Chinese

I was having lunch with Edith and ran into one of my treasured old friends and she was talking about wanting her wonderful twins to learn Chinese. Then I came across this story and thought it might be interesting to post:

WEB EXTRA: 3 Michigan Cities to Offer Chinese-immersion Preschool Programs
By ADAM LARK
The State News

Nicole Ellefson's wristwatch alarm goes off at 7 p.m. everyday — sometimes she forgets that she set it in the first place.

"I always tell my daughters that it's seven in the morning in Beijing," Ellefson laughs.

Beginning next fall, both East and West will overlap in the same classroom.

A Chinese Immersion Program for Lansing, East Lansing and Bay City schools will be established for preschool-aged children. The class will be open enrollment for the fall beginning May 15.

Ellefson, who is the senior project director of the program at the MSU's US-China Center for Research on Educational Excellence, said that students will spend the first two and a half hours of their day speaking Chinese, and the last half speaking English.

A part of a five-year, $5 million grant, the program is geared for parents with adopted children from China and parents interested in exposing their children to the Chinese culture.

"We're excited to be starting with three new schools," Ellefson said of the program's "bilingual, bicultural" experience. "Ultimately we want to see this model of education expand each year a little bit further."

Ellefson hopes that once the preschoolers move up to the next grade level, another immersion program can be formed at the kindergarten and first grade levels.

Based on Chinese teachings in reading, writing, math and science, the Eastern classroom will be taught by a Chinese bilingual instructor. Eastern arts like Chinese drawing and calligraphy will also be included.

Mandarin Chinese, currently the largest spoken language in the world with over 800 million native speakers, will be the language used in the Eastern classrooms.

In the Western classroom, the all-English teaching curriculum will be centered around the Reggio Emilia philosophy that teaches instructors to study the children's emerging interests and ideas.

Ellefson said the Western classroom is just like a typical American preschool.

"They are not going to be learning the language just for learning it," Ellefson said. "But to learn it for the sake of becoming users."

Wendy Wilmers-Longpre, assistant director of East Lansing Parks, Recreation & Arts, is looking forward to having one of the classes in the Bailey Community Center.

"If we can get a minimum enrollment of 10, I'm confident that it will a have a self-sustained funding," she said.

Both the Lansing and East Lansing programs attempt to follow in the footsteps of the immersion schools that have been established in the Portland, Ore., public schools. While enrollment in Portland schools are decreasing, enrollment for immersion classes continues to rise.

DeWitt resident Tammy Kinney, a member of the Families with Children from China, or F.C.C., is currently in the process of deciding if the program would be best for her 3-year-old adopted daughter from China.

"I'm weighing the options right now," Kinney said. "I don't live in East Lansing, so it's hard to get my child there. Otherwise it would be perfect."

Nancy Majzel, also an F.C.C. member, noticed that her 5-year-old daughter's preschool class is made up of a wide variety of ethnicities.

Although her daughter missed the age cutoff for the program, Majzel said the it's perfect for parents to understand the Chinese language.

"I was just listening and reading about all the jobs being outsourced to China," Majzel said. "I think these programs are ideal for the school system."