I have started learning Mandarin Chinese with New Concept Education 3.5 years ago, and I still…read moreenjoy it! It was surprising how quickly you can go from not understanding anything at all to being able to exchange WeChat messages in Chinese. It's like magic! My teacher Vicky Chen is an amazing educator who herself keeps learning and trying new things in order to find the best way for her students to stay engaged and learn better. I take 1:1 lessons, and they are totally worth it because I get to practice a lot. Happy with how my Chinese was going, about 2 years I also started learning Japanese with New Concept Education. I eventually signed up for 1:1 lessons with Yukiko Tsukada, and last December successfully passed the JLPT N4 exam. Again, magic! Whether you want to learn Mandarin or Japanese for business reasons or because you need to prepare for an exam or simply for fun, New Concept Education will make sure you accomplish your goal and enjoy the process! I highly recommend it!

Learning Chinese language here has been a great experience. The platform is very useful and easy to…read moreuse. We learn with real-life situation videos that we break down and study. The built in flashcards and grammar videos are very helpful for practicing. My teacher is super easy to talk to, ask questions, flexible, and accommodating to students needs. It makes me look forward to my next class every week!

I studied at this academy for 3 months. Both teachers are…read morepassionate and professional and kindness. My English skills has improved during that time. It was so useful and fun while attending class.

I like my time in ALPS. It started to feel like a place to hangout and be at peace. The community…read moreis really nice and it's very easy to make friends. The teachers have interesting backgrounds so they provide insight in many topics from different areas of knowledge. I highly recommend ALPS

The instruction I received here was spot-on. Couldn't ask for better quality from the teachers…read more They are all native speakers and many, if not all, are or were professors. The classes are small - no more than 9 per class - so instruction is well-tailored for you. The office staff is a joke. They are incompetent and always seem like they are somewhere else. They very obviously hate their job and it shows in the service you get.

The school is a non-profit institution, so every cent here counts. I took all my French courses…read morewith one teacher who wanted to see her students succeed in speaking the language. You should go to a school for the dedication in your education. Look at me thinking I'm a copywriter! The rooms lack proper acoustics, it wasn't unusual to hear the traffic outside or the occasional crazy person screaming aloud. Sometimes you hear the outside world more than your teacher, which I often complained about when we completed our evaluations at the end of every course. The school staff are friendly and always ready to answer questions. Women, take note: classes are held in the evening. A former classmate was mistaken for a prostitute late one night, and she was more offended at the offered rate than the mistaken identity.

I was so thrilled to have found SCS! Immediately impressed by how organized and dedicated the…read moreteachers and administrators are. As with most educational organizations, parental involvement and volunteerism are vital to its success. Currently, the Seattle Chinese School utilizes the Interlake High School facility at 16245 NE 24th Street in Bellevue, for its Saturday morning classes. They teach Traditional Mandarin Chinese, not simplified, from age 3 and up. It follows public school calendar, with 30 weeks of classes per year. For parents who prefer a more structured educational setting, I would highly recommend to take a tour, talk with other parents to see if it's a good fit for your child.

From the owner: As the flagship Chinese School in the US Northwest, Seattle Chinese School teaches 3~17 year-old…read morestudents Chinese language (in traditional Chinese characters) and culture in our preschool, bo-po-mo phonetics (class 0) and level 1~10 classes. For non-heritage, 6 years old or older students and/or whose families don't speak Mandarin Chinese, we also offer Chinese as Second Language (CSL) classes. We aim to help these students learn the commonly used Chinese vocabulary and sentence patterns, so they can communicate in Mandarin Chinese and traditional Chinese characters. Enrollment for the new families starts in May through September. School hours are on Saturday mornings for 30 weeks from early September to early June. For more information, please check the school website. Seattle Chinese School (SCS) is a self-supporting, non-profit organization and has no political nor religious affiliations. Its primary goals are to provide the education of the Chinese language and culture for overseas Chinese, to raise the awareness of overseas Chinese of their own ancestral roots. The volunteer school administrators and teachers have always strived to plant the seeds of the Chinese culture in our hearts by offering quality Chinese education.

it sucks. 3 hours of class, 24 hours of homework, and if you don't pass at the end you repeat the…read moregrade.

My 8-year old son had a great experience at GE Chinese School. He made great progress in the past 6…read moremonth, I'm really happy with the result. I think it is a great school for serious Chinese learners. The school developed its own apps to help kids do their homework everyday.

We love this preschool, all three of our kids have had a wonderful experience here. My oldest son…read morewent here in 2012 when it was at a different location and Caroline was his teacher, when my second was ready for school in 2015, I put him in this bilingual preschool as well. Now my youngest daughter is attending this preschool, she is enrolled in the Chinese and English and her Chinese has significantly improved. We don't speak Chinese at home and because the school has sparked a curiosity in her, she requests Chinese words throughout the day and asks, "how do you say this in Chinese?" We were at a preschool before whose values did not align with our early learning philosophy. That school had wanted to teach every child exactly the same and ignore the needs of the child's developmental stage. We wanted a preschool that deepened our child's love for learning while treating them each as individuals and Language Garden does both. We feel so blessed to have found them. It's been over a year for my daughter and the teachers in both Chinese and English classrooms have been the same which helps build that stability a child needs to thrive. I highly recommend them!

TL;DR: We found the owners extremely inflexible, unreceptive to parent feedback, and rigid about…read more"school policy," even when those policies weren't clearly communicated. The school made a great impression during our tour, and our son's homeroom teacher, Ms. Chloe, was wonderful. Unfortunately, our experience with the owners/administration was terrible. I originally considered giving one star, but reconsidered solely because of Ms. Chloe. (More below) During our tour with the owner, Catherine, I was genuinely impressed. She knew the children by name and remembered details about their development, and I loved that she had 35+ years of childcare experience. We were also excited that the toddler teacher, Ms. Chloe had Montessori training and experience, and that the school is dual language Mandarin & English. During the tour, we saw teachers preparing what appeared to be homemade seaweed soup and other homemade food, and we were specifically told that if we sent food from home, it would be heated before serving to our child. Unfortunately, after enrolling, our son barely ate his school lunches, and the leftovers coming home provided by the school were frequently things like hot dogs and hamburgers, chicken nuggets. We started sending homemade meals instead that he would usually eat, such as stir fry and dumplings but unfortunately he continued to not eat much of his lunch. Six months later, we learned the school actually had a policy against reheating food from home. Our son started in December, and we didn't learn this until June by a new teacher. I wonder when we would have found out otherwise. This policy wasn't in the parent handbook we received and contradicted what we were told during our tour. For months, we were sending food expecting it to be warmed without realizing our son was being offered it cold. No wonder why he wasn't eating. For something as basic and important as whether our child was eating during the day, this was incredibly appalling. We also found the school extremely inflexible with scheduling. We paid for three days per week, but couldn't switch days or make up days missed due to illness or other situations. For example, if our schedule was M/W/F and we needed M/W/Th one week, Thursday required an additional payment even if our son didn't attend Friday. I understand that daycares need predictable staffing and policies, but there seemed to be very little flexibility. If we are paying for 3 days and they are saving the spot for my son, why does it matter which 3 days of the week? Another frustration was the administration's response to parent feedback. The school uses Brightwheel for communication, billing, and daily updates, but photos are uploaded separately to Flickr. Photos from the entire school are posted together, usually a day or two later, meaning I had to scroll through hundreds of photos just to find a few of my son. I repeatedly asked if photos could at least be organized by classroom so parents could easily see their own child's class. The request was repeatedly rejected because of "school policy." I also wasn't comfortable with every other parent or grandparent of the school having access to photos of my child. Eventually, I stopped checking Flickr because I simply didn't have time to scroll through 400+ photos. The best part of our experience was Ms. Chloe. She genuinely cared about our son, shared stories about his day, and made us feel like she really knew him. We also saw significant improvement in both his English and Chinese vocabulary during his time at Language Garden. Most importantly, he felt safe and comfortable with her. During the months when drop-off was difficult, we always felt relieved when Ms. Chloe was there to receive him. There are caring teachers here, and the school made an excellent first impression. Unfortunately, the gap between what we expected from our tour and what we experienced--particularly around food, scheduling, communication, and the administration's receptiveness to parent feedback--ultimately left us very disappointed. PS: my son's new daycare posts photos of him DAILY in brightwheel itself. Clearly it's possible. AND we still drop him 3 days a week, and they don't require a set schedule. We just drop him any 3 days and they are fine. That's what we should be paying for! I have done many daycare tours at this point, and am happy to share my experience with various daycares in the Eastside that may be a better fit, if anyone parents would like to reach out. Best of luck!

My son has been in this school for almost a year now. My experience so far has been really good. My…read moreson has learned many mandarin words, learned to clean up, learned to play with others.The teachers are caring. Her main teacher has a master degree in education. The director has been really nice and supportive.

Very scary my child was yelled at there by director. This is scary for small children I saw it at…read morepickup and it made me sad.

If I could I would give 3.5 stars. My kids are still here because of some of the amazing teachers…read morethey have. My 3 year old and 1 year old has been attending here since May. I liked the idea of a language immersion program and since we don't speak mandarin, I liked having my kids exposed to their native language. I think that is why 99% of the kids here are all Chinese! Tuition is reasonable and cheaper than most kindercare or bright horizons franchise. I liked the payment breakdowns where you could choose full day/half day, before school care and after school care, all prices are broken down so you basically only pay what you use. For $80/ month, you could also enroll your kids once a week to music, tumble bus, and art class where they come to the school during class time. Here's what I don't like... Overall seems unorganized. Teachers are often changing classes teaching different age groups because some teachers will go on vacation. It feels more like a home daycare. My son walked in yesterday and he had another new teacher and I asked if he was there and she didn't even know his name and had to check her list. We had no warning. I get the impression the owner/director is cheap. They don't even have adequate diaper changing pails/garbage bags in my daughter's class. You also have to bring your own cups every day and take home to wash. They don't provide any. Since their front desk person left in May, they have not hired anyone yet. One of the teachers is running the front as well as taking care of everything else! The owner is very lucky to have such wonderful staff Update 03/01/2020- my kids have been here for almost 2 years now. Nice to see that they were able to hire some new staff and manage to keep them there! Jennifer the new supervisor is wonderful, very friendly and attentive. New teacher Miss Leah is wonderful, she's does a lot of hands on activity from making arts and crafts to malign strawberry fondue! She also got my son to be very engaged in math. I would recommend this school to everyone.

We sent our daughter here to try out for a week during the summer. If you are looking for a…read moredaycare, this should fulfill your needs, but not if you are looking for your child to learn anything or just grow. Overall i feel like the teachers were pretty cold and distant. Our daughter was always excited to tell us about the activities she did in other camps she attended, but whenever we asked her about her day at Washington International School, she would quietly say she had fun, but was never willing or able to elaborate on anything she did. On her last day, we asked the teachers for a picture with her, but they cited privacy issues, shrugged their shoulders and end of discussion. Coupled with the fact she just walked to our car without turning back for a glance or saying goodbye to the teachers, makes me feel like they were probably very cold to her during her stay as well. It's a good thing we only signed up for a trial week; odds are I probably wouldn't send her back for a second week even if was paid for anyway.

We enrolled our daughter in IMA in July 2019 and have been very happy with it so far. The…read moreMontessori approach is great and focuses on helping your child to become more independent through teaching them life skills, which is a great fit for our parenting philosophy. Yimin Chen, the owner, is responsive to emails and very clear and direct. Our daughter is in Ms. Luz's toddler classroom. Ms. Luz is everything you could hope for in a teacher - very knowledgeable, caring, and experienced. We regularly get photos of our daughter doing new tasks we didn't even know she could do, and the teachers always seem to be coming up with new activities. Other assistant teachers seem to know our daughter and greet her by name. We have not had any incidents similar to what others described here (teachers not responding appropriately to children hitting, etc.) We felt Yimin was very clear on tuition during our tour including the more complex details around deposits, summer being billed weekly, and an extra fee for childcare during vacation weeks. There is an annual tuition option in the contract which gets you a discount but we opted for the monthly plan which avoids any lock-in. Communication from Brittney in the IMA office is regular and repeated, billing is clear and straightforward through Brightwheel, I didn't see any unreasonable clauses in the contract, and they are working to build more of a community with the families by doing more activities where parents are invited. Lunch and snacks are all provided and have good, healthy variety. The school brings in teachers to teach additional optional extracurricular classes (e.g. music, dance) for an additional fee. There are regular vacation days/weeks/parent teacher conference days, but IMA provides childcare for many of these (the head teachers are not there but "daycare" is provided by the assistant teachers). I like this as it means the head teachers are being given vacation/time off (Ms. Luz will regularly tell us of her trips, so hopefully the teachers are being paid decently, too.) IMA is an immersion school, but I can't comment much on how effective it is as we don't speak Mandarin and there hasn't been any info about what Mandarin they're learning. In addition, many of the assistant teachers appear to only speak Mandarin, making it challenging to communicate with them in English. However, we are able to communicate effectively through the app or Ms. Luz. It may be that the extent of the Mandarin immersion going on in the Toddler classroom is the assistant teachers speaking it exclusively (perhaps the kids are taught songs or read Mandarin books, but again I don't know). That said, the kids are quite young so that may be sufficient - but would be great to have some communication like "here is a Mandarin song we learned", or "here are some Mandarin words we learned" (with a link to a YouTube video), or "we learned about the Chinese New Year" so us non-speakers can help reinforce :-). If the language immersion is a big selling point for you, you may want to probe more on it during your tour - I just can't speak to it well. The only other issue we've had is that the stand-up diapering procedure (typical at Montessori schools) seems to result in a lot of (sometimes bad) diaper rash for our daughter, and sometimes the diapers are not logged reliably in the app making it hard to tell whether the assistant teachers are not changing her often enough or not cleaning her well enough. She basically never gets diaper rash when she's at home with us but a couple times has gone back to school after a weekend/vacation and bam, diaper rash. However, the teachers seem to be responsive in addressing these concerns.

First of all, the list of items that parents are required to prepare is really quite long. I…read moreunderstand the intention -- things like emergency biscuits for earthquakes are for safety -- but honestly, if a real earthquake happens, shouldn't the school be able to provide such basic emergency supplies? This has created unnecessary stress and burden for parents. Second, I feel it's unreasonable to expect a two-year-old child to manage their own belongings, follow strict rules, and not be allowed to bring a favorite stuffed toy for comfort. My child has told us directly that they don't like this preschool. At this age, children should be playing and being cared for -- not subjected to discipline and education as if they were older. Lastly, I've noticed that the teachers seem to change very frequently. This gives me the impression that the school management might be unstable, which makes parents feel uneasy and less confident about the environment.

My two eldest children have been attending RLS since their preschool years. The education level is…read morevery good and homework is assigned daily. The classes keeps my kids challenged and engaged without being too overwhelmed. I highly recommend this school!

My children have been attending RLS for over 5 years now, staring when they were 3 years old…read more RSL has fantastic teachers - dedicated and carrying, giving each child the attention he/she needs. Their classes are small - no more than 6 children per teacher, and every child is provided with textbooks and appropriate notebooks. You can attend classes in person, but there is an option to sign up for private classes over zoom. The school has a lot of classes to choose from, and they always help parents like me with multiple children who want to attend a variety of classes get my schedule just right. The classrooms are clean, the staff is professional. I highly recommend it!