College Park Elementary School

My daughter spent two years in the Mandrin immerstion program at College Park. She likes to read Mandarin boooks, and enjoys listening to Mandarin stories, She is not shy to talk to people in Chinese. We feel that the immerstion program at College Park has helped her to learn Chinese language by providing a daily learning enviroment. Unlike other types of after schools and sunday schools, the immersion program seams to make kids like to learn this difficult language. For the past two years, we have seen many good things happening at College Park and the new campus is nearly complete. More and more grograms are now available at the school with the principle's support. Many parents organize the music program, art program, and many after school enrichment program on campus.
—Submitted by a parent

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We've been here long enough to *not* believe everything that the principal has promised. We came here mainly for the mandarin immersion exposure (definitely not for the academics or the physical surroundings) and was promised that the kids with higher mandarin fluency would be on a different track than others with no mandarin exposure. Made sense to us. And it worked the first year too. Now the kids are no longer in differentiated classes and they come from different levels. My child is no longer challenged because there are kids in the class that do not have any mandarin background. As a result, I have had to spend money to hire a chinese tutor to teach after school. Kind of defeats the whole purpose of going to a "mandarin immersion" school. Yes the principal is nice and all, but I wish the administration would not over promise and under deliver. Parents need to know exactly what can and cannot be offered so that we don't have any false expectations.
—Submitted by a parent

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We feel fortunate to have a Mandarin Immersion school nearby that's led by a principal with strong leadership. It's great to see a growing community, more parent involvement and better academic performance. I do agree that the school needs to increase its Mandarin instruction to make it a real immersion experience. It will be great to have more teachers who specialize in Mandarin, and not try to make Mandarin teachers teach English. I also believe differentiation in Mandarin is beneficial for all students. In a class with mixed Mandarin levels, if teachers teach to the highest level, the novice Mandarin students would get lost. If the teachers teach to the novice level, kids that are fluent could get bored quickly. Unfortunately, the distribution of Mandarin proficiency is not a bell curve. Having said that, I could see that the principal was put on a tough spot with Mandarin differentiation which was misconstrued as school assigning students by their last names (see earlier comment by one prospective parent), which obviously was not true. Overall, we love the school, and would love to see it getting better.
—Submitted by a parent

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I totally agree with the previous emails regarding issues relating Mandarin program. One of the teachers pronounced xiao yu as in light rain instead of little fish. Not only that, they can't write Chinese characters correctly. I wish that the school can hire teachers with proficient in Mandarin speaking and writing so that our kids can learn to speak and write correctly. I am thinking of transfering my kid to our neighbor school and hire a Chinese tutor to teach my kid Chinese at home. Definitely, there are good Mandarin teachers at the school but those are for lucky ones.
—Submitted by a parent

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