Scholarships to Study Abroad

Do you know a high school or college student that is interested in studying abroad and could benefit from a scholarship to help fund their excursion. The following govenment programs exist to help students study overseas. Targeted funding is available for students that wish to study in China through the 100,000 Strong Initiative. Applications are currently closed but please prepare your student to enroll in August for the Fall of 2013. See below for the wonderful opportunities that exist and view the video at the bottom of the post.

High School Students:

National Security Language Initiative for Youth (NSLI-Y), sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, provides full, merit-based scholarships for eligible high school students to learn less commonly taught languages in summer and academic-year overseas immersion programs. NSLI-Y is part of a broader government-wide presidential initiative that prepares American citizens to be leaders in a global world.

The Language Flagship Program offers students intensive language instruction to enhance their academic degrees through the achievement of superior-level language proficiency and cultural competence. Programs are available at both undergraduate and graduate levels and include periods of rigorous language and cultural immersion at Overseas Flagship Centers. The Language Flagship also funds a select number of pilot K–12 programs designed to provide an articulated path of language instruction for students from elementary school through college and graduate school.

Undergraduate Students:

Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship Program provides scholarships to U.S. undergraduates with financial need for study abroad, including students from diverse backgrounds and students going to non-traditional study abroad destinations.

Boren Scholarships are awarded to American undergraduate students for amounts ranging from a maximum of $10,000/semester or $20,000/year. The program focuses it’s funding on geographic areas, languages, and fields of study deemed critical to U.S. National Security. In exchange for scholarship funding all recipients must agree to work in the federal government for one year.

Critical Language Scholarship Program provides fully-funded, group-based intensive language instruction and structured cultural enrichment experiences for seven- to- ten weeks overseas. U.S. undergraduate, masters and doctoral students of diverse disciplines and majors are encouraged to apply for scholarships in one of thirteen critical languages.

Fulbright U.S. Student Program offers fellowships for U.S. graduating college seniors, graduate students, young professionals and artists to study, conduct research or be an English teaching assistant abroad for one academic year. In addition, Critical Language Enhancement Awards are available to grantees for study of critical need foreign languages before or concurrently with their grant period. Approximately 6000 grants were awarded in 2010.

The following video highlights the benefits of one student’s journeys abroad.

Did you study abroad or intend to encourage your child to do so. Please comment below.

Best Apps for Learning Chinese

My five year old is attempting to master her whisper primarily to issue orders to her younger sister. Interestingly, the younger one enjoys it. She inches closer and closer trying to hear the details of the obscured and hushed orders. When she makes out the details of the mischievous exchange her excitement peaks. Watching this I know that their mastery of Chinese will only make this exchange of secrets, codes, and hidden meanings even easier and more exciting for them as they grow older.

Luckily, my recent interest in phone applications has opened a whole world to me. Opportunities to learn Chinese make themselves available during my morning drive, trips to the gym, waiting at the DMV, etc. It’s been easy, accessible and fun.

Here are my favorite applications:

Chinese Pod: an online service that provides Internet lessons that can be downloaded to your iAnything. The lessons range from newbie to advanced, so both you and your children can learn. I love these lessons as the instructors are upbeat, engaged and very easy to understand. They add in cultural references to teach real vs. text book Chinese which I definitely appreciate. I use the free version (Families enrolled at Yu Ming Charter School have an additional discount that makes this a great offer).

Chinese Flashcards: a well organized education package to maximize your results, progress and joy in learning Mandarin Chinese by means of the attractive and interactive interface of flashcard display that shows you useful Chinese words card by card to help your memorization. I love the flash cards. It helps me to learn some of the basic greetings and commonly used Chinese words while familiarizing myself with the character. Very easy to use which makes it a fun and quick go to when I have a few free minutes.

Flash Match Chinese I: a highly customizable matching game ( memory game ) and flashcards presentation tool. It doesn’t inundate you with all the varied and subtle meanings of words. That’s the domain of a good text book and teacher. The words selected here have a clear meaning that can be printed in the space of a one centimeter tile. This is one of my favorites. I really enjoy the matching game. Playing the matching game helps me realize how much I am picking up from the girls. I actually have a larger vocabulary than I realize and find this game super fun.

Learn Chinese Lite: an easy to use mobile Chinese phrasebook that will give visitors to Chinese-speaking countries and those who are interested in learning Mandarin a good start in the language. I think this app will be most helpful for traveling but it’s a very easy to use application with words and phrases presented on an attractive and easy to use platform.

Pinyin Lite: helps you master those tones with Pinyin, the standard romanization system for Mandarin Chinese. With 1,000 individual sound recordings made by a native Chinese speaker and a variety of question-and-answer methods, it’ll keep you on your toes and improve your Chinese listening skills like nothing else. I love this app because I still have no clue how to distinguish tones and sounds. Just playing with this app and guessing is fun because it’s helping me to become a better listener in Chinese so hopefully I’ll know the difference between cat, horse, mother, etc.

Bonus Recommendation:

Remembr.it: teaches you Chinese characters based on an optimized learning sequence that actually makes them easy to learn. First you’ll learn basic components then you’ll learn characters based on their phonetic series to help see the logic behind the characters and means you can easily remember whole groups of characters. Not everyone cares about learning to read Chinese but if you are interested in learning characters this is another great site. I love the drills that they offer to help commit the words to memory. It’s not available via app but it’s a great website.

Is it necessary for me to learn Chinese?

No. It is in no way necessary for monolingual parents to learn Chinese in order for their children to thrive or succeed in bilingual programs. It is also not necessary to learn Chinese to help your children with their homework. I will never be as fluent as my children and that is not my intent. I just want to know a little bit so that I can understand some of their whispers.

Have you made any attempts to learn Chinese? Please comment on your journey and any sites or apps that have helped you learn.

Too Much Media Consumption? Race/Class…

Creativity and imaginative play are incredibly important for children.

Sometimes I take parenting too seriously but it’s because I truly see it as a gift. An incredible opportunity to nurture and support young little minds that are growing at a rapid pace. In this journey I want my children to be truly inspired. I believe that’s a shared journey in our commitment to raising bilingual children – to stimulate them, to inspire them, and to encourage them to meet their full potential.

I’m hoping I can engage a lively conversation about the ways in which we inspire our children to grow, thrive and excel within environments that are often filled with obstacles to those very goals.

I have heard ongoing conversations by many PAASSC parents about the role of television in their child’s life. While many African American families are making the effort to reduce the amount of television that their children are watching a recent study published by Northwestern University finds that Black youth consume significantly more hours of media a day than their peers. The study identifies three concerning points:

Black and Hispanic youth are more likely to have TV sets in their bedrooms (84% of blacks, 77% of Hispanics compared to 64% of whites and Asians), and to have cable and premium channels available in their bedrooms (42% of blacks and 28% of Hispanics compared to 17% of whites and 14% of Asians).
Minority youth eat more meals in front of the TV set — with 78% of black, 67% of Hispanic, 58% of white and 55% of Asian 8- to 18-year-olds reporting that the TV is “usually” on during meals at home.
Trends such as TV sets in the bedroom and eating meals with the TV on begin at an early age. Black children under 6 are twice as likely to have a TV in their bedroom as whites and more than twice as likely to go to sleep with the TV on. Black children under 6 are almost three times as likely to eat dinner in front of the TV than white children the same age.

The study did not find a significant difference in 1) the time young people spend using a computer for schoolwork and 2) no significant difference in time spent by youth multi-tasking their media (i.e. using another medium while watching TV).

Add to the Discussion…

Should this study have looked at variations based on factors such as family income, parent’s educational levels and even neighborhood demographics (high vs. low-crime communities)?
An inordinate amount of studies highlight the “failures” among Black children and Black parents. How does this information impact your parenting or other’s perception of your parenting.
Does your child watch more than three hours of television each day?
How does your child’s relationship with television impact their overall development?

Please post your comments below.

Where do most Black Students learn Chinese?

Medgar Evers College Preparatory School is a public school in central Brooklyn, New York. Most of its students come from low-income families: about 90% are eligible for free or reduced lunches. The student population is mostly African American and Afro-Caribbean. And here’s one other thing to know about Medgar Evers. It runs one of the largest Chinese language programs for students not from a Chinese background in the United States. About 400 pupils take Chinese, from grade 6 through to 11.

To say the students are motivated is an understatement. “From the sixth grade, I always said I wanted to be a neurosurgeon,” said senior Sadiki Wiltshire, the principal’s son. “As the years progressed, I still wanted to, but I realized it would be better if I extended my network to not just America but all over the world.

“Because of my love for Chinese, I realized that I love languages, period. When I go to college I want to study Russian, Korean and Japanese. When you break the language barrier, there’s nothing you can’t do,” he said. “You can do anything.”

Young Wiltshire, now an AP scholar with distinction, was one of the first Medgar Evers students required to take Chinese in the sixth grade. Six years later, he already has college credits and is looking at attending Ivy League universities such as Harvard, Penn, Yale and Princeton.

Spanish and French are the other options once the students reach the ninth grade, but students can continue with Chinese if they wish.

More than language

Medgar Evers is one of 100 schools nationally that the Asia Society supports with its Confucius Classroom program. “We look at programs which are focusing on a much larger agenda and are using language instruction as a lever to be globally competent,” said Chris Livaccari, the society’s director of education and Chinese language initiatives.

In seventh and eighth grade, the curriculum is more project-based on subjects such as the weather and what kinds of clothes should be worn on different days. There is also an art class once a week in seventh grade.

Role-playing and technology are incorporated into the smaller ninth- and 10th-grade Advanced Placement classes. “We want to teach them five skills – reading, writing, speaking, listening and typing,” said Yuhang Michael Jiang, who formerly worked at IBM. Jiang also began a Chinese chess club, which Sadiki Wiltshire described as “very, very interesting” and “much more warlike” than American chess.

Involving mom and dad

“My parents are very happy I’m learning Chinese,” said Angelique Torres, 11, who also is conversant in Spanish. “The hardest things in Chinese are the tones and characters and the pronunciation of the characters.”

“They are bowled over with the Chinese, just blown away,” said Adilifu, the assistant principal, who has been at the school for eight years. “The parents support us 100 percent on back-to-school night and we have an ‘Attend School With Your Child’ day.”

Wu, the sixth grade Chinese teacher, said the students “read to the parents even if they don’t understand, so they involve the parents and extend the learning when they’re home. A lot of them want to go to China to study.”

Baozhong Ye’s students use 200 to 250 characters in each of their projects, and Yuhang Michael Jiang makes technology part of his classes.

How program works

The Confucius Classroom program, which is almost 2 years old, reaches nearly 25,000 students in 27 states and the District of Columbia. It is only in schools that already have Asian language studies.

Resources such as DVDs, professional development, free interaction, a newsletter with 7,000 subscribers, and a National Chinese Language Conference provide growth opportunities, according to Livaccari, the Asia Society’s education director.

Programs are flourishing in such unlikely places as Oklahoma and Utah, Iowa and New Hampshire, West Virginia and Texas. “That’s the great sea change,” Livaccari said. “It’s become incredibly diverse, available to all students across the board. There are great opportunities and challenges to a wider audience in the last five to six years.”

Each of the Confucius Classroom programs also works with a sister school in China on various projects. The Medgar Evers counterpart is in Jinhua in East China’s Zhejiang province.

What makes Medgar Evers a perfect environment is its unique approach. “We don’t follow the traditional middle school model,” Adilifu said. “We focus on an accelerated high school prep-early college program where students can take six to 15 credits at (neighboring) Medgar Evers College. We have our kids prepared to take the high school Regents (exam) in the eighth grade, which is not common in the city.”

Nor is such performance common in a school, like Medgar Evers, where 80 percent of the students qualify for a free or reduced-price school lunch. These children do not come from privileged backgrounds.

Why Bilinguals Are Smarter…

SPEAKING two languages rather than just one has obvious practical benefits in an increasingly globalized world. But in recent years, scientists have begun to show that the advantages of bilingualism are even more fundamental than being able to converse with a wider range of people. Being bilingual, it turns out, makes you smarter. It can have a profound effect on your brain, improving cognitive skills not related to language and even shielding against dementia in old age.

This view of bilingualism is remarkably different from the understanding of bilingualism through much of the 20th century. Researchers, educators and policy makers long considered a second language to be an interference, cognitively speaking, that hindered a child’s academic and intellectual development.

They were not wrong about the interference: there is ample evidence that in a bilingual’s brain both language systems are active even when he is using only one language, thus creating situations in which one system obstructs the other. But this interference, researchers are finding out, isn’t so much a handicap as a blessing in disguise. It forces the brain to resolve internal conflict, giving the mind a workout that strengthens its cognitive muscles.

Bilinguals, for instance, seem to be more adept than monolinguals at solving certain kinds of mental puzzles. In a 2004 study by the psychologists Ellen Bialystok and Michelle Martin-Rhee, bilingual and monolingual preschoolers were asked to sort blue circles and red squares presented on a computer screen into two digital bins — one marked with a blue square and the other marked with a red circle.

4 Indicators for Globally Competent Children

What Is Global Competence?

In a recently published book, Educating for Global Competence: Preparing Our Youth to Engage the World, (CCSSO/Asia Society, 2011) authors Veronica Boix-Mansilla and Anthony Jackson state it this way:

Globally competent individuals are aware, curious, and interested in learning about the world and how it works. They can use the big ideas, tools, methods, and languages that are central to any discipline (mathematics, literature, history, science, and the arts) to engage the pressing issues of our time.

Monolinugal parents that enroll their child into a language immersion program want to raise globally competent children. Here are four important skills your child should have in moving toward this goal.

Opportunities to Investigate the world: Students are given the opportunity to design and research topics that impact our world and connect to one or more of the areas of the content for which they have responsibility. Whenever possible, students are given a choice of topics so their engagement becomes authentic and their interests are piqued.
Ability to understand and weigh multiple perspectives: Students will buy from the world and sell to the world as they become adults. They will work with a more diverse population than we ever envisioned. Their own school experience connects them with students from different ethnic and socioeconomic groups. It is important that they understand that others may come from a different worldview than they do and that seeing the world from multiple lenses may actually enrich their view of the world.
Communicate ideas: Making our thinking or ideas visible requires us to communicate effectively. Collaborating with others also requires an ability to communicate. Traditional literacies such as reading, writing, speaking, and listening continue to take center stage. We can’t neglect, however, the new literacies such as viewing, reading, and evaluating web content; and creating blogs, videos, and web pages since these are becoming core skills for the global world. In addition to incorporating strategies for students to utilize math and arts as a part of their universal language, as well as, adding a foreign language to their curriculum.
Take action: The fourth pillar engages students in authentic opportunities to make the world a better place. High-powered service learning grows out of classroom learning and allows students to feel empowered to take action.

Education