Recently, our school joined in a new Chinese Immersion Program that sounded really exciting to me. Our nephew participated in this same program at his school and has had a great experience so far. I attended the informational meeting at our school to decide if we wanted to have Angela participate. I came away from that meeting so excited about the program I couldn't wait for Ang to be a part of it. The state is really working hard to create a future work force that is ready to participate in the job market with China. They are investing in teaching the children Chinese.
I think it is a fantastic idea and it's exciting to see the how the program works. When school starts, she will spend half the day with a Chinese teacher learning mostly math. There is no speaking English allowed. Usually, the kids don't even know their teacher can actually speak English. Even when parents come in to help, the teachers don't speak English to them. The other half of the day is with a regular teacher who works on their English reading skills and writing. The parents who have been in to help say that they have even learned some of the Chinese words while volunteering.
The children already participating have actually excelled in mathematics when it is taught in Chinese and the teachers hired are native speakers so they learn the correct pronunciations and intonations which is the hardest part of learning Chinese. The other thing that I thought was really cool was that the grant, as of now, pays for the children entering to continue through 6th grade. They are working on programs that will continue through jr. high and high school. BYU and the U of U are also working on college level courses that can be taught in the high schools, so that if students are interested, they can actually achieve a minor in Chinese before they graduate from high school. How cool is that? When I told Angela the day we got a phone call letting us know she was accepted into the program, this was her reaction . . .
She is excited to learn and is constantly noticing Chinese characters. Whenever she hears about China or Chinese she tells people, "I'm going to learn that!" I bought her some Chinese flashcards and a CD and she loves to look at them and listen to the CD. She will also get to participate in a special summer Chinese camp where she will get to meet her teacher and do some fun cultural activities to get her ready for this big change.
The day we found out Angela was officially in the program, we went to celebrate at a Chinese restaurant. It was fun because we could hear the workers speaking to each other in Mandarin and we reminded Angela that she would understand that someday!
Ang didn't really eat much at the restaurant. Hopefully, she'll learn to appreciate things like the food. (o: I couldn't help but tease Angela that the students in the Chinese program have to eat Chinese food for lunch. Her face was priceless! She was having second thoughts on the whole thing. When I told her I was teasing, it was one of the most relieved looks I've seen on her little face. (o:
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