Reply to CHARTERS MAY MERGE AT WALTER REED (The DC International School, IB Diploma Programme)

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[quote=Anonymous]^^ I'm one of the small number of people talking about the possibility of starting a second Chinese immersion school in DC.  We've met via the Chinatown Community Cultural Center and/or the Rockville Cantonese School.  Most of us have babies and toddlers and, as things stand, aren't planning to put our kids' names in the YY lottery for reasons discussed.  One family pulled out.

All we're doing right now is talking and fact finding.  I don't disagree with what this thoughtful poster is saying.  There aren't as many 50 stand-alone Chinese immersion schools in the country yet, but a plethora of school-within-a-school programs are indeed springing up.  CA, UT and NC are the state leaders in the field.

What we're studying at this very preliminary stage is how the one-way immersion programs, like YY, and the dual, or two-way, immersion programs differ in their approaches to teaching and learning.  We're not experts, we're learners.

A "strong connection to China" and bilingualism in a dialect are not mutually exclusive of course, but they are two different things.  For example, a dual-immersion administrator I spoke to at one of the longest-standing schools (few existed a decade ago)  talked about how much faster kids who are fully bilingual in a dialect can learn Mandarin than kids who come in knowing little or no Chinese (although they may come from families who've lived on the Mainland).  Thus, there are dual-immersion schools allowing fully bilingual dialect speakers as old as 11 to enter their regular immersion program after a very intensive Mandarin summer program.

DC Charter law seems to have laid down rigid rules governing admission and administration that don't work well for every school and family.  So perhaps DCPS would provide fertile ground for a two-way immersion program.  Perhaps not.  We're not experts on how DCPS runs its immersion schools either.  We're simply seeing what we can learn for now.

We'll get back to you eventually.  For now, we'd rather not defend ourselves here.  All that's clear is that YY isn't for us, and some other bilingual families, and we aren't for you under the school's current administration.  It's not a problem, it's a possibility in a city that won't suffer from an over-abundance of Mandarin speakers anytime soon...If we succeed, and DCI wants us, peachy keen.

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