Northeast Park

My kids started out in a Chinese immersion school in St Paul and then transferred to Hopkins one due to the pandemic. We had good experiences in both of those schools. They seemed well-balanced in terms of social emotional needs and academic rigor. However, we wanted to transfer to Yinghua bc it is close to our house. I thoroughly read through the reviews before transferring and was concerned about some of the VERY negative reviews held by some 10%+ of the reviews here on Great Schools. Then we won the lottery and I decided to take a chance and chalk up the negative reviews to being parents who were exaggerating their complaints. Fast forward to today, I realized that the negative reviews are honest.There are some awesome teachers at Yinghua (many of them are the ELA and science teachers). Two of our favorite teachers ended up quitting Yinghua. One admitted to me in a conference that the school culture was toxic on the children. He said when he was in Taiwan, the kids there are "less stressed" than the kids here at Yinghua. He quit a few weeks later. The second teacher we loved was so stressed and overworked, she got to the point where she could no longer handle responding to emails in a timely fashion because there was so much on her plate. The Chinese teachers at Yinghua indeed come across as very caring at conferences and when parents are in the building. I do think they care a lot, but they are pushed by leadership to extremely high standards and so they take their stress out on the kids when they can't handle the massive amount of homework. The shaming of kids and comparing them to others in the class is a true rumor, and it happens frequently. I was told by a staff that when kids leave Yinghua they say "suddenly I'm no longer depressed"Homework: The first year or two is not bad. Mind you that my kids came from Chinese immersion, so we were used to it (plus, I wanted my kids to be pushed hard). But the amount of work increased exponentially after 2nd grade. Your kids will have no life outside of academics, or if they are in sports, they will have no down time at all. It's not healthy. The kids that CAN succeed at Yinghua and not be scarred are most likely very academic oriented kids. However, these kids will then be exposed to being doted upon by the teachers and will learn it's ok to put other students down who aren't like them.If you want Chinese immer for your kids, highly recommend St Paul, Hopkins, Minnetonka ones, not YA.