Deana R. Pan’s Introduction

        Growing up in the USA, I never met home schoolers. When I got married I never really thought about home schooling. When my oldest started talking, then I thought about home schooling.  I started doing research and my, is there a lot of information out there. Unfortunately, there is not a lot of information on bilingual home schooling. Well, ok, there is for say Spanish and English, but that’s not helpful for us. Our family speaks Chinese and English.

        I am American and my husband is native Taiwanese. My husband (Luke) is a national missionary/pastor here in Taiwan. We have three bilingual boys ages 8,4 and 2years old. We have met nothing but encouraging comments about our bilingualism. Though when we are out, we usually here “Does your son speak Chinese?” My children are in a Chinese world, there Chinese is very strong (too strong in my opinion). I am fluent in Chinese (ok, through maybe the 5^th grade here in Taiwan) and speak it at church, Sunday school and at home with our foster kids. So my boys KNOW I speak Chinese, so why bother with the English. It isn’t easy, but I try to force myself to speak English with them and when we watch DVDs it is only in English, but with Chinese subtitles for dad.

        Our oldest is 8years old or second grade here in Taiwan. We are the fourth home schooling family here in Taitung but the first that has started from first grade. I just shake my head at the requirements here. In my home state none of this is required. We would only have to write a letter saying we are homeschooling, that we home schooled 180 days (a school year in America) and that’s it. No tests, no records required, no lesson plans to show, nothing to get approved. Totally opposite of here.

        Our last meeting with the department of education, a lady on the committee asked “I don’t understand something, how come these homeschooling families all chose the school’s text books to use at home and what would be the difference between using them at home or at school?” This is from a lady on the committee (granted not just a homeschool committee), and she has been on it two years at least. It was my turn to answer, so I informed her of Taiwan’s law of not allowing the parents freedom in choosing textbooks, that’s why we use the school’s books. The difference: one on one versus one on 25 (small for most schools), the child can have freedom to ask questions as HE wants to, there is no “quiet, we have to get this done” type thing. We can spend more time on something he likes or has an interest in and we can move along at his pace. One problem we have recently encountered was my lesson plan. It is in English. I am the main teacher, I need it in English. They didn’t seem to pleased. I did tell them that this is simple English, surely the department of education could understand this. I still haven’t figured out if I can keep going on in English or not. They were under the assumption that Chinese wasn’t being taught….I set them straight though.

        I am happy to be sharing my experiences in bilingual homeschooling. I hope more and more parents can bilingually homeschool. Really for those kids who grow up with two languages, they have so many more resources and possibilities in store.

The Pan Family may be reached at www.morninglightministries.org