One of a handful in the region, Camden district is offering Mandarin Chinese with plans to grow the program

Sophomore Brandon Martinez thought studying Spanish would be a good choice to meet the New Jersey world language requirement for graduation.

His parents are from Mexico, and Spanish was his first language as a child. But the scheduler at Dr. Charles Brimm High School in Camden had other plans and placed him in a Mandarin Chinese class.

Martinez, 15, was a little nervous when he landed in Michael Nusbaum’s class in September with about a dozen other underclassmen. Now, he enjoys the class and plans to enroll in Mandarin Chinese II for the 2024-25 school year.

“I like the class,” said Martinez. “I get to learn something new.”

The school system is among only a handful of districts in the region that offer Mandarin, the most common dialect of Chinese. Elsewhere in the South Jersey region, Cherry Hill and Trenton include Mandarin as an option for students to fulfill the state mandate for at least one year of world language arts.

Camden added the class to its offerings in 2011 and has five sections, including an honors class, with 46 students total currently enrolled. It is only taught at Brimm, a magnet high school, said Ericka Okafor, director of world languages. The district hopes to add an AP Chinese class next year and eventually would like to expand the class to its four other high schools and elementary schools, she said.

“We want to build the program out,” said Okafor, who majored in Chinese as an undergraduate.

Nusbaum, in his third year with the district, teaches all levels of the classes. He learned Mandarin when he was 23 and spent about a decade in China as an English teacher and later worked in New York.

“This is a subject I love,” said Nusbaum, 40. “This is my passion.”

For the entry-level class, Nusbaum focuses on the nuts and bolts of learning the language. Students learn Chinese characters and the word that each character represents, with lessons focusing on topics such as greetings, occupation, and family.

“The biggest thing is for me to keep them challenged,” Nusbaum said.

The goal is for students to achieve proficiency in reading, writing, listening and speaking Mandarin . Nusbaum also teaches about Chinese culture. Students learned how to use authentic chopsticks, and they got credit for volunteering at the district’s Chinese New Year celebration.

“I was going to take Spanish,” said sophomore Nasir Ross, 15, an aspiring dermatologist or trauma nurse. “But I’m learning more here. It’s fun.”

During a recent class, the students watched videos on their laptops and practiced Chinese terms. Nusbaum split them into teams and they played a Jeopardy-like game to test their knowledge about Chinese New Year zodiac signs, customs and food.

How many zodiacs are there? A student correctly answered 12.

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For a vocabulary and comprehension lesson, Nusbaum played snippets of Mandarin and asked the students to identify the phrases and repeat words. Two students excitedly battled to respond first, prompting sophomore William Mann, 16, to admonish his classmate: “Let me answer a question!”

“This class has a lot of personality,” said sophomore Tyshir Carmickel. Nusbaum is “the right person for the class.”

After group lessons, Nusbaum has the students work independently. Students can also record themselves on their laptops and play it back for Nusbaum to review. A student who wants to use the bathroom must say the Mandarin word in order to be excused.

“It teaches me a lot of things I didn’t think would be interesting,” said 10th grader William Mann, 16. “Chinese really wasn’t my go-to.”

The class has become popular in a district where 54% of students are Hispanic, 44% are Black and 0.8% Asian, according to the 2021-2022 New Jersey School Performance Report, the latest statistics available. Chinese is one of the most spoken languages in the world with 1.3 billion speakers.

All New Jersey schools are required to have world language programs for grades K-12 that provide students with the essential language skills and cultural understandings needed live and work in a global and diverse world.

It is left to individual districts to decide what languages to offer. They may select classical languages like Greek and Latin, or American Sign Language. In addition to Mandarin, Camden offers Spanish and French.

During the 2022-2023 school year, 15,790 students statewide studied Mandarin Chinese in New Jersey public schools, according to the New Jersey Department of Education, in all grades, but more often in upper grades.

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Jaylin Hill, 16, a junior and an aspiring nurse practitioner, rearranged her schedule to get into Nusbaum’s class. “I think it’s a good skill to have, just in case.”