Chinese charter school eyes Hadley for new spot

By Mary Carey
Staff Writer

Published on November 23, 2007

Ten weeks into its first year, the Pioneer Valley Chinese Immersion Charter School is accepting applications for next September and scouting for a new location, with Hadley looking like the strongest possibility.

PVCICS, which opened its doors Aug. 30, is in a small strip mall on Pomeroy Lane and Route 116 with no room to expand, making it probable that it will relocate next year, co-founder Richard Alcorn said Saturday.

Ideally, school officials would like to construct a new building but in the meantime are negotiating a lease somewhere.

"There are financial reasons why it's advantageous to open up in Hadley," Alcorn said. "I think we are looking west."

PVCICS is the first Chinese language immersion charter school in the state, the only public charter school approved of 10 that had applied for a charter in 2006.

About 40 kindergarten and first-grade students from Springfield to Greenfield are instructed in Mandarin Chinese for 75 percent of the day and in English for the remaining quarter of the day. Most did not speak any Chinese when they started.

Amherst native Kathleen Wang, Alcorn's wife, is the principal.

On Saturday, seven parents and six children attended an informational session at the 7 Pomeroy Lane school to watch a videotape about the "immersion" method of teaching Chinese, ask Alcorn questions and pick up applications for next year.

Last year, everyone who wanted their children to go to the school was able to send them there, Alcorn said. If there are more applicants than slots this year, a lottery will be held in March.

The most frequently asked questions were where the school would be located in September, whether there would be room for outdoor activities and how well the young children are adjusting to being taught primarily in Chinese.

If all goes according to plan, there could be two kindergartens, two first grades and one second grade in a bigger building next year, with space for the children to play outside, Alcorn said. Now they go to Groff Park to play or to Amherst Athletic Club, which is directly across the street and owned by Larry Kelley, whose daughter attends the school.

As for how well the children have adjusted to being taught primarily in Chinese, Alcorn said there had been some rough spots at the beginning of the year. But the teachers thought they were typical of the kinds of problems encountered as children make the adjustment to going to school.

"The parents have a bigger problem than the kids do," Alcorn said. The children performed at Hampshire College recently, and Chinese speakers praised the kindergartners' and first-graders' pronunciation, saying it was better than some third-year college students', he said. Young children are in "language acquisition mode," Alcorn noted.

Paula Quinn, of Springfield, whose son Simon is the first grade at PVCICS, said she has found the teachers, who are graduates of master's degree programs in the United States, to be exceptionally welcoming to the children. It's made the transitions from English to Chinese and home to school easier, she said.

"The teachers not only know Chinese, they know children."

The teachers do tend to give more homework than perhaps their counterparts in the district public schools do, Alcorn said. Quinn said parents should expect to spend about 45 minutes a night helping the children with homework.

How much homework the children are given, "is sort of a negotiation between the parents and teachers," Alcorn said.

Some parents have asked whether the children will fall behind in English studies if they learn primarily in Chinese, Alcorn said. The goal, as the school adds more grade levels in the coming years, is to teach children in English for a greater percentage of the time in the higher grades, with sixth- through eighth-graders learning in English 75 percent of the day.

"In order to pass MCAS (the state's standardized testing system) and the rest of it you want to have more English language instruction for the vocabulary," he said.

By the time the students reach the higher grades, they will already be proficient in Chinese, Alcorn said. There are no plans now to accept new students after the first grade.

Asked why PVCICS had founded a Chinese school rather than an immersion school in some other language, Alcorn said it was in part because he is an importer of Chinese goods but doesn't speak Chinese, which has made for some frustrating transactions. Chinese is considered a strategic language to learn by the United States government and "one of the women at the DOE (Department of Education) views it as a regional development project," Alcorn said.

Quinn said after the informational session that she had heard about the school on the radio and "took the plunge" because she had wanted Simon to learn another language.

"He's thriving here," Quinn said of Simon.

Simon, for his part, says he likes his Chinese language lessons and science lessons the best. He knows both the Chinese and American names of all the children in his class and can write his own Chinese name, Ching si mo, in neat letters.

Quinn is proud of the fact that the whole family is now involved in something that is positive for the community, she said. "We're integrated into something that is helping to make the community more diverse."

Mary Carey can be reached at mary.carey@att.net.