United States

TCLP Arabic teacher Mohamed Mahmoud at Shawnee Mission West High School in Shawnee Mission, KS designed project which aimed at increasing the knowledge base of current Arabic I students while also exposing a large population of middle and high school students to Arabic language. His students created a long-lasting Arabic language instructional booklet in a magazine format and an instructional Arabic video. Both the magazine and the Arabic video were distributed to all Shawnee Mission elementary, middle, and high schools where up to 28,000 students may view these materials.

• TCLP Arabic teacher Ibrahim Elkadi will design a project titled “Around the Arabic Nation in Two Days” with support from teachers and students at Scott’s Branch High School in Summerton, South Carolina. This two-day celebration will expose 300 high school students, 100 middle school students, 70 primary students, 6 administrators and 40 teachers to the diversity of 22 Arabic-speaking countries. Local groups and neighboring schools will also be invited to attend this unique event.

TCLP Chinese teacher Cao Yanna will organize project at Indian River Charter School in Vero Beach, Florida with the support of the Indian River students and faculty. This Spring Festival Event includes multiple components aimed at providing students with an opportunity to practice their Chinese skills in real-life language situations and share what they have learned with their families, teachers, and classmates while also exposing other community members to Chinese culture and increasing interest in the Chinese program at Indian River Charter School.

TCLP Egyptian exchange teacher Ahmed Mohamed at Renaissance High School was awarded a grant to shed the light on many aspects of the Arab language and culture though an Arabic Night. Current Arabic students gave participants an in-depth look at the Arab world through performances, songs, fashion shows, and games. In the audience were current 8th grade students who will be attending RHS next fall, as well as community members, school district officials, and current RHS students.

TCLP Arabic teacher Manal El Gamal worked with mentor teacher Claudine Clark to organize a field trip to the Milwaukee Public Museum in order to provide an authentic cultural experience for the facilitated language students at Madison East High School. In April, 45 students attended the exhibit on Egyptian Mummies, explored actual Egyptian artifacts, viewed educational films on ancient Egypt, and had lunch at an authentic Middle Eastern restaurant.

TCLP alumni mentor teacher Lalainya Goldsberry was approved for a project to showcase Arabic and Chinese students’ language and cultural knowledge at the Lindblom World Language Festival. A secondary goal of the project was to motivate students to begin or continue learning the Arabic or Chinese languages. The Lindblom World Language Festival itself is a competition where students from Lindblom and other schools who were taking Arabic and Chinese compete with each other in the categories of poetry recitation, talent, skits, research project, and drama.

TCLP host school alumna Roslynne McCarthy from the Center for Global Studies in Connecticut was awarded a CLP for a student collaborative project called Sister-schools: Expanding the Student Dialogue. The goal of this project was to create and implement a curriculum of personal interactions among students at the Center for Global Studies and Al-Salam Private Language School in Tanta, Egypt with the expertise and input of TCLP 2008 alumnus Mr. Emil Markos.

TCLP mentor teacher alumni Todd Lynum led a group of Willmar High School students on a trip to China in the spring of 2012. He was awarded a CLP that helped to fund 18 student and 3 chaperons visas as well as on-the-ground transportation to and from the airport. Their trip to China was the culmination of 3 years of studying Chinese and it provided students with the opportunity to see China and its famous sites and to interact with local Chinese using this opportunity to practice and apply the Chinese they have learned so far.

TCLP mentor teacher alumni Steven Berbeco was awarded a CLP for his grant proposal to organize a meeting of The Teachers of Arabic Language K-12 network at the Northeast Conference on Teaching of Foreign Languages in Baltimore, MD. At this meeting, he hosted a best practices workshop and professional networking meeting with 20 teachers of Arabic who came from all over the United States.

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.