Anonymous wrote:Sorry, no chance. I'm a native Chinese speaker who's watched Yu Ying closely for years, so I know that they're still struggling on many levels. They can't do dual/two-way immersion in this city, and many of their teachers (both from China and the US) aren't very experienced. Few in the YY community want to hear it, but many of the students only speak and understand a little Chinese after years in the program. I can't imagine Miner doing a good job with Mandarin, not when the poor Tyler Spanish Immersion parents can't even get DCPS to set up a verticially integrated MS program. The outlays for Mandarin at Miner could be considerable, and the enthusiasm great, without much in the way of results. But the odd Miner kid with home Chinese inputs would still do fine. We're leaning toward MoCo in search of greener pastures.

Reading your anonymous posting here, I'll take it that you didn't read anything above what you simply wrote.

Cliff note version: Immersion has great benefits that have nothing to do with whether you become fluent in a language.

You might read a thread before you post. Some people have already posted that a child at YY isn't going to be fluent unless there is a commitment at home as well. Moving to MoCo isn't what most people are looking to do when they are talking in the DC School Forum.

Anonymous wrote:

warrenox wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Minor is a bridge too far for us, way too far. How many high SES/white kids in K this past year - 2? How many in 1st-5th, zero? What percentage of the catchment area is high SES/white now - 60%? Simply put, the arrangement is criminal. DCPS could easily give the gentrifiers a fighting chance of using the school, or Payne. Mandarin immersion won't do the job, folks. Nice try.

Could you please quote statistics instead of guessing? I'm interested in debating and working out solutions, but we have to have a honest dialogue.

Did you see my post above where 30 parents of children inbound to Miner met about how to help Miner change into the neighborhood school we would all like to see? What brought this about? Conversations about immersion for Miner. There isn't a program there yet, but just talking about a immersion program has spurred some people into becoming engaged.

What will do the job for you?

One can't come by official public school grade-by-grade demographic stats in this city because neither DCPS nor DCPC collects them. But you can always talk to parents with children in the school, and visit to peer into classroom windows. On my last visit to Miner, at a spring open house, I saw 2 white kids in one K class, and none in the other, or in any elementary class I got a look at. Does anybody have a different, more accurate head count to offer up?

DC could house a test-in GT ES program at Miner to help the school serve its catchment area, but won't so much as consider doing so.

If a Miner Mandarin program offered a Chinese dominant lottery, with speakers of dialects other than Mandarin (Cantonese, Hakka, Fujian) etc. eligible to enter it, at least the program would offer something Yu Ying doesn't, a path to dual/two-way immersion. Even with two lotteries, I'm not optimistic that parents would rush in, particularly Chinese speakers. As I said, a bridge too far for the great majority of gentrifiers living in the Miner District. I'd wager this will be the case for a decade or more. Good luck.

I don't know what bridge you are looking at that you can't see the other side, but I do know that Mandarin is spoken by 1/5th of the World's population, and is increasingly important in business as we see China becoming a even larger market that will someday take over the United States as the largest market in the World.

I've been involved with a large group of parent's that are eager to have a neighborhood school. So I'd take your wager; Miner will change in less than 3 years.

Thanks for the well wishes; I'll get you to buy in when you see changes taking shape.

Anonymous wrote:Minor is a bridge too far for us, way too far. How many high SES/white kids in K this past year - 2? How many in 1st-5th, zero? What percentage of the catchment area is high SES/white now - 60%? Simply put, the arrangement is criminal. DCPS could easily give the gentrifiers a fighting chance of using the school, or Payne. Mandarin immersion won't do the job, folks. Nice try.

Could you please quote statistics instead of guessing? I'm interested in debating and working out solutions, but we have to have a honest dialogue.

Did you see my post above where 30 parents of children inbound to Miner met about how to help Miner change into the neighborhood school we would all like to see? What brought this about? Conversations about immersion for Miner. There isn't a program there yet, but just talking about a immersion program has spurred some people into becoming engaged.

What will do the job for you?

Anonymous wrote:I applied to Minor this week- I am waitlisted at number 35. Congratulations to the parents who got their kids into this school, I am still hoping to be lucky enough to get a spot!

Good Luck!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Miner will benefit from having a more diverse student body and parent community. One if my friends is a Miner preschool parent. She tried to donate new scholastic books to the classroom and met with resistance from the classroom teacher. Brent and Maury get so many donations from parents. Miner doesn't know what to do with involved parents. I would totally have sent my kids to a Mandarin program at Miner.

Thats a problem at a lot of gentrifying schools unfortuantely. There is an attitude to recruit, recruit, recruit new families (ie High SES) to the school but any effort to make changes is met with an attitude of "your new hear and thats not how we do things"--and then people get huffy when high SES families with their high achieving kids bail by 1st, and 2nd grade and the original recruiters accuse the families of being racist and classist. Mandarin isn't going to fix that dynamic anytime soon.

Again, totally agree. Mandarin as a language isn't going to fix that problem.

Parents that will invest in an immersion program and the school will fix that problem. So it will require involvement in the school, becoming tone deaf to the obstructionists who always are there to complain "that's not how we do things"... Getting a good core of those parents/students who are invested in the program will change the school culture.

Just to let you and anyone else that didn't know, there was a group of about 30 parents who have potential inbound students that met in a informal gathering that was organized through word of mouth of friends. That is parents who most do not even yet have a child old enough to attend Miner. This was friends and friends of friends. People who just know each other as neighbors in the community. That will tell you there is some momentum building to change the school. That was a big eye opener and there was encouragement to join the PTO, to attend functions for Miner and to get involved. If that community spirit and involvement starts spreading to other local families, to the teachers at the school looking for parent involvement, to the neighbor down the block with young children, or the parent(s) who have a child in Miner and looking for allies to help the school raise academic standards and test scores, then that will change the school.

Anonymous wrote:Miner will benefit from having a more diverse student body and parent community. One if my friends is a Miner preschool parent. She tried to donate new scholastic books to the classroom and met with resistance from the classroom teacher. Brent and Maury get so many donations from parents. Miner doesn't know what to do with involved parents. I would totally have sent my kids to a Mandarin program at Miner.

Can't disagree with your post. Miner is in desperate need of a more diverse student body and parent community.

I hope your friend will become involved in the PTO at Miner. There is a wonderful President of that organization and I think she could help find a use for those books.

Anonymous wrote:20% PROFICIENCY. Not "efficiency." Only 20% of the kids at Miner are scoring at a "proficient" level on math and reading tests. They are not measuring the percent efficiency (whatever in the world that means) of individual students.

With all due respect, you are not inspiring a lot of confidence if you don't even understand this most basic measurement of student achievement.

I perfectly understand the measurement and was typing quickly and didn't proofread. You aren't suddenly showing brilliance by pointing that out. When an anonymous poster is suddenly the grammar police on the internet, it's often because they are losing the argument otherwise.

BTW, what are you doing for Miner besides being the grammar police on the internet? Please let us know so that we can get behind you and support your actions.

Anonymous wrote:

warrenox wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

warrenox wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Stupid question- does it HAVE to be Mandarin?

I believe that DCPS will choose the language by what is available to them. DCPS knows that Yu Ying has extensive waiting lists for their Mandarin program.
It will not be Spanish because they already have immersion schools for Spanish.

I have had reservations about Mandarin as well, but after reading and understanding that Elementary kids can soak up Mandarin as easily as French or Spanish at that age, then my uneasiness was alleviated.

The benefits of a child being exposed to Mandarin at such a young age is that they are learning a Level 6 language (language difficulty ranking based on learning a language as a adult). If you learn a higher level language, it becomes immensely easier to learn a lower level language later in life. So if you wanted your kid to learn French or Spanish, he/she will have a easier time with it because of their exposure to Mandarin at the Elementary level.

I agree with everything you're saying, BUT, I don't see how people will be drawn to AND STAY IN a school with a 20% proficiency rate across the board when the language is Mandarin. Honestly it's hard enough to support the Spanish language in a place where so many kids have access to spanish speakers. I can't imagine how that would even be possible with Mandarin.

The language would start only at the earlier grades. It's impractical to start at every grade. So you would have Pre-K and Kindergarten as your beginning Mandarin students. As these kids move up through the school, the Mandarin education would move up with them until it reaches all grades at the school. I agree that you don't start introducing Mandarin to kids who haven't been exposed to it at the pre-K or Kindergarten level.

I don't understand what you mean by support? Does every child learning Spanish at school have Spanish speaking parents? I highly doubt that. Do you mean support groups that help parents? Here's one...

http://paassc.com/ - African American parent group for children learning Chinese

What I mean by support is that children need more than just school to truly learn a language. Yes, I know that the prevailing wisdom on DCUM and maybe DC in general is that you can just dump your kid at your immersion school and your child comes out speaking perfect Spanish/French/Hebrew/Chinese. But the reality is that children really DON'T become truly fluent unless families REALLY try. That means hiring a babysitter/au pair/family member who speaks the target language to speak to the child. That means interacting with that particular community to better understand the culture and language. Every child I've ever spoken to without this sort of support does not really speak the language. Yes, they can understand and put some words together, but that's not fluency.

Are you also prepared for the fact that parents can't help kids with homework unless they speak mandarin? And yes, I realize that a good many subjects will also be taught in English, but Mandarin taught ones will be out of the reach of parents. And frankly, in a school with 20% proficiency, parents NEED to be a part of the picture. They can't feel that they're not able to help their kids.

Look I live near Miner, and I WANT THEM TO SUCCEED. I want Miner to be the amazing school it definitely can be. But I really don't think Mandarin immersion is the way to achieve that.

Do I believe every child that would attend an immersion program at Miner would become fluent in the language? Of course not. Then why do it? Because of this right here....

http://www.bhlingual.com/brain-benefits-bilingual-infographic/

Cognitive skills.. A child learning another language has their mind mapped a different way that sharpens their cognitive skills; makes them better multitaskers and strengthens their memories.

Even if a child doesn't become fluent, they have had that learning experience in earlier years which helps shape their brain and allows them to be more flexible learners in life. That's the biggest benefit, not what language is learned.

As far as homework, I cannot help them if they speak Mandarin, French, Spanish, or any other multitude of languages. Am I prepared for that? Yes. How? Because like any homework, my job shouldn't be to show them a new concept; they already should have the concept, homework is just practice. It's probably scarier for the parent than it is for the child grasping this idea. Here are some ideas for helping with homework. A local immersion program would also involve the parents and help them understand what kind of homework a student should expect and how a parent can help.

http://www.carla.umn.edu/immersion/acie/vol3/Dec1999_Homework.html

Finally, the 20% that you throw up isn't an assessment on the kids who would be starting in an immersion program. Do parent's need to be a part of the learning for those kids with the 20% proficiency? Absolutely. But I'm not a parent of a child with 20% proficiency, so I cannot change the home environment for that child or help that child with their homework. Why do you think there is only a 20% proficiency currently? And how do you translate that number and assume that would mean kids going into a immersion program will only be 20% proficient?

You and I do have something important in common; we both want to see Miner succeed.

Apologies, some of the posts above are mine, but I didn't realize I wasn't logged in... I'm sure people will be able to identify my posts from others though.

I'd encourage others to log in and not post anonymously as well.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

warrenox wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Stupid question- does it HAVE to be Mandarin?

I believe that DCPS will choose the language by what is available to them. DCPS knows that Yu Ying has extensive waiting lists for their Mandarin program.
It will not be Spanish because they already have immersion schools for Spanish.

I have had reservations about Mandarin as well, but after reading and understanding that Elementary kids can soak up Mandarin as easily as French or Spanish at that age, then my uneasiness was alleviated.

The benefits of a child being exposed to Mandarin at such a young age is that they are learning a Level 6 language (language difficulty ranking based on learning a language as a adult). If you learn a higher level language, it becomes immensely easier to learn a lower level language later in life. So if you wanted your kid to learn French or Spanish, he/she will have a easier time with it because of their exposure to Mandarin at the Elementary level.

I agree with everything you're saying, BUT, I don't see how people will be drawn to AND STAY IN a school with a 20% proficiency rate across the board when the language is Mandarin. Honestly it's hard enough to support the Spanish language in a place where so many kids have access to spanish speakers. I can't imagine how that would even be possible with Mandarin.

Sorry for the duplicate post. I would also add that it makes no sense to say, oh we've got too many spanish programs as it is considering the waitlists for these spanish DCPS schools. Even the disaster that is Tyler has an almost 100 child waitlist for pk3.

I will not argue about the waitlist at Tyler and needing more Spanish language immersion schools. What I will say is that from discussions with DCPS and DC Immersion, they aren't focusing on another Spanish language immersion at this time. They see other needs and they have to compete with these charter schools for students. So insisting on a Spanish language immersion program at this point would slow down the momentum for change at Miner that many desperately want. Getting the potential inbound parents/children of Miner to consider going to Miner and not driving past the school to take their kids to the charter school further away or the school a child is attending because the parent's went the lottery route is the desired change.

Anonymous wrote:I have read on other posts about Yu Ying that it takes quite a bit of parental commitment for their children to succeed at Yu Ying. If the parents at Miner are not willing to make the investment in their children's education with a single language track, what makes DCPS think that these same parents will make the commitment to see their kids flourish in Mandarin?

What makes me think they will succeed is because the parents who choose the Mandarin immersion will be the parents who make the commitment to see their kids flourish. Why would we assume that Yu Ying parents are willing to make an investment in their child's education but parent's who would put their child in an immersion program anywhere else wouldn't make that same commitment?

It appears you are assuming that the kids currently at Miner in the grades above pre-K and Kindergarten would be introduced to Mandarin. They would not. There is a large percentage of people who are currently inbound for Miner that do not send their kids to the school. There is a desire to reverse that trend and create a true neighborhood school.

Anonymous wrote:^ Interesting. Could you site any sources?

http://www.bhlingual.com/brain-benefits-bilingual-infographic/ (You can focus on the Bilingual Benefits in Children section).



http://www.languagestars.com/program-overview/programs/parents-and-tots/14-programs/curriculum/66-the-benefits-of-learning-language-young.html

"Exposing your child to a second language while young allows him or her to optimize his or her learning potential, helping to shape the brain at its most flexible stage. Young children are uniquely suited to learning a second language. Learning a second language at a young age is cognitively as easy as learning a first language."

While some parents worry that starting their toddler on a second language will interfere with developing English skills, the opposite is actually true. Children can differentiate between two languages within the first weeks of life. "Learning another language actually enhances a child's overall verbal development," says Roberta Michnick Golinkoff Ph.D., author of How Babies Talk.

Anonymous wrote:

warrenox wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Stupid question- does it HAVE to be Mandarin?

I believe that DCPS will choose the language by what is available to them. DCPS knows that Yu Ying has extensive waiting lists for their Mandarin program.
It will not be Spanish because they already have immersion schools for Spanish.

I have had reservations about Mandarin as well, but after reading and understanding that Elementary kids can soak up Mandarin as easily as French or Spanish at that age, then my uneasiness was alleviated.

The benefits of a child being exposed to Mandarin at such a young age is that they are learning a Level 6 language (language difficulty ranking based on learning a language as a adult). If you learn a higher level language, it becomes immensely easier to learn a lower level language later in life. So if you wanted your kid to learn French or Spanish, he/she will have a easier time with it because of their exposure to Mandarin at the Elementary level.

I agree with everything you're saying, BUT, I don't see how people will be drawn to AND STAY IN a school with a 20% proficiency rate across the board when the language is Mandarin. Honestly it's hard enough to support the Spanish language in a place where so many kids have access to spanish speakers. I can't imagine how that would even be possible with Mandarin.

The language would start only at the earlier grades. It's impractical to start at every grade. So you would have Pre-K and Kindergarten as your beginning Mandarin students. As these kids move up through the school, the Mandarin education would move up with them until it reaches all grades at the school. I agree that you don't start introducing Mandarin to kids who haven't been exposed to it at the pre-K or Kindergarten level.

I don't understand what you mean by support? Does every child learning Spanish at school have Spanish speaking parents? I highly doubt that. Do you mean support groups that help parents? Here's one...

http://paassc.com/ - African American parent group for children learning Chinese

Anonymous wrote:

warrenox wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Stupid question- does it HAVE to be Mandarin?

I believe that DCPS will choose the language by what is available to them. DCPS knows that Yu Ying has extensive waiting lists for their Mandarin program.
It will not be Spanish because they already have immersion schools for Spanish.

Yu Ying has an extensive waiting list for many reasons that have nothing to do with Mandarin.

What is the substantial difference of Yu Ying from other charter schools? If the extensive waiting list isn't for Mandarin, please let me know what it would be... Because it certainly appears that Mandarin is the incentive to get these kids and their parents who are invested in their child's education.

Anonymous wrote:Stupid question- does it HAVE to be Mandarin?

I believe that DCPS will choose the language by what is available to them. DCPS knows that Yu Ying has extensive waiting lists for their Mandarin program.
It will not be Spanish because they already have immersion schools for Spanish.

I have had reservations about Mandarin as well, but after reading and understanding that Elementary kids can soak up Mandarin as easily as French or Spanish at that age, then my uneasiness was alleviated.

The benefits of a child being exposed to Mandarin at such a young age is that they are learning a Level 5 language (language difficulty ranking based on learning a language as a adult). If you learn a higher level language, it becomes immensely easier to learn a lower level language later in life. So if you wanted your kid to learn French or Spanish, he/she will have a easier time with it because of their exposure to Mandarin at the Elementary level.