About the language program, unfortunately HCPSS is not offering enough support. Because of the budget issue, Spanish classes were dramatically downsized too. Here, I am introducing some community support for the language learners. For Chinese language learner, there are several channels you can use:
1) There are three weekend Chinese schools in Howard County:
- The Howard County Chinese School at HCC and Centennial High (https://www.hccs-md.org/ ),
- The Peiying Chinese School at River Hill High (http://www.peiying-md.org/),
- The Chinese Language School of Columbia at Howard High (http://www.clscweb.org/).
All of them offer Chinese language classes from K-12, paced with our public school schedule. The tuition is really affordable. There are more than 20% of class participants do not have Chinese heritage at all.
2) The Columbia Association’s language coffee at East Columbia Library. It takes place at the fourth Tuesday of the month. It offers almost all major languages and is relative causal. It is fun. https://www.columbiaassociation.org/facilities/international-exchange-multicultural-programs/multicultural-programsevents/
If you can weigh in and share other language learning opportunities in the same post, that will be great. I can then put all of them in one place in the future.