In the back corner of Miller Elementary School’s library, a group of kindergarteners flip through a popular picture book. Their teacher points to a QR code on the front cover, and with a quick scan, a video pops up on a screen. The kindergartners smile as they hear the story told completely in Mandarin, their first language.
This new project was created by Westford Academy’s Mandarin IV students, who have spent the past few months translating and recording the narration of popular children’s books for young students at Miller, delivering them around the end of March. Their hope is to make elementary schoolers who speak Mandarin at home feel more welcomed in their classrooms, and provide them with access to stories that they can actually understand.
“Miller Elementary School has a large number of non-English speaking students. They speak Mandarin at home and they come to school for the first year in kindergarten and they have no idea [what people are saying],” WA Mandarin teacher Ying Ma said. “It’s hard for little kids to learn a totally new language at the beginning of their school year.”
The idea of books narrated in Mandarin came from Westford Academy’s Language Department Chair, Stephanie Devlin. Miller has been battling the issue of non-English speaking students feeling lost for years, and Devlin suggested this solution as a way to connect high schoolers with younger students who need help.
In order to carry out this plan, the Mandarin IV students were given books from a collection provided by Miller Elementary School. The students then translated the stories into Mandarin, recorded themselves reading the books aloud, and flipped the pages on camera so the elementary schoolers could follow along with them. A QR code was then printed and placed on the book for the teachers to scan and show the video in class.
According to Ma, despite this being the first year of the project’s implementation, it has already made an impact on both the elementary and high school students involved.
“For both the high school students and the elementary school students, [the project] has been meaningful,” Ma said. “The Mandarin students feel that what they learned for four years can help someone, they feel that it has meaning.”
Ma also witnessed the reaction of two kindergarteners at Miller who got to watch these videos.
“They [were] super excited, because they heard the audio and saw the video at the same time. They are very engaged […] you can see the smiles on their faces,” Ma said. “They understand and are involved; they feel as if this community has a special way to welcome [Mandarin speakers].”
Aside from the evident impact the books have had on Miller students, Ma has also noticed a shift in how the high school students see the language.
“Some students, when they are studying in the classroom, I don’t feel like they have a great passion for the language,” Ma said. “But when they explore this program and project a little deeper […] they feel more passionate about the language.”
Next year, the WA Mandarin program hopes to improve the project by increasing their book production or using more efficient translation apps.
“It was gratifying to know how much of an impact our efforts were making, not just now but in the future as the books are shared with more incoming children for years to come,” senior Mandarin IV student Rebecca Ward said.
