in DC with a Head of School and a Board that, by all accounts, has done an INCREDIBLE job with all the most basic and important parts of developing a school: getting space, developing a curriculum, figuring out the dual language model, figuring out the IB model as applied to their focus on Mandarin, hiring native speaking staff... and so much more. The school is considered a model for dual language Mandarin instruction in a public setting, and yet SOLELY because the Principal is not Chinese, there are community partners that want nothing to do with the school. There were absolutely Mandarin and Cantonese-speaking parents at the time Yu Ying were first doing their outreach to DC's Chinese community, so don't say there were no parents who could speak to community members.

It's actually a miracle YY has done as well as it has, given the blatant prejudices so many have about the Head of School who has opened doors for the school and run the school in a way that has kept it's standards high, kept the instruction going and apparently of good quality (even if it doesn't meet the "MoCo is better at all of this" poster's standards here), and yet there were community members who didn't want to collaborate with the school just because the Head of School (who was one among many reaching out) didn't speak the language(s) (even though others did).

The community members you speak of gave up? Yeah, I bet they did, if the only way for YY to appease them was to fire the Head of School and bring on someone they approved of, they probably did get tired of waiting. Still, YY continues to survive and thrive. I hope my kids literally win the lottery when they're old enough (which will be next year for the oldest) to apply. We've been focused on Mandarin as our 1st choice of language since pregnant with the oldest. Would really love to be part of this school community that has accomplished so much in the face of so much resistance and animosity.

[Anonymous]

Can anyone recommend any weekend Chinese schools for native speakers at the 3PreK level? In DC or MoCO.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do you speak Chinese at home? Some of us pass on "immersion" at YY (not entering the lottery), but speak dialects and teach characters at home. Our kids attend rigorous heritage language schools in MoCo on weekends (normally several hours on a Sat or Sun afternoon, including calligraphy class). There are four or five native-speaking DC families in our particular weekend program, none at YY. Our kids all speak Chinese well, albeit slangy Chinese...

this is not true at all. There are two in our class of 18 alone! More in the school overall obviously.

Is Chinese your primary language at home? Do you speak it to your children all the time? We only have one Chinese fluent parent, and one basic Chinese parent so we only speak all-Chinese for one weekend day, supplemented by Sunday Chinese school. Is that enough for is full immersion the way to go?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:YY tried outreach in those areas, but they have been snubbed so they gave up.

They should make Chinese fluent parents actively volunteer at YY in exchange for their kids admission. That would motivate involvement.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Can anyone recommend any weekend Chinese schools for native speakers at the 3PreK level? In DC or MoCO.

Potomac Chinese School is good.

[Anonymous]

I feel for YY. The bullshit hoops DC's chinese community makes you jump through to do anything....

I actually had my chinese friend (who doesn't speak chinese) go to a meeting with me (my white daughter speaks chinese). They would rather deal with a chinese looking person (who has no interest in the language and culture of China) vs a white person who has spent 15 years of her life studying the language and culture.

Go to MoCo. Much better to deal with. DC's chinese community is terrible.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I feel for YY. The bullshit hoops DC's chinese community makes you jump through to do anything....

I actually had my chinese friend (who doesn't speak chinese) go to a meeting with me (my white daughter speaks chinese). They would rather deal with a chinese looking person (who has no interest in the language and culture of China) vs a white person who has spent 15 years of her life studying the language and culture.

Go to MoCo. Much better to deal with. DC's chinese community is terrible.

They are an insular community like every other immigrant community. The kids become fully americanized and are not like this at all and move far away from the ethnic communities where their parents feel most comfortable.

You couldn't pay me to live with these people.

-signed child of immigrants

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:YY tried outreach in those areas, but they have been snubbed so they gave up.

They should make Chinese fluent parents actively volunteer at YY in exchange for their kids admission. That would motivate involvement.

YY parents are very active, native Mandarin speaking or otherwise.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can anyone recommend any weekend Chinese schools for native speakers at the 3PreK level? In DC or MoCO.

Potomac Chinese School is good.

Any otheres? All their stuff on their webpage is from 2012!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:YY tried outreach in those areas, but they have been snubbed so they gave up.

They should make Chinese fluent parents actively volunteer at YY in exchange for their kids admission. That would motivate involvement.

YY parents are very active, native Mandarin speaking or otherwise.

That's fine but one of the problems I keep hearing is lack of native Chinese speaker involvement

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I feel for YY. The bullshit hoops DC's chinese community makes you jump through to do anything....

I actually had my chinese friend (who doesn't speak chinese) go to a meeting with me (my white daughter speaks chinese). They would rather deal with a chinese looking person (who has no interest in the language and culture of China) vs a white person who has spent 15 years of her life studying the language and culture.

Go to MoCo. Much better to deal with. DC's chinese community is terrible.

But YY doesn't equal the Chinese community. And that's one of its challenges.