NCLC: National Chinese Language Conference 2014

Got back from the NCLC trip in LA, California about a week ago. What an experience, really! NCLC  stands for National Chinese Language Conference. It has been held every year in different locations of the US ever since 2007, I believe. This year happens to be in LA of California.

NCLC offers different workshops for teachers of Chinese Immersion teachers all over the country for 4 days straight. My teammates and I were fortunate enough to have our district offer us this opportunity to go.

There, I attended a few workshops (apps for Chinese Immersion students and student engagement in language immersion classrooms are just a couple of my favorites and most memorable) and also observed at Broadway Elementary School's Chinese Immersion.

A few things I want to mention about the conference:

• Many of the workshops that were held were, at the most part, something that I already knew from my college courses. I'm not saying it's not beneficial, but a friendly reminders are never a bad thing.
• Broadway Elementary school started their Chinese Immersion the same year our school started ours. Question: how was theirs a qualified school to show the entire nation's Chinese Immersion what a Chinese Immersion classroom should look like? It was a good place to observe anyways. They were very well worth the time, though!
• They used traditional Chinese 
• Kindergarten was doing guided reading during the time of observation
• 4 guided reading stations
• 1 listening: songs
• 1 listening: read aloud
• 1 listening: sounds like the teacher's previous lesson put on repeat
• 1 speaking: with another instructor
• 2nd grade was playing jeopardy
• very well organized
• everyone was participating
• the name of the jeopardy is 百分百
• 3rd grade was learning how to label different parts of a building and the names of it
• a lot of encouragement for students to speak target language was used
• half of the students were motivated to speak to each other in target language
• They are looking for 4th grade teachers next year, haha!
• Apps that have been used in the classroom that were beneficial
• Explain Everything (we use it in our classroom too! CHECK)
• Chinese Writer (check)
• PuppetPals
• Apps and online resources that were in the exhibition that were being sold
• SnapLingo
• MagiKids
• eChinese
• The exhibition had many books that were being sold and our district probably bought around a couple thousand dollars worth of books for next year. Talk about not enough books!

Overall, the experience was good. The networking was pretty successful in terms of getting to know other Chinese Immersion teachers and producers of potential companies that may or may not be the main sources of some of the immersion programs.

Something to note is that not all workshops are very applicable to all teachers and programs. All immersion programs are different in their own ways and it's very important to take or toss the information that is more applicable (I literally had to walk in to some workshops, decide, and either leave or stay for the entire thing. Yes, there were times when I walked into a workshop late because the previous workshop was not applicable.)

Almost official

All the changes that is happening (or happened) within the next month:

• got my work computer
• got my work log in
• got my work email
• will get my iPad Air for work
• will finish student teaching next week
• will leave state for NCLC conference
• will work on curriculum for one week
• will leave for Taiwan

...

So much change!

Need to embrace. But first, relax~

Updated list!

Updated, again!

http://mandarinbilingual.blogspot.com/2013/12/going-to-taiwan.html

Conflict with Gen. Ed. Teachers

This is something I've noticed in the past and I'd like to point it out and make goals for myself.

GE teachers might not understand the struggles bilingual teachers have to face because they are not and will ever not be in the same shoe.

GE teacher support each other by sharing materials, lesson ideas, kids, etc. but bilingual teachers are... sometimes, just isolated on their own. Many of the materials has to be created on their own, lesson ideas on their own, and kids are only stayed in one classroom all day (unlike GE teachers who can share students). This causes a lot of separation with the grade level teams and may become stressful at times for the bilingual teachers. There are times where the bilingual teachers have double the meetings and take twice as long to make any materials than the GE teachers because of the language and the system in place. Due to misunderstandings/miscommunications, GE might think of bilingual teachers otherwise.

To help lessen the stress, I've made myself goals for next year.

• to express to GE teachers, whenever appropriate and possible, the needs to translating on the materials given to teachers
• to express reasons why I cannot be in meetings because I have other 100 meetings I have been pushing off
• to be very opened in communication whenever I can to let others know my situation

Schedule is almost all set. Just a few logistical things to go through. I'm glad to say our team decided on this together! So complicated though. I really wish there is a way I can just do the schedule my way... but got to remember I have a team and we gotta do it together!

My New Classroom Assignment and Scheduling

I am getting my new classroom!

It's very exciting until they assign me one classroom, I choose which bulletin boards to stay, what to add, figure out what should my classroom look like, and then I get reassigned to a different room. This happened twice. I was put in 3 rooms! The third room is now final (I hope). I will be in the 3rd/4th grade hallway with the other 3rd/4th grade teachers! I am very excited.

Recently, I've been figuring out my schedule. It's rather confusing.

I'll try to explain.

The green means the courses will be in English. I am planning to color any classes held in TL be in Yellow. The reason why I haven't color yellow is because I still have to see what the 3rd/4th team decides on; our schedule should match because we have Math, MAC and LAC together. MAC = Math ACceleration; LAC = Literacy ACceleration. As I wrote down Math in pen and colored it green, that class is already set. Now it is MAC and LAC where we have to decide where we want them.

As for literacy, I have two one-hour blocks. One for English, one for Chinese. I've talked to the CI team support (she's wonderful!!!) and she suggested I do:

• Monday, Wednesday, and Friday
• 20 min. Shared Reading
• 40 min. Guided Reading
• Tuesday and Thursday
• 20 min. Shared Reading
• 10 min. I do/We do Model
• 30 min. Writing

I also might do that for English too.

On the schedule, I still need to put social studies (taught in Mandarin Chinese) and science (taught in English) on it. I would like to pair s.s. with Chinese literacy and sci. with English literacy. Ugh, we'll see how successful I am with that and if I'm not, I might have to talk to our support again or the principal.

????? What I am a little iffy about is if I will have any common planning time with the 3rd/4th team. Plan time is during specials (art, music, PE, and LRC). I wonder if I have any of the same time with any teachers. Need to ask that this Tuesday.

?????? I really would like half of my day to be in English and another half to be in TL. It doesn't seem to be possible at all. I could have chunks during the day but that is least ideal. I need to bring this up to the principal.

Helpful websites

http://www.semanda.com
http://chinese4kids.net
mandarin-immersion.blogspot.com
http://www.asianparent.com/index.aspx

These are some of the websites and blog I found months and months ago. This might be a great way to start searching for resources when I need it.

• Semana.com has a lot of flashcards. Because our program is an Immersion program, no English is encouraged to be used during class. That, I might need to edit.
• chinesefkids.net is a bunch of activities, stories, videos, etc. on it. It's just a good resource to go to it whenever I need something for a lesson I just cannot find anywhere else.
• mandarin-immersion.blogspot is a website that helped me find the other three websites. The teacher, 畢老师, is from Utah. The last updated blog was back in 2012. Even though that is a little outdated, it's a good place to find any activities or lessons s/he's done in the past.
• asianparent.com might be a great website for my district to take a look at. We are still looking for books the kids can read during the school day so this might be a good website for us.