Chinese schools as we know them, are heritage schools which cater to students whose parents are from a Chinese-speaking part of the world. In our case, Taiwan. As Taiwanese immigration into the New Haven area slows in the past years, we no longer have a robust population of Taiwanese families who are looking to send their children to heritage schools. With no advertisement nor additional promotion in any form, we were lucky to still exist thanks to all the loyal families who still send the babies of their families to our school.
This June, with a colleague from the school, we called a meeting inviting parents and teachers who are returning, to put their heads together to find a way that will enable the survival of our heritage school. Majority of the attending parents have kids in my class (the only language class for the non-heritage speakers). It seems obvious that we need to open up our heritage school to the non-native Chinese-speaking population. With my colleague and I who teach in mainstream schools, it's a no-brainer that we should welcome and include the non-native population, and develop a curriculum for this track.
On promoting the school, the parents really came through when we were putting out flyers, bouncing emails around for ideas, deciding on administrative procedures, and a teacher who's no longer with us also helped out in a huge way. I was so impressed with everybody. Their enthusiasm for their children's Chinese language education is what keeps me going at that school.
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