The visas get extended in one-year increments. Teachers know if they challenge admins, extension paperwork may not be filed. If YY hired mostly ABCs like MoCo, you'd see changes, particularly where outreach to the local ethnic community goes.

Real question: how are the teachers here for year after year if they are on a one-year visa?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That's strange because our DC's Chinese teacher last year taught at another US school before moving to Yu Ying. You sure about that?

Same here, PP. My DC's Chinese teacher came to YY from MoCo. I think the complaining PP is "Heritage Mom" who is perpetually angry that her Cantonese-speaking family didn't get language preference - and so she blames the school for it.

Oh right, blame one probably fictious parent who's supposedly angry not getting a non-existant language preference for shoddy hiring practices that lead to one lead admin after another not reading or speaking Chinese, let alone as a native speaker.

YY clearly prefers that its teachers to come on one-year visas, rendering them virtually powerless in the hierarchy. But to some extent, the joke is on the admins. Ever seen the sentences praising "President" Mao teachers have kids copy down (in characters). Laugh or cry.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That's strange because our DC's Chinese teacher last year taught at another US school before moving to Yu Ying. You sure about that?

Same here, PP. My DC's Chinese teacher came to YY from MoCo. I think the complaining PP is "Heritage Mom" who is perpetually angry that her Cantonese-speaking family didn't get language preference - and so she blames the school for it.

Either Heritage mom or her new friend. Heritage mom definitely checked in earlier in this thread. I can't imagine what it's like to keep grinding an axe like that for this long. She needs to see Frozen and "Let it go"!

Anonymous wrote:No, I'm a white, non-heritage mom and my DC attends YY already. No ax to grind and I love the school for my daughter. I'm just pointing out that I know 2 people who had similar negative hiring experiences as another poster. If the hiring practices have changed tone then that is new for this past year and it is very exciting. It would be fantastic to populate the school with teachers who had some experience in US schools and who have dealt with US children, discipline, psychology and behavior management prior to teaching at YY.

Apparently your friends' alleged experience is not the norm because my child also has a teacher who taught in the US prior to teaching at YY, and it wasn't in MoCo. You are stating rumors and your theories about them as fact, and that is really irresponsible.

No, I'm a white, non-heritage mom and my DC attends YY already. No ax to grind and I love the school for my daughter. I'm just pointing out that I know 2 people who had similar negative hiring experiences as another poster. If the hiring practices have changed tone then that is new for this past year and it is very exciting. It would be fantastic to populate the school with teachers who had some experience in US schools and who have dealt with US children, discipline, psychology and behavior management prior to teaching at YY.

Anonymous wrote:That's strange because our DC's Chinese teacher last year taught at another US school before moving to Yu Ying. You sure about that?

Same here, PP. My DC's Chinese teacher came to YY from MoCo. I think the complaining PP is "Heritage Mom" who is perpetually angry that her Cantonese-speaking family didn't get language preference - and so she blames the school for it.

Straight from the horse's mouth

That's strange because our DC's Chinese teacher last year taught at another US school before moving to Yu Ying. You sure about that?

Anonymous wrote:Give us a break, YY could surely hire at least one native-speaking Chinese administrator (and not necessarily ethnic Chinese, there are expatriates with native fluencey) if they tried very hard. I know a highly qualified native Mandarin speaker in the DC suburbs who has submitted a resume several times in the last five years. Nobody ever gets back to her; the school must be hiring insiders.

That was a very similar experience with a friend of mine from China who was dual certified in early elementary education and special education from a US school. The HR person who screens applications doesn't want to have anything to do with Chinese teachers who have experience in the American system prior to working there. She was also terribly rude to another person I know who applied there and made a follow-up call since she hadn't heard anything. I do know that if the application doesn't get past her then no one at the school will ever know of it.

It's apples and oranges to compare Montgomery County to DC schools on every level. As you said, the demographics are different, the law about accepting students later is different, the funding is different, and the quality of the overall school system is different.

And all of the teachers of Chinese language classes and AP Chinese at the high school level are native speakers.

It is greener in MoCo. The principals speak excellent Chinese, and the teachers, who are paid and trained well, tend to stick around for years. Most teachers are ABCs with strong ties to the local ethnic community, which is very involved in the programs. Standards are considerably higher--for math, English and, yes, Mandarin--and there isn't a non-immersion track. Roughly one-quarter of the kids mainly speak Chinese at home (far more in 5th grade than K, because bilingual children test in to replace drop-outs). Best of all, parents aren't driven to these programs to escape low-performing neighborhood elementary schools, so no there's almost no admissions rate race. You don't meet many MoCo immersion parents who don't know basics about the US Chinese immigrant experience, and China itself, like you do at YY.

Anonymous wrote:I think the lack of qualified candidates has more to do with the horrible pay and the unwillingness to provide compensation for experience. It is also responsible for the high staff turnover and the abundance of teachers in their first 1-3 years of teaching. There are many thousands of native speakers of Chinese in the area just a few miles outside of city limits. For example, schools in Montgomery County have no trouble staffing all of their Chinese programs with native speakers with many years of teaching experience.

Interestingly Montgomery County's Chinese Immersion program coordinator is a white American as are all of the administrators at College Gardens ES where it is held. They only have 7 teachers total for the program - so it is not that big. I'm thinking it is not greener on the Maryland side of the line.

Anonymous wrote:Give us a break, YY could surely hire at least one native-speaking Chinese administrator (and not necessarily ethnic Chinese, there are expatriates with native fluencey) if they tried very hard. I know a highly qualified native Mandarin speaker in the DC suburbs who has submitted a resume several times in the last five years. Nobody ever gets back to her; the school must be hiring insiders.

Maybe your friend is not as qualified as you seem to think. Or, maybe your friend is a convicted child molester. Or, maybe you are just lying. We will never know because anybody can say what they want on an anonymous board. FWIw, YY does have Chinese speaking administrators, not many, but some.