Reply to Bilingual Kids in Language Immersion ES Programs, Which Programs Have Many & Strive to Attract Them?

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Reply to "Bilingual Kids in Language Immersion ES Programs, Which Programs Have Many & Strive to Attract Them?"

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[quote=Anonymous]Original Poster here, signing off.  Thanks for an interesting discussion (please continue it if you're so inclined).  Our decision not to put in for the YY lottery feels more right now than before we made it.  Pretty clearly, we are too Chinese for YY, an expression I've heard before.  But if you are an ethnic Chinese parent there, raising a fully bilingual child, you are more open-minded, patient and tolerant than the likes of us so more power to you.

My spouse was just giving me a hard time saying "Oh come on, chill out, we've got 3,000 years of language and culture to build on while what YY has is around four dozen 10 and 11 year-old graduates a year, almost all kids whose families are going to struggle to maintain the Chinese, even if they're not short on time and money to throw at the exercise. DCPC isn't even planning to continue the immersion through MS, like Canadian immersion schools do.  We've got one of the best IB schools in the city, so let's simply enjoy it, at least from K, and head to a heritage language school in MD on weekends and enjoy that."  Good spouse, good points.

I will check out the MoCo Mandarin immersion programs for a comparative and won't rule out ending up there, for MS at least.  Before I go, complements to those of you at the Spanish and French immersion schools who fight for, and prize, your native speakers, hard as it is for your schools to draw them in under DC charter law.  If YY's leadership had the good attitude of Tyler's principal, we would have tried to enroll.  It's one thing to strive to implement the two-way immersion model, even if the politicians are not on your side, another to reject it out of hand in favor of the less effective one-way model (students learning the language only from teachers) as a matter of principle.  The "We'll treat your Chinese-speaking kid like one who knows zero Chinese, and don't care if they come anyway" approach didn't do it for me.   Good luck with language immersion, everyone.

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