by Lindsay Weiss posted in Parenting

Our public school district is offering a Chinese immersion program next year. It's a lottery program, free of charge, with only a small number of spots available. The program uses a dual language immersion model in which students are co-taught by two full-time classroom teachers, spending half of the day in the Chinese and half in English.
The immersion program begins in kindergarten and participating families are asked to make a long-term, multi-year commitment to the program -- it's for the long haul including elementary, middle, and high school. The program just began this year, so the first class is currently nearing the end of its first year.
When we first heard about it, we were like YES! SO COOL! SIGN US UP! Language immersion isn't a brand new concept -- lots of districts have done it successfully -- and kids graduate being totally fluent in the language. In many cases their test scores far supersede those of non-immersion kids. And they have a unique global cultural view that they may not have gleaned from a suburban school district lacking diversity. It really seemed like it was a no-brainer if we could manage to get in.
We got in. (Yay! I think")

We went to the informational meeting for our program, but the actual teacher in the program was not present, nor were we given an opportunity to see the classroom. We did see a short video of a few minutes in the classroom and were amazed at the little 5-and 6-year-old Chinese...