Seattle Schools Community Forum

Nicholas Kristof, a NY Times columnist, had an interesting column with a premise about parents rushing for their children to learn Chinese (Mandarin) while Spanish seems to be more to the point for our own country's interests (both in population and borders). From the column: Chinese is still far less common in schools or universities than Spanish or French, but it is surging and has the "cool factor" behind it — so public and private schools alike are hastening to add Chinese to the curriculum. In New York City alone, about 80 schools offer Chinese, with some programs beginning in kindergarten. And let's be frank: If your child hasn't started Mandarin classes by third grade, he or she will never amount to anything. Just kidding. In fact, I think the rush to Chinese is missing something closer to home: The paramount importance for our children of learning Spanish. He points out that we have many more Spanish speakers in this country and, increasingly,...

I had wanted to put this quote in from the governor of Pennsylvania, Ed Rendell, because it made me laugh. He made this remark after the NFL postponed the Sunday football game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Minnesota Vikings (which was played last night and the Vikings won). The NFL called the game off because of the danger of fans getting safely to and from the stadium because of a huge snowstorm. “We’ve become a nation of wusses. The Chinese are kicking our butt in everything,” Rendell added. “If this was in China do you think the Chinese would have called off the game? People would have been marching down to the stadium, they would have walked and they would have been doing calculus on the way down.” The " doing calculus on the way down " made me laugh. But then there was this interesting piece on NPR today about Chinese education. Basically, the point is that they are great at learning and memorizing facts but not very good at analytic, problem-solving t...

The Times is reporting that the UW, Hanban (a Chinese nonprofit group affiliated with China's Ministry of Education) and SPS are launching a new institute to spread the Chinese language and culture in Washington State. It will be called the Confucius Institute. Hanban has several teachers in different SPS schools teaching Chinese. From the article: Hanban provided $150,000 in startup funds for the institute, which has been matched with about $150,000 in time and office space from the Washington partners. The institute's main office will be on the UW campus, and its education office, now at Denny International Middle School in Seattle, will move to Seattle's Chief Sealth International High in the fall, when Sealth and Denny move into a new, shared campus in West Seattle. The institute's director signed a memorandum of understanding with UW president Mark Emmert, Superintendent Goodloe-Johnson and Governor Gregoire. Apparently some other communities in other par...

From the SPS School Beat : Applicants Needed: The Instructional Services science staff is planning for an anticipated adoption process for high school physical science, physics and chemistry instructional materials . The process will start in late spring 2010 and end in spring 2011. Applications to become a member of this Instructional Materials Adoption Committee will be accepted from March 16 to April 16. The time commitment for each Instructional Materials Adoption Committee member is approximately: • one meeting in late spring 2010, approximately three hours • five six-hour days, approximately one per month in the first seven months of the school year • three after-school meetings, approximately three hours each District educators and community members are encouraged to apply. Seattle Public Schools teachers will be provided with substitute release or extra hours for their time. Community members will participate on a volunteer basis. Please look for the announcement a...

I have a bunch of stories I've been holding onto because we had so much breaking news. This article was in the NY Times about a government -financed survey found how thousands of public schools in the U.S. have stopped teaching foreign languages (not the trend here, clearly). But the one lanaguage that does seem to be growing in popularity is Chinese. From the article: "Among America’s approximately 27,500 middle and high schools offering at least one foreign language, the proportion offering Chinese rose to 4 percent, from 1 percent, from 1997 to 2008, according to the survey , which was done by the Center for Applied Linguistics, a research group in Washington, and paid for by the federal Education Department ." “It’s really changing the language education landscape of this country,” said Nancy C. Rhodes, a director at the center and co-author of the survey." And AP Chinese is rapidly taking over German as the third most take AP foreign language test (after...