A Fairy Tale in the Making: One Woman's Quest to Connect Children of the World
By Katie Klinger
4/19/07
Once upon a time . . . sound familiar? Remind you of a fairy tale? And don’t we learn valuable lessons from fairy tales? Of course! The story I am about to share with you is a real-life fairy tale about a Harvard-educated woman who wanted children to learn to speak to each other around the world.
She created a charter school for children K–3 to learn Mandarin and Spanish just miles away from the state capitol buildings in California. She even worked the miracle to bring in $1.3 million in funding to make this happen. But, as in any fairy tale, there is always an obstacle to overcome before the main characters win the prize. This story is no different.
Last year, Linda Ventriglia wrote two grants: one to establish a charter school in north Sacramento and the other to create a language academy for young children in a low-income neighborhood. The three most commonly spoken languages in the world are Mandarin, Spanish, and English.
Knowing that the success of every language program is based on sharing not only the words but also the culture in which the words exist, Ventriglia went to China to engage two universities as partners in this learning revolution. The excitement her partners from China felt about using technology to connect their classrooms with hers has inspired her to create a Mandarin curriculum modeled on her highly successful teacher kits designed to help children learn Spanish.
The plan is simple: Students in Sacramento will integrate Mandarin as part of their daily classroom activities, then teachers and students in Beijing and Shanghai will videoconference weekly with Ventriglia’s students to learn grammar, pronunciation, and contextual meaning from each other. Due to the time zone advantage, parents will also be given the luxury to participate in the videoconferences after school as they learn Mandarin along with their children.
In the middle of this fairy tale, a formidable obstacle arose in the form of the school board of the North Sacramento School District. The fact that this dual-immersion charter school was tied to a specific school location was just the beginning of the dissent, which lasted for many months. Other considerations brought up to Ventriglia and her support team (of which I was one) included the charter school’s budget, a lack of interest from some of the community’s minority parents, the absence of support from the local teachers’ union, and the district’s hesitation to honor the matching-funds requirement for the awarded Mandarin grant.
Several school board meetings amounted to verbal challenges between supporters of the new charter school and its opponents. District lawyers lined up against the visionaries to deflate the excitement of creating this new learning environment despite the support team’s efforts to demonstrate that educating young children to learn these languages will provide them with an advantage in their career paths.
Minority parents from the community played two roles: One set of parents supported the visionaries because they understood the gift this funding would give their children; the district invited others to protest that their children first needed to refine their English-language skills. The seesaw of this exchange during one meeting after another drained the visionaries and weakened their resolve—exactly the outcome their opponents hoped for.
During this time, three board members were replaced in an election. At the next meeting, the returning members decided that their new colleagues did not have enough of a handle on the situation to call for a vote in support of the new charter school. Again, the delays seemed orchestrated to flatten the visionaries. In fact, it had the same effect on several board members; at the next meeting, one of them simply said “Enough” and called for a vote. To the surprise and delight of the visionaries, the vote passed, making the charter school a reality.
It remains to be seen, however, whether they will live happily ever after.
It's a very toching story. I'm a colloge student from China Harbin. I major in English and have learned a little bit Japanese. I'd like to teach some students Chinese mandarin on the internet because I do like teaching and learning from what I'm doing. If you are interested, please feel free to contact me. mirror-tong@hotmail.com
Heather, See this report from a
Heather,
See this report from a longitudinal study: W. Thomas and V. Collier. 2001. A National Study of School Effectiveness for Language Minority Students' Long-Term Academic Achievement Final Report: Project 1.1. Center for Research on Education, Diversity, and Excellence.
Also see digests from the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL) on results of 2-way bilingual ed programs -- a 1999 digest is at http://www.cal.org/resources/digest/ed379915.html; there may be newer ones. Jon Reyhner's site might also have some references -- http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jar/TIL.html
The Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation in Oregon have a charter high school (Nixyaawii Community School) that requires students to study one of the Tribes' three heritage languages. While it's not a perfect comparison (as you can't compare Native students within the same school), you could contact Principal Annie Tester to see if drop-out rates, standardized test scores, or interest in college is demonstrably different for her students compared to Native students at other area high schools. Most folks involved with the Tribes' language program have suggested the classes have been good for culturally connecting the students with their elders.
Good luck,
Jesse Blackburn Morrow
Northwest Indian Language Institute
University of Oregon
Taanshi, What a great inspiration!
Taanshi,
What a great inspiration! I come from an indigenous community in northern Manitoba, Canada. Presently, I am a graduate student in linguistic anthropology and very interested in getting our most endangered Metis language Michif (spoken fluently by only about 200 elders across the Prairie provinces of Canada) into our local school. After reading your story, I am challenged to think bigger than I have! The most important thing is being able to demonstrate that learning an indigenous langauge will give children a significantly better chance at success in their schooling and life in general. Does anyone know of any bibliographies dealing with bilingualism/multilingualism and success in schooling and/or beyond?
Kihchi-marsii! Thanks alot!
Heather Souter
I love your story!! My daughter Anna goes to a Dual Immersion Program for Spanish and we already speak German at home, so Anna is on her 3rd language and she is only 7. I am amazed at how fast she is picking up Spanish and I think it would be great to have more dual immersion programs in our schools! In a time when our demographics are changing rapidlyall it is so important for all citizens to be culturally literate and to know a second language. A child's brain is capable of easy language acquisition and I hope our countries educators will realize the need for more global education!
In Michigan we are looking to Visionaries to help us see possibilities for language learning. I would like to discuss the model in this article. We have video conferencing available in each of the districts and would welcome an opportunity to look into possibilities for the districts to infuse video conferencing into the language curriculum.
Wow! What an inspirational story! The fact that non-governmental community members stood their ground and made a vision become a reality is awesome!
Thank you for sharing Katie!
It is interesting that the political side of education often takes the driving seat in the possibility/option component for students.
Imua!
Don
On the edutopia website there is a video clip titled "World Party Video." The substance of that video serves to support what Ms. Ventriglia, Katie Klinger, et al. are trying to do. Learning a second or third language at an early age makes the mind more supple in that one learns to see that concepts can be understood and expressed in multiple ways. There is more than one way to cogitate, to solve a problem, to view the world, and having the ability to do so is an advantage, not only for the individual, but for the world in which s/he lives.
I work for the Los Angeles Unified School District as an English Learner Advisor. LAUSD has more English Learners than any other school district in the United States. Data that has been collected for many years show that students who reclassify from being English learners to fluent English proficient outperform monolingual students. The benefits of being bilingual are evidenced by standardized test scores and report card grades that are higher for bilingual students than for those who are not.
The time has come for Americans join the rest of the world and to come to the realization that monolingualism is cognitively stifling.
Nancy Buge
In the United States, Spanish is becoming a standard second language. In the future, it will not be an option NOT to speak Spanish in some capacity. Obviously China is the largest nation in the world and they are emerging as a substantial consumer, which from a capitalistic view, means that anyone poised to be a successful business-person had better prepare to communicate with China!
This school is a great idea! It isn't like they are taking choice from parents. This is a charter school. If you don't want your child to learn Spanish or Chinese and be a mono-lingual dolt like the rest of us were forced to be by short-sighted public policy, then fine... send them to the regular school. If you want to be ahead of a revolution that will be the standard 20 years from now, then how about you go ahead and send them to this great, innovative school!
A governmental entitity in California doing something right? Hard to believe! But it took the work of lots of non-government people to make it happen! Texas has many similar programs looking to get our kids bi-lingual in English and Spanish (yes, even caucasian kids), but the Mandarin idea is something that is true fore-thinking and will pay off in career and cultural opportunity for these kids. Bravo!
-Michael
Katie, Nice to see you are
Katie,
Nice to see you are putting your talents to good use. I'm glad this fairy tale has a chance for a happy ending. Persevence and innovation should be two qualities listed for future educators. It appears education today is so involved in test results we have lost the importance of creativty and knowledge in educating our youth. Stimulating the minds of these young children through language should allow them an opportunity to be more successful in their learning path; hence a more successful student.