Mira Costa’s Chinese program is slowly dissolving from the school curriculum. Since the 2023-24 school year, Chinese 1 has been discontinued, and the remaining levels are slowly combining into one class. In addition, Manhattan Beach Middle School Chinese teacher Shelly Liu replaced the previous Chinese teacher Zhang Laoshi.
This year, there are 33 students in junior Dora Tuitupou’s Chinese class. However, according to her, this includes freshmen that should be taking Chinese 2, but can’t because of the class merges. This causes some rifts in the class curriculum.
“Since there are a lot of students who did not take Chinese 2, there are a lot of knowledge disparities within the class,” said Tuitupou. “This makes it harder for our teacher to cater to everyone’s level of understanding. Sometimes we have to go slow in learning lessons to help the newer students catch up.”
Even before these drastic changes, though, the Chinese program was very small compared to other language programs. According to senior Ella Digilio, despite the program’s size, it was a dynamic learning environment.
“It was a tight squeeze in the small classroom, but the rowdy atmosphere was fun and we were still able to be productive,” said Digilio. “It felt like one big family.”
After hearing about the merging of Chinese levels into one class, Digilio dropped Chinese 4 at Costa. She believed the one-on-one zoom interactions with an instructor at the online program Fusion Academy would be more beneficial to her than the cramped classroom setting.
“I knew I would learn better there than in Chinese at Costa, where a new teacher was teaching two periods of Chinese (4 and AP) in one classroom,” Digilio said. “Fusion has been great and highly effective for me so far.”
In the past few years Chinese has lost interest among Costa students. Spanish is the most popular language option, with American Sign Language and French following behind.
“I think Chinese is losing popularity at Costa because there is a perception that it’s a hard language to learn when in reality the class is quite easy and the teacher is very understanding,” said Tuitupou. “I also think the school doesn’t necessarily advertise the course to students and it definitely does not help that they are cutting Chinese class sections.”
These adjustments are setting up to phase out the Chinese program in MBUSD. Efforts have been made to counter this, but with no luck.
“There was a petition being pushed out at the end of the 2023-2024 school year in hopes to not cut Chinese class sections but it was not successful,” said Tuitupou. “Many aims to keep the Chinese class have failed because of the lack of awareness among students about the situation.”
Chinese has already been cut from the curriculum at MBMS, and in the next few years it will meet the same fate at Costa. The Chinese program has been a safe haven for its students, and many are discouraged at its inevitable end.
“Chinese class, my classmates, and the old teacher Zhang Laoshi were some of my favorite parts of Costa these past few years,” said Digilio. “They were a constant thing to look forward to in my school day and it was a community that felt incredibly close and special, even though it was just a language class. I’m very disappointed that MBUSD decided to eliminate its Chinese program and I hope it can be brought back in the future.”
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