Word: lueth
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...outside, Betsy Lueth's school looks like any other in this arty neighborhood of Minneapolis: a sprawling, boxy red brick building with plain steel doors. Yet inside, the blond, gregarious Minnesotan presides over an institution unique in the heartland: Yinghua Academy, a charter public school where elementary students of every ethnicity study subjects ranging from math to American history in Mandarin...
...challenges at Yinghua are numerous. Most teachers come from Taiwan or mainland China, and cultural misunderstandings prevail. Lueth's instructors are learning to be tolerant of local norms like nontraditional families and boys who cry - as well as a lot more parental input than they're used to. "In China, teachers are revered. They are not questioned," says Luyi Lien, Yinghua's Taiwan-born academic director. "In America, parents are more ... expressive of their opinions." (See TIME's photo-essay "The Making of Modern China...
...cognitive benefits, including more flexible, creative thinking. Though students from the programs lag for a few years in English, by fifth grade they perform as well as or better than their monolingual peers on standardized reading and math tests. For multicultural families, the psychological boost can also be important. Lueth, a former teacher and manufacturing executive, co-founded the school as a way to expose her adopted Chinese daughter Lucy to her native culture. Lucy used to squirm when cousins asked why her skin color was different from theirs; before she started at Yinghua, she was resistant to exploring anything...
...Lueth recently won an $800,000 grant from the Department of Education to develop a teaching model for immersion middle schools, and she advises educators around the country who are starting their own programs. If Yinghua can make Mandarin a success in Minnesota, she tells them, so can they. "This is a glorious culture - and an increasingly important language - that we are meaningfully teaching to our children," she says. "And we're in the middle of nowhere...
...People can't figure out why we're out here and why we aren't bored," says Gerry Bloomquist, enjoying the sunset with her neighbor Mary Lueth. Back home in Minnesota, the Bloomquists and Lueths live an hour apart; here in the desert they live at either end of a laundry line. "Oops, there's our noise for the day," cracks Gerry, looking up at four Army helicopters...