Adam Li holds up a tomato and asks his kindergarten class to identify it.
“Fan qie!” a half-dozen students eagerly call out.
Li next holds up a potato.
The students quickly respond: “Tu dou! In the classroom next door, Susan Parker stands before her first-grade class using an interactive smart board to show various monetary combinations. She points to a $1 bill and a penny, inquiring about the amount. A dozen kids raise their hands. Parker calls on 6-year-old Keirstan Knutson
“Yi yuan ling yi fen,” answers Knutson, who comes to school from Mountain Home each day.
These scenes of kindergarten and first-graders speaking, reading and writing Mandarin Chinese does not take place in a distant land, but at a Meridian School District elementary school in West Boise.
Gateway School of Language and Culture is the only public elementary school in Idaho joining the national trend of adding Chinese to its curriculum, Principal Craig Ayala-Marshall said. It’s Meridian’s only dual-language elementary school program. Elsewhere in the Treasure Valley, the Boise district offers a Spanish dual-language program at Whitney and Whittier schools.
At Gateway, about 70 kindergartners and first-graders from as far away Elmore and Canyon counties are taught half the day in English and half the day in Mandarin Chinese. The teacher conducts the entire half day in Chinese, except for the occasional explanation in English. Gateway’s halls, classrooms and gymnasium are filled with bilingual Chinese-English signs.
April Truax drives her 6-year-old daughter, Sasha, from Southeast Boise every day to take advantage of the kindergarten program.
“There is nothing like it in the Valley and it is one of few in the nation,” Truax said. “It really is amazing to see firsthand how much they learn and how much fun they have doing it.”
She said she chose the “trailblazing program” to broaden her child’s horizons. “I think this opens up their minds to new and creative ways of thinking.”
Truax has applied to have her other daughter, Francesca, 4, enroll in the kindergarten program this fall.
‘LITTLE SPONGES’
Marly Ader, 7, started the Chinese program in the fall as a first-grader. With just six months of instruction, she already has learned dozens of words and she easily follows Parker’s Chinese instructions. Ader is mastering writing in Chinese and can sing songs in Chinese, including Happy Birthday, which she and her fellow students sang for two classmates last week.
After school she shares new words she’s learned with her family and teases her older brother by speaking to him in Chinese, knowing he cannot understand.
She often thinks about her Chinese class. When she goes ice-skating, she carves the new Chinese symbols and words she has learned into the ice with her skates.
Ader loves learning a new language so much, she said, that for Christmas she wants a Rosetta Stone Mandarin Chinese language program. Next she would like to learn Polish.
Young children are adept at learning languages and develop a more natural accent than late learners, Parker said. “They have uncorrupted hearing,” she said.
While they are learning Chinese, children also are increasing their English vocabulary and skills at the same time — developing two different languages simultaneously.
“They are phenomenal,” said Li. “They are just likelittle sponges.”
An afternoon observing Gateway’s Chinese classes also showed young children are adept at technology.
Six-year-old Knutson also is Parker’s IT person. When the smart board balked, Parker asked Knutson in Chinese to help. The first-grader went to Parker’s computer, small fingers scurrying quickly across the keyboard. Within moments, the smart board was back online.
“It is my job to fix it when there is a problem,” Knutson said proudly.
TRANSFORMING A TRADITIONAL SCHOOL
The Meridian district chose Mandarin Chinese for its first language-immersion program after researching national trends and discussing what the world will need 10 to 20 years down the road, when current students will be entering the workforce. Mandarin Chinese came up at the top of the list as the language most likely to provide students with a unique skill, Ayala-Marshall said.
Gateway launched its Chinese program with its fall 2010 kindergarten class. In fall 2011, it added a first-grade program and this fall the school will add second grade.
The program will expand a grade level each year as that initial class ages. Ayala-Marshall said the Meridian district plans to continue its Chinese immersion program at Lewis and Clark Middle School and then at Renaissance High School.
In fall 2010, McMillan Elementary changed its name to Gateway School of Language and Culture and began serving grades kindergarten through five as a magnet school.
One-fifth of the 352 students enrolled in Gateway are in the Chinese-immersion program. The others are in the school’s international enrichment program. Each grade level focuses on a different continent, learning about its geography and culture. Enrichment-program students also receive an hour of Mandarin Chinese instruction per week.
Just 18 months into the school’s new magnet program, Ayala-Marshall said it is proving successful — not only bringing diversity to the students, but to the school itself.
Thirty percent of the program’s students are from outside the Meridian district and 20 percent are non-white, making Gateway the Meridian district’s most ethically diverse elementary school.
“Parents drive in from all over the Valley for this program,” the principal said.
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