NewsSouth

Yinghua Academy is the first Chinese immersion school in the Midwest and the first Chinese immersion charter public school in the United States.

Principal Betsy Lueth has been at Yinghua since it opened in the fall of 2006.

“I think the research on language acquisition shows that people are going to become more fluent and literate in a language the earlier they start learning it,” Lueth said. “So I think it makes the most sense for us to be teaching our children languages, especially languages as difficult as Chinese, as early as possible. I think this kind of a school follows that track.”

To be an immersion school means that the students are taught in and speak only Mandarin Chinese. Fangwen Yeh, a first-grade teacher at Yinghua, explained how this may be challenging for both the students and the teachers.

“If I want to explain a phrase we need to use another way to help the kids understand what I’m talking about,” she said.

Yeh uses gestures, body language and pictures to help her students understand what she is trying to teach. They are not only teaching the subject, for instance science, but also teaching Chinese words and phrases that correlate with that subject.

“If I use English to explain to them then they will choose to listen to English, they won’t listen to Chinese,” Yeh said. “If you use Chinese, they will force themselves to listen to what you are talking about, they will try to understand what you are talking about.

“If you explain in English, it’s easy for them,” she said. “If we want them to learn Chinese faster, the best way is to throw them into an all-Chinese environment. Don’t give them any English environment.”

The support for this type of education can be seen in the enrollment numbers. In its first year, Yinghua started with 73 students and ended the year with 89 students. In Fall 2007 it added fourth grade and had an enrollment of about 150 students. She expects 250 students next year and will add a fifth grade.

Denise Meyer and her family moved to Minneapolis from Hudson, Wis., in search of a language-oriented school for her 6-year-old daughter Raina.

“I wanted to give her the benefit of learning when the brain is most receptive to languages,” Meyer said. “I’d looked into other language programs but was really excited about the culture aspect at Yinghua and their after-school enrichment programs.”

In addition to Chinese immersion, the school offers a number of after-school programs including music lessons and martial arts.

The Yinghua program actually came out of a plan for a charter school with a Spanish language focus that had been granted a charter to open in 2005. After some research, it was determined there was not going to be enough enrollment for that type of school, and so instead a group of people interested in starting a Chinese immersion school adopted that existing charter and started the new school.

Yinghua Academy was the result and opened it doors for the 2006-2007 school year with 73 students in kindergarten through third grade.

The mission of Yinghua Academy is “to provide a challenging and comprehensive learning environment that will nurture our students’ natural inquisitiveness and will prepare them to be engaged and productive global citizens.”

Chinese is considered a very difficult language to learn. Yeh said that her students struggle with some words and phrases, but that she is surprised and proud with how quickly they are able to catch on and understand the social language.

“Immersion education has proven through about 30-to-40 years of research to really provide a lot of cognitive growth for kids, meaning their brains actually become smarter in sense than children who are monolingual,” Lueth said. “And so immersion as an educational choice I think is really good for children to expand their brains and their abilities to learn.”

Meyer saw the benefit of Chinese in a global perspective and is even thinking ahead to her daughter’s future in the working world.

“Given the increasingly important relation between China and the United States, I thought that Mandarin Chinese would be one of the more important languages for her to acquire,” she said.

Lueth, Yeh and Meyer all consider Yinghua’s mission to be a great success. Meyer sees this through her daughter thriving in the program.

“From day one she has expressed that she absolutely loves the challenge,” Meyer said.
Meyer’s daughter started at Yinghua as a first grader and was able to catch up within the first few months. Now she comes home singing songs and speaking Chinese.

“I’m sort of surprised she’s not more blown away by her success,” Meyer said. “It’s a testament to the quality of the program at Yinghua.”

Yeh is most proud of her students when they make enormous progress.

“When they come to school they cannot speak any Chinese. After a few months or a half-year later they can speak and they can understand what you are talking about. This is the best part,” she said.
Lueth sees the success not only on a case-by-case basis but also in the numbers.

“Our board has already started conversations about either acquiring additional space or moving into a larger space or building a space,” Lueth said.

Yinghua has almost 100 percent retention and has had to create wait lists. It draws students from 45 zip codes and people come from as far as an hour away from the Twin Cities.

“Initially in year one we were drawing a lot of people who had a connection to China somehow. This year that has completely changed. We seemed to be drawing people who are just interested in making sure their children get a good quality education as well as an immersion education learning Chinese,” Lueth said.

Lueth said Yinghua has received national attention for being a leader in total immersion in schools. This has included stories by local and national news outlets. Four other public schools in Minnesota have followed by starting Chinese immersion programs.

“I think we really set an example for some of the traditional schools that they really need to do something about languages and because we went ahead and pushed that forward as an agenda in education in Minnesota,” Lueth said.