Lately I've been thinking about the immersion and bi-lingual schools in Milwaukee Public Schools. If you're wondering if they're drawing positive attention to MPS, here's one example for you.
On Thursday, two officials from the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Chicago's Cultural Division will travel to Milwaukee to visit the Milwaukee Academy of Chinese Language, 2430 W. Wisconsin Ave., an MPS charter school.
"We want to expand the program and I think it's important to make these connections," principal James Sayavong tells me.
The office requested a meeting with the school's principal James Sayavong to expand cooperation between the two. The office's director Rose Chen and senior officer John Lin will visit the school to discuss a Chinese summer program in Taiwan and a school leaders visit to Taiwan and other potential collaborations.
Sayavong says he knows that in the past the Taiwanese government has provided grants and scholarships to students of Chinese and he hopes making connections like the one with the guests from Chicago will help expand Chinese language programs in MPS.
"We will have K5 or first grade students welcome them in Chinese and sing them a song in Chinese," says Sayavong. "Eighth graders can serve them some tea. We have also sent an invitation to the superintendent (Gregory Thornton) to invite him to join us. It would be good for our district in the future, I think."
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
