A Look At Excelsior's Chinese Immersion Program

Although temperatures hovered around 100 degrees during the last week of the 2010-2011 school year, students at  were still hard at work honing their language skills. 

And they had help from their friends from the Far East.

Eighteen students from Beijing came to the Lake Minnetonka area for a slice of Minnesota's version of 5th grade life while staying with host families. 

"It's totally different from our school," said Lucy Lui, an 11-year-old 5th grade student from Beijing.  

While in Minnesota, the Chinese students went to class immersed in English instruction in writing and math. When not in school, they experienced a slice of American life by going to the Mall of America, McDonald's and Lake Minnetonka.

"This is part of a strategic plan to develop a broader world view for children," said Lee Drolet, principal at Excelsior Elementary. "This helps them become connected in a real way to learn."

Excelsior Elementary is one of two elementary schools in the area that offers a Chinese immersion program starting in kindergarten. 

Core subjects such as math, reading and science are taught in Mandarin Chinese. Art, music and physical education, meanwhile, are taught in English.

School officials say Mandarin is the most spoken language in the world. With more than 800-million native speakers, that's more than the number of Spanish and English speakers combined. Recognizing the future demand for fluency in Mandarin Chinese, the Minnetonka School District began offering language immersion in 2007 at Excelsior Elementary and Scenic Heights Elementary.

Immersion teachers are native speakers from China and Taiwan.

Feng Zhen Zhao is one of the teachers from China who accompanied the students on their trip to the Minnesota. She has been a teacher since 1968, but this was her first trip to the United States. 

She said the biggest contrast in terms of education here versus in Beijing is the classroom size, where classes can have up to 45 kids — and possibly as many as 70 in rural areas.

"Our plan over the next ten years is to minimize our class sizes, that is the trend countrywide," Zhao said through translator Andy Wang. "We need to improve that."

Overall, she came away with a positive impression of the education system in Minnetonka. 

"There are so many benefits here: the environment, the curriculum, the daily life," Zhao said. "I'm very impressed with the focus on every student's development. I'm very impressed by the teachers too."   

The students prepared for the trip by skyping and emailing one another. The children from Minnetonka and Beijing talk with each other four to five times every year through skype, and they stay in touch with the same students for up to four years as they go through the immersion program.

"It's going well, really helping them with communication," said Ting Ting Mei, a kindergarten teacher in Excelsior's Chinese immersion program. "They are more interested in each other this way."

Even some of the host families can't overstate the impact the exchange program has had on them.

"We felt like the exchange program was a great opportunity for our daughter to spend a week with someone from China and to get to experience another culture from our own home," said Eric Best, an Excelsior Elementary host parent (and Patch employee). "It really taught her so much about herself and helped her learn about what children in China experience on a day-to-day basis at their schools."

Chinese student Lucy Lui, meanwhile, didn't hold back when asked about her experience in Minnetonka.

"I'd like to be able to stay here," she said. "I've already made friends."

However, she said she was looking forward to the students' next stops on their visit to the United States: Hollywood and Disneyland.