Reply to Sp or Ch language?

Forum Index » DC Public and Public Charter Schools

Reply to "Sp or Ch language?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]For what it's worth, your child wouldn't be one of only a handful of bilingual kids in the school, just one of only a handful of Cantonese speaking kids. In my child's pre-K class of 18, one-third of the kids have at least one parent who grew up speaking a language other than English, and four of those six kids speak a foreign language at home at least some of the time. (These 4 don't include kids whose parents are American but know Mandarin and use it with their kids at least sometimes.) I don't know that this 1/3 bilingual parent, 2/9 bilingual kid ratio is common across the school--I sort of doubt it is, although I'm certainly aware of several other bilingual kids in PK. [/quote]

I'm the PP who posted earlier about the relief I felt after we returned WOP.  It's true that there are plenty of bilingual kids, just not many at all who're conversant in a dialect of Chinese spoken at home.  I know just what you're saying, PP, about not feeling assimilated enough for the community.  We ended up at YY mainly because my mom, who lives with us, didn't want our kid speaking Mandarin with a strong "Canton accent."  She thought the accent would give him problems if he worked in China, outside the South, as an adult.

If you're IB for one of the best schools, WOP or Brent on the Hill, and feel you can do a good job teaching a dialect at home, my recommendation would be to stay local.  You have all the time in the world to add Mandarin later if you don't mind the accent.  The weekend school in Rockville offers nice Mandarin-for-Cantonese-speakers classes for MS and HS age kids.  We have a wonderful au pair from Guangdong through one of the State Dept. licensed au pair agencies, GoAuPair, who really helps at home.  Or you can move to MoCo, where you would be welcomed into one of the fine immersion schools there.

Staying IB means avoiding the hassle of the YY commute and walking on eggshells around parents, and even kids, who may be quick to slam your family for not being "open-minded" enough if you don't watch it.  You can just be yourself in an environment where you aren't under pressure to celebrate diversity over ethnicity.  For example, one day my child came home in tears because a group of kids had given him a hard time at lunch about how he doesn't eat raw vegetables or cheese.  Other kids, including those adopted from China, had laughed at him and called him "stupid" when he told them that these foods were dangerous.  These foods are not part of any regional Chinese cuisine.  No big deal, but these little incidents added up for us, and it was all draining.  Not every Chinese-American or Chinese YY parent feels the say way of course, but I noticed that the happier ones did tend to be more assimilated, and didn't tend to have stellar IB options.

I don't see YY getting the numbers of bilingual Chinese speakers up in the future - the school pays lip service to wanting us, but probably doesn't care if we're involved or not.  OK, that's their deal, the founders started the school, not me.  I feel more valued WOP.

[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics