Acquire or share best educational practices and new methodologies

TCLP Arabic exchange teacher Mohamed Abdelsamad was awarded a CLP grant to attend and present at the NCOLCTL (National Council of Less Commonly Taught Languages) Conference. His presentation was titled “Incorporating Egyptian Culture and Current Events into the Teaching of a Critical Language with TCLP.” Within this presentation, he talked about his experience teaching Arabic in Missoula, Montana and addressed the importance of incorporating cultural competency into language classes.

TCLP mentor teacher Christina Cannon has been chosen to present with colleague Annie Hasan at the Northeast Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages in April 2012. Their CLP proposal will help them cover the cost to attend the conference. Their presentation discussed best practices for teaching songs in the target language, and attendees learned a method of teaching with songs and games that maximizes ‘student talk’ during the class period, keeping students engaged and communicating.

TCLP Arabic Teacher Alumnus Ahmed Mohamed was awarded a grant to implement a professional development project he designed to help other teachers in his home school district in Egypt. The project helped teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL) build a pedagogical foundation, exchange best practices for EFL teaching, learn about the U.S. educational system, and share resources. Planned to be a multi-day training program, Ahmed made use of published education materials as well as those provided at no cost by the U.S. Department of State’s Regional English Language Officer.

Mentor Teacher, Dr. Steven Berbeco was awarded a grant to host a best practices workshop and professional networking meeting for the New England Association of Arabic Teachers (NEAAT), which is a network of elementary and secondary school teachers from public and private schools in the New England states. The best practices workshop and professional networking meeting was at the Massachusetts Foreign Languages Association in Sturbridge, MA, October 25th-27th. CLP funding allows NEAAT to offer these events as well as provide teacher-training materials for teachers from diverse schools.

With the help of CLP grant, TCLP alumna Fu Ailing worked with volunteers to conduct summer English lessons for students in grades 4-6 at Jinye Primary School in Guizhou Province, China. Jinye is situated far away from major cities in the mountains and consequently does not have a regular English teacher. The primary objective of Fu Ailing's project was to teach these students some basic English and to lay a sound foundation for their English learning in middle school.

Exchange teacher Wei Wei received a CLP grant to implement the Joy of Eight Project at her U.S. host school, Roton Middle School. The project encompassed various activities with the overall goal of motivating middle school students enrolled in Mandarin classes to continue to study the language after they enter high school.