Yu Ming Charter School is a public K-8 school established in 2010 that offers Chinese immersion programs for every grade. This means that the daily curriculum is conducted bilingually in both Chinese and English. From kindergarten to 2nd grade 90% of the teaching is delivered in Chinese and 10% is delivered in English. The proportion of sessions taught in English increases to 70% for students in the school’s highest two levels, 7th and 8th grades, but 30% of the sessions are still taught in Chinese.

In response to the ongoing great demand for instruction in Chinese, the school has worked with the Ministry of Education in Taiwan to recruit 4 Mandarin teaching assistants from Taiwan for the 2015 school year. A teaching assistant’s main duties are helping to prepare teaching materials, tutoring students, and teaching small group under the supervision of the school’s teachers. The school provides host family accommodation, meals, transportation, and visa application subsidies for the teaching assistants, and the Ministry provides a round-trip international airfare and a monthly stipend of US$600.

Chinese immersion programs have become very popular in elementary and secondary schools in the U.S., so having a school like Yu Ming is very helpful for Taiwanese students majoring in Teaching Chinese as a Second Language. Yu Ming received dozens of applications this year from Taiwanese students who have a career goal of teaching Mandarin overseas to undertake an internship there. It finally selected 4 enthusiastic young students after conducting Skype interviews. The selected teaching assistants are expected to arrive in the U.S. in early August, and they will begin their stay with training and orientation sessions to help them get ready for their work at the school.