The Oregonian

Adapting, schools look East

For the Oregon study, the four school districts will elaborate on the resources needed and the challenges they face in providing second-language instruction.

The flagship partnership between the center and Portland Public Schools has one of the only kindergarten-to-college Mandarin immersion curriculums in the country. The district is expanding its Mandarin program and starting a new one in Russian this fall.

Portlanders who speak Chinese -- Cantonese as well as Mandarin -- increased at least 20 percent from 2000 to 2005, a recent Multnomah County Library study found. Ding Li, an electrical engineer from China who teaches Mandarin in Portland and Beaverton, agrees. "We can feel that the language is becoming hotter."

The UO researchers' initial survey also noted two-way immersion English-Russian and English-Spanish programs in the Woodburn School District and a Spanish immersion program in the Klamath Falls City School District. Mandarin is now taught in some Beaverton and Lake Oswego schools. And Korean is taught in a Eugene School District elementary school a couple of days a week

Sherwood's foray into broadening its offerings came from both fortune and initiative.

In 2005, Anna Pittioni, the middle school principal, led a trip to China with students as part of an exchange program that was encouraged by Washington County officials who had made a trip a couple of years earlier. A group of Sherwood middle schoolers is set to go in June on a second exchange trip.

Now a school in Yichang, China, wants to formalize the exchange relationship and has offered to send podcasts and exchange teachers to instruct Sherwood students in Mandarin.

Some Sherwood middle school students have already begun. Last fall, Julie Afsahi, a math teacher with years of Mandarin study took the Sherwood job, drawn by the China exchange program and a chance to teach Mandarin and Chinese culture in an after-school class. She will teach Mandarin again next year but as a course during the school day.

"I think it's a movement that Sherwood is part of, and it's exciting that it can include a small district," she said.

Pittioni answered an offer from the Oregon Department of Education to arrange for teaching assistants from Japan and Korea, and the school welcomed Huijeong Kim, an English literature major from the University of Seoul in South Korea. She was a teaching assistant this year and might lead a Korean language club in the fall.

Pittioni said language programs must reflect the changing world. She was left shaken when she heard a speaker at a recent conference on critical languages say, "We study the West to understand our past and the East to understand our future."

Reporter Kimberly A.C. Wilson contributed to this report. Maya Blackmun: 503-294-5926; mayablackmun@news.oregonian.com