Bao & Bun's Bilingual Journey

I mentioned in a few posts that the school my kids attend is not a typical Mandarin immersion school. The Mandarin learning portion is minimal, and my kids can hardly learn much from it. A close friend recently asked me, “If kids only learn so little, why bother going to a school like that?”

Tonight, I found an answer to this question. I was helping interpreting next year’s election of the Parent Association board members at our school. While reading the candidate statements from many parents, including a few dads, one of them mentioned that he learned Chinese in college, later lived in China for a few years, and his child was born in Asia and they are returning to visit this summer. The topic of visiting Asia during the summer seems common among parents.

Just about a year ago, when my husband and another dad were chatting, they discovered they were both studying Chinese at National Taiwan Normal University 20+ years ago. It’s hard to believe they didn’t know each other back then, and now our kids are classmates.

After several interviews, readings, and experiencing Mandarin immersion school ourselves, I understand that relying solely on Mandarin Immersion school is not enough for Chinese learning. That’s why I don’t rely on our school to advance my kids’ Chinese; I see our school more as a community of families who care about bilingualism. Since the goal for each parent is different, so I am less frustrated about how little Chinese the school teaches because what may seem insufficient for us could be a lot for other families.

At the end of the election meeting, there was a raffle, and I had to announce the numbers in both English and Chinese. Little Bao was very interested in helping and ended up announcing the raffle numbers in both languages. Little Bun came later and was upset that she didn’t get to make as many announcements as her brother.

Initially, we considered just taking the kids home while I did the interpreting, but I wanted them to see me in action. Often, kids in the States don’t see enough people doing public Chinese speaking, and there’s no role model for them. In the end, I managed to get them to the event and let them see me translate the entire event into Chinese. I hope I am setting a good example for them for the future.

Our school has a lot of first-generation immigrants, so naturally, some families speak Chinese (Cantonese or Mandarin) at home because the parents don’t speak much English. Little Bun shared with me that she now speaks more Chinese with her friends. Sometimes, when she doesn’t know certain words in English, she asks her friends to translate for her.

With a shared goal of maintaining Chinese language skills, one of the families coincidentally came to Taiwan at the same time we did for the OCAC (short-term in-school experience) this past spring break. We managed to take a walking tour with that classmate and visited the volcano in Yangmingshan National Park in Taipei. Seeing my kids’ classmates abroad felt surreal, but it underscores the fact that many families at our school share similar goals.
With a community on this bilingual journey, I feel less alone and have found many partners along the way.