Mandarin teacher, Yin Wang, Argues Against Elimination of Middle School Mandarin Instruction

Yin Wang, welcome. Good evening.

I want to, um, tell everyone that there's one program you—you did not mention, which is the Mandarin program in Walsh Middle School. Um, so I am in Walsh, and I am the only Mandarin teacher in all three middle schools.

Um, so I started about nine years ago. Um, started from King Elementary and Walsh at the same time. So every day I would go to King Elementary for about an hour, and I teach K to fifth graders. And I was blown away by the fact that they would just like sponges get them get the way to say things without any hesitation.

The main, the even better thing for me to see is that they have this lion courage. They will go and point it out to you. Hey, you said it wrong. That's not how you say it. So that's what I saw.

But guess what? Two years later, that program got cut. I didn't know where to go. I didn't know who to talk to. So here I am standing in front of you because I am facing the same problem again.

Walsh Middle School. I was told that the program is going to be eliminated, and my students who are currently with me have to go to French or Spanish. Is that really something we can't do better than that? No. They don't agree with me.

You see around you that many of them come and want to talk to you and want you to see their face and tell you who they are. We are not a group of students just hiding behind the classroom, minding our own business.

We go to the anti—uh—we go to elementary school to perform in Mandarin. We go to MFA, we go to Boston Chinatown as our field trip. Not only that, we build a community because they're with me for three years. They get to know each other. At the end of the day, they be friends, and they will talk about it forever—the experience they share, what they do together in my classroom.

And when I told them, many of them cried. I almost cried. And—and today I told them, no paper. You want to tell your story. You want to be able to say it with what you believe, with passion, and with your ability, what you have learned.

So please, this is only one program.