MINNEAPOLIS
— On weekday mornings, a stream of orange buses and private cars from
75 Minnesota postal codes wrap around Yinghua Academy, the first
publicly funded Chinese-immersion charter school
in the United States, in the middle-class neighborhood of Northeast
Minneapolis. Most pupils, from kindergarten to eighth grade, dash to
bright-colored classrooms for the 8:45 a.m. bell, eager to begin
“morning meeting,” a freewheeling conversation in colloquial Mandarin.
Meanwhile,
two grades form five perfect lines in the gym for calisthenics, Chinese
style. Dressed neatly in the school’s blue uniforms, the students
enthusiastically count each move — “liu, qi, ba, jiu, shi.”
By
9:15, a calm sense of order pervades the school as formal instruction
begins for math, reading, social studies, history and science.
Instructors teach in Mandarin, often asking questions that prompt a
flurry of raised hands. No one seems to speak out of turn. “We bring
together both East and West traditions,” explains the academic director,
Luyi Lien, who tries to balance Eastern discipline with Western fun.
Ms.
Lien helped start Yinghua, which means “English Chinese,” with just 76
students and four teachers in 2006. This autumn a new addition opened
that doubled capacity to handle the growing numbers of students. The
school now has 660 students, all awarded tuition-free places by lottery.
Yinghua is expected to be at its full capacity of 800 students by
2021.
The
student-teacher ratio is 10 to one, and 78 percent of the teachers hold
advanced degrees, many of them from American universities; three have
Ph.D.’s. All receive training in the United States, including two
teachers paid for by Hanban, an affiliate of China’s Ministry of
Education.
Yinghua
Academy is among a handful of total-immersion schools, though the
United States has 175 Chinese-immersion programs within regular schools
across the country, 18 begun this academic year alone. While immersion
programs have a mix of English and Chinese classes, Yinghua teaches all
academic subjects in Chinese through fourth grade before moving to a
half-English model for grades five to eight.
Total-immersion
schools groom students with deeper cultural understanding and stronger
Mandarin skills, particularly in reading and writing, Ms. Lien said.
“Our goal is real bilingualism by eighth grade, which is near native,”
she said.
At
Yinghua, the process is intense. Just ahead of snack time in
kindergarten, the teacher, who speaks only in Mandarin, thrusts an
orange plastic disk in the air and 28 little hands shoot up. She points
to one girl who answers correctly — “chengse” — before dashing to the
nearby sink to wash her hands. In just minutes, all the students have
identified a color and are happily tearing open their snacks. One
5-year-old asks, “Can you open this?” The teacher replies, “bangmang
dakai?” On cue, the child repeats and then says, “xie xie” — thank you.
“Yinghua
is the best of the best,” according to Hattie Bonds, the mother of two
children at the school and a former associate superintendent for
Minneapolis public schools. “The first week my son came home from
kindergarten and taught my 3-year-old to count to 10 in Chinese,” she
recalled. “High expectations are yoked to high results.”
In
Minnesota standardized tests, Yinghua students perform at least as well
or better than their public school counterparts, even though English
classes begin only at age 7. In Minnesota’s Multiple Measure Rating
system, Yinghua has ranked within the top 15 percent of all Minnesota
public schools for the past three years. (That includes the Focus Rate
ranking, which measures the school’s reduction in the achievement gap
between higher and lower socioeconomic groups.)
A
primary reason, according to the executive director, Susan Berg, is the
students’ home environment. Parents who choose immersion are often well
educated themselves, and are highly committed to the school’s goals,
including nightly homework.
Math
results, which are particularly strong, are partly attributed to the
Singapore Math curriculum and its eight-step approach to word problems,
as well as the Chinese-educated teachers who move through material more
quickly than their American peers.
Mathematical
terms in Mandarin are also clearer. The word for “triangle,” for
instance, “sanjiaoxing,” means three-sided. And when counting to 100,
the Chinese use only 10 numbers to build all others; 71, for instance,
is written 7-10-1. “The number system is easier to work with,” said Mary
McDonald, a seventh-grader who takes an extra university math class
once a week. “It’s faster and more organized.”
Research
also shows that early immersion produces cognitive benefits. “These
students are better at nonverbal problem solving,” said Dr. Tara
Fortune, of the Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition at
the University of Minnesota. “They have better executive control to
focus on relevant information, and better listening skills.”
Yinghua’s
retention rate this autumn was 93 percent. Asians and Pacific Islanders
comprise 47 percent of the student body; Caucasians, 46 percent. At the
school, 13 percent qualify for free or reduced school lunches and 8
percent are special-education students. According to Mrs. Berg, almost
all the students flourish in immersion, including those with special
needs. “These students do well, relatively speaking,” she said. “They
are so proud they know Chinese.”
Chinese
immersion is apparently an American phenomenon, fueled since 2000 by
impressive French and Spanish immersion test results, new charter
schools that tap local school district funds, federal grants and,
notably, substantial infusions of Chinese government support,
particularly since 2004.
But
the scope is broadening. China will highlight immersion for the first
time at a conference in Europe early next year. “Immersion is still new
to the Chinese,” said Joan Brzezinski, executive director of Minnesota’s
Confucius Institute. “But they see the results and they now want to
reach out to their Confucius Institutes in other countries.”
Since
2004, China has set up 465 Confucius Institutes and 713 Confucius
classrooms in 123 countries. The institutes, mostly on university
campuses, offer schools compelling incentives. China will cover budget
costs for teacher training, materials, top-notch cultural programs and
student exchanges. China also offers $10,000 grants to all schools that
start teaching Mandarin.
No figures exist for Chinese immersion efforts outside North America, according to an email response from a Hanban spokesman.
While
Ms. Brzezinski knows of several immersion programs in Canada, and one
in Britain, she says other countries still teach Mandarin as a second
language, albeit with impressive results in certain countries, such as
Singapore. (Chinese Singaporeans begin Mandarin at an early age and
continue through high school.)
Dr.
Shuhan Wang, director of the Asia Society’s Chinese Early Language and
Immersion Network, based in New York, calls Minnesota a “hidden gem” in
the immersion movement. (Other key states include Utah, California,
Delaware, Washington, Oregon and North Carolina.) She credits
Minnesota’s Concordia College Language Villages for the model of an
immersion laboratory. In 1984, it opened the Sen Lin Hu, or “Lake of the
Woods,” Chinese village as part of its summer camp immersion programs.
“Sen Lin Hu proved that immersion works,” Dr. Wang said. “It gave us
both knowledge and best practice.”
The
United States Department of Education stopped funding Chinese immersion
in 2012, Dr. Wang said, though the Department of Defense still
contributes a minimal amount. These days additional support comes from
state budgets and from China. “By having people learn Chinese, it
becomes a global language,” she said.
After
school at Yinghua, preparations are underway for Grandparents’ Day, in
line with the Chinese tradition of honoring family elders. Banners are
already hung as teachers meet with students to hone speeches and parent
volunteers prepare food. Also on the agenda: a presentation on a middle
school trip to China, where students visit a sister school and stay
with Chinese families.
Once
students leave Yinghua to attend various high schools, they now have
the option of continuing Chinese. Dr. Lien developed an online credit
course that debuted in September, which includes chat rooms. “These
students are well positioned to compete in a global market,” Dr. Fortune
said. “The language is a key part of what they will offer.”
Correction: October 27, 2014
Earlier versions of picture captions misspelled the name of a
Chinese-immersion charter school in Minneapolis. It is Yinghua Academy,
not Yiunghua or Yianghua.