El Dorado Hills school offers Mandarin immersion program, ‘not just language exposure’
Poems, vocabularies, pinyin diagrams and schedules pinned on the wall are all in Chinese. In a classroom decorated with paper lanterns and fai chun — red paper with written blessings hung on doorways for Chinese New Year — all one can hear are chants and chatters in Mandarin.
Buckeye Union Mandarin Immersion Charter School is a public school in El Dorado Hills’ Buckeye Union School District founded last year by superintendent David Roth and principal Tracy Linyard after they explored and found interest among parents in the community.
The goal for the school program is for students to write and communicate in Mandarin — in short, be literate in the language, Linyard said.
Eighty percent of a school day is taught in Mandarin, according to Linyard, including mathematics, science and social studies. The remaining 20 percent goes to English teaching, where teachers not only teach English but also reinforce mathematics and science concepts in English. The percentage will shift as students move up the grades. Online language resources and software are regularly used for language and maths exercises for students.
Classes are currently for kindergarten, first- and second-graders. Student body is a mixture of heritage speakers and English speakers.
Children, ages 5 to 8, were writing simplified Chinese characters in the right order for each stroke as practice. Some were reading books quietly in a corner. Others were reading books aloud with the teachers or completing online exercises. A few of them waved their whiteboard, eager to show their teacher the Chinese character they wrote.
Yafeng Liao, a first-grade Mandarin teacher and China native, wears Hanfu (traditional Chinese clothing) in class everyday. The idea came to her when she found out people are beginning to wear it as everyday fashion back home.
“It is a good way to show students the culture in real life,” Liao said.
“It is sharing the culture on an everyday level, not as a costume worn in festivals only,” Linyard added.
Liao said most of the students enrolled a year ago didn’t how to speak Mandarin or write the characters. They can now communicate with her in the language. Like other teachers, she only speaks Mandarin with her students.
She added that the principal was open-minded and agreed to purchase more online educational programs to enhance their Mandarin teaching tools.
Lu Zhai, a second-grade Mandarin teacher and Chinese native speaker, said the students enjoy singing and dancing with the music and chants, which really helped them with their Mandarin skills.
“We are trying to teach students bilingual and bi-literacy skills,” he said. “They can understand, read and write in Chinese. They also need to understand what they are reading and express themselves by writing in paragraphs and sentences.”
Kiersten Bliss, whose daughter is enrolled in the first-grade class, said the teachers are key to the program.
“Reading and writing practice is done in a way they have to do it right — in the correct stroke order,” she said. “It is truly an immersion program, not just language exposure. If anyone’s considering it, go for it. It’s amazing how fast young minds can pick it up. It has been a blessing to have that opportunity for (my daughter).”
Ada Pizon, whose son is enrolled in the first-grade class, said the charter school has the best program she’s imagined. As a China native who moved to the United States in 2011 and to Sacramento two years ago, she wanted to find a school that teaches Mandarin. But Chinese schools in the Folsom and El Dorado Hills region only run classes every Friday night, Pizon said. She then learned about the new school, went to the open house and enrolled her son. Her 7-year-old can translate both English and Mandarin for his father and grandparents.
“To introduce him the language is a gateway to learn about the culture in China,” Pizon said. “We have a different way of thinking and angle of looking at things, so I want him to be more international in thinking.”
Linyard said she hope students will be able to continue their Mandarin studies by enrolling in the International Baccalaureate program in Camerado Springs Middle School.
“Our goal for them is to be ready to study Chinese literature (in college), not learning the language but learning through the language,” she said.
Parent information meetings are scheduled on Feb. 12 and March 11. Students outside of the district are eligible to enroll in the classes.
While there are various Mandarin and Cantonese public school programs in Sacramento, Buckeye Union is the only Mandarin charter school in the Sacramento region and one of the few in California. Yu Ming Charter School in Oakland, which was founded in 2010, is the first K-8 Mandarin immersion charter school in California.
This story was originally published January 29, 2020 at 1:00 PM.