A new charter school will soon become D.C.’s first public school to offer Chinese-language immersion.
The leaders of Washington Yu Ying — meaning “nurturing excellence” in Mandarin — are currently recruiting teachers and students from around the city and across the globe. The school is scheduled to open in the fall.
Mary Shaffer, one of the founders, said the impetus to establish the school is that immersion programs, particularly those focused on Chinese, are explodingin popularity, and D.C. parents have lacked that option to date.
“We believe that Chinese is the language of the future and a language that kids should be learning early on,” she said.
Shaffer, a former tutor, lived in Taiwan for a time and has adopted a child from China, as have a number of the other school co-founders.
Washington Yu Ying, though, is not just geared to students with some connection to China, she said. The school hopes to attract students of all types.
So far about 40 families have sent in applications. School leaders expect to educate about 150 pre-kindergartners, kindergartners and first-graders in its first year. The school’s plan is to grow one grade every year until there are 700 students through eighth grade.
A search for teachers is under way in this country and China. Because students will be immersed in Chinese half the time, only half of the instructors will need to be native speakers, Shaffer said.
Although several D.C. public schools boast Spanish immersion programs, Chinese has never been in the mix. Several private schools allow students to take a language course, but do not offer an immersion program. National statistics are difficult to come by, but there’s no doubt Chinese language education is taking off, said Steve Ackey, director of communications for the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages.
“The last time we looked at new language enrollment trends, Chinese was in the ‘all other’ category,” he said. “But it’s probably leading in terms of growth.”
