By Japhet Weeks/WEST BERKELEY

On a Friday afternoon in the Plum Garden classroom, Julian’s first grade teacher asked him to perform a simple task: bring a cardboard box full of paper scraps to the table. Instead, Julian grabbed a scrap of paper from the box. The teacher told him again that she wanted the box, but Julian still didn’t understand. So she took the box herself as she repeated the request, enunciating each word.

Smile for the camera: Pre-K students at Shuren learn about dental hygiene. (Photo by Yulia Weeks)

Julian’s “ah-hah!” moment consisted of a nod and a slightly embarrassed smile. He shuffled back to the table, picked up his scissors and began cutting again.

Julian, a student at the newly opened, private Shuren International School in Berkeley, had difficulty understanding his teacher, To Kai-yao, because she spoke to him in Mandarin. It was only his tenth day of class.

More American kids than ever are learning Mandarin, spurred on by the rapid ascension of China over the past three decades from a country mired in messy revolution to a global economic powerhouse.

A 2008 joint study from Asia Society and The College Board estimated that nationwide there are 779 K-12 schools with Chinese programs, up almost 200 percent from the last study Asia Society conducted in 2004. And yet, of the 336 dual-immersion programs in the United States, as estimated and defined by the Center for Applied Linguistics, only three are Mandarin/English. More kids are learning Mandarin in class, but dual immersion programs remain uncommon.

Shuren, which claims to be the only full-time Chinese-language immersion school in the East Bay– and hopes to one day offer a dual-immersion program – is counting on the appetite for Chinese-language education to keep growing. But for now, the almost 5,000 square-foot building, located two blocks west of Sacramento on University Avenue, feels empty. There are just six students enrolled from pre-K through first grade.

Still, the school’s founder,  Jie Moore, is satisfied with the results so far. “What they’re learning is beyond my expectations,” she said on Friday, after having sat in on part of the combined kindergarten and first grade class. Her goal is to “combine the best of the East and West” in order to teach students “global competence.” A lofty goal, that begins with the basics.

Kai Laoshi, as To Kai-yao is known to her students, led her class in song on Friday: “School is really great!” they sang. The energetic former graphic designer from Taiwan, dressed in Chaco’s sandals and a bright pink t-shirt with a variation of a smiley face on it, pointed to the Chinese lyrics with a wand that had a plastic hand flashing a peace sign on the end. “We study Chinese, we learn to sing, paint and do P.E.,” the group chanted in unison, with the rising and falling inflections of Mandarin.

Moore hopes that next year Shuren will have 20 to 30 students. And she expects that in two years, they’ll outgrow the space altogether. A crowd of almost 80 parents attended a recent open house for the school.

Moore, who has a Ph.D. in sociology and has done research on early childhood development, decided to start Shuren after she was unable to find a Mandarin immersion school in the East Bay for her daughter Maya.

Maya was the most verbal of the three students in the combined kindergarten and first grade class. If the other students failed to understand the teacher, To could depend on Maya for the answer.

To, who has a 13-year-old daughter of her own she wished could have attended a Mandarin immersion school like Shuren, says her biggest concerns so far are the relatively few number of students and the difficulty in getting them to speak in Mandarin because of their different levels.

For now, Shuren is starting off its students with 100 percent Mandarin immersion, but in the higher grades, which they plan to add year by year through 8th grade, the program will be dual immersion. That means students will learn English half of the time and Mandarin the other half. The student body will ideally consist of an equal mix of native and non-native Mandarin speakers.

The dual immersion model is already in place in other Berkeley schools. Three public elementary schools — Le Conte, Rosa Parks and Cragmont — offer Spanish dual immersion programs.

But no public school offers a similar program in Mandarin. Berkeley Unified School District Spokesman Mark Coplan said last week that in the past six years he has received just two phone calls from parents inquiring about a dual immersion program in Mandarin. “We have waiting lists for the dual immersion program [in Spanish],” he said, “but Chinese doesn’t have quite that same draw or popularity.”

Nonetheless, it’s undeniable that there’s a demand for Mandarin. Berkeley High School added the language to its curriculum two years ago, and Jefferson, an elementary school in North Berkeley, has offered a Chinese Bicultural Program to its students for past three decades.

Annie Tong, who has taught at Jefferson for almost as long as the Chinese Bicultural Program has existed, says the program was originally started to help Cantonese-speaking students cope in school. Over the years, as the need for Chinese ESL learners has decreased, it has become an enrichment program. Kids in kindergarten, first and second grades learn numbers, colors and common phrases in Mandarin.

Tong thinks there’s a desire for Mandarin immersion in Berkeley public schools, but the chances of it happening anytime soon are slim. Unlike Spanish immersion programs, there isn’t the critical mass of students who need instruction in Mandarin, she says. Tong says that’s because the East Bay’s Chinese population is more spread out than its Latino counterpart.

The number of Mandarin speakers in Alameda county public schools is at least 2,571, according to 2007-2008 California Department of Education data on languages spoken at home by K-12 students. Almost all of those students attend schools in the Fremont Unified School District. Compare that to the number of Spanish speakers in Alameda County schools: 38,531. Data isn’t recorded for a population at any given school that constitutes less than 15 percent of the student body. For this reason, there is no data for the number of Mandarin speakers in Berkeley, Oakland or Richmond– the three cities Shuren is currently drawing students from.

Anne-Marie Pierce, President of AMP & Associates, the educational consulting firm that helped launch Shuren, is optimistic about the school’s future. She says the school has a low enrollment now because Moore had difficulty finding a school site and got off to a late start. Shuren “has everything going for it,” she said. “The need and the demand for Chinese bilingual education is very high for good reasons — Chinese is one of the languages of the future.”

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