CALL FOR PAPERS
EXTENDED TO JANUARY 31, 2013!

8th International Conference on Language Teacher Education

Preparing Language Teacher Educators to Meet National and Global Needs

     May 30–June 1, 2013
George Washington University
Washington, D.C.

Designed for practitioners and researchers involved in the preparation and ongoing professional development of language teachers, LTE 2013 will address the education of teachers of all languages, at all instructional and institutional levels, and in many national and international contexts in which this takes place including: English as a Second or Foreign Language (ESL/EFL) instruction; foreign/modern/world language teaching; bilingual education; immersion education; indigenous and minority language education; and the teaching of less commonly taught languages.

CALL FOR PAPERS––Extended deadline is January 31, 2013

• Submission guidelines (PDF)
• Submit abstract online

More information about the conference can be found on the NCLRC website.

This conference is sponsored by the National Capital Language Resource Center (The George Washington University. The Center for Applied Linguistics & Georgetown University), the Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy (The George Washington University), and the Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition (University of Minnesota).

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A friend from Starr King Elementary in San Francisco, my daughters’ school, moved to Beijing at the beginning of this school year. She’s working with a school there that has a Mandarin immersion summer camp which I’ve heard great things about. The program’s meant for folks who live in Beijing, but last year several families from our school basically decamped to China for a two to four weeks, renting business apartments in Beijing and signing their kids up for summer camp there. It could also work to have the kids stay longer but have parents rotate through, for example several families could pitch in together.

Here’s the brochure from the camp and some pictures from last year.

Check out their Facebook page

http://www.facebook.com/PAASSC

And web site

http://paassc.com/

Currently PAASSC is based in the San Francisco Bay area, but wouldn’t it be great if there were chapters around the country?

Computer scientist and web developer Nathan Yeung is a student at Brigham Young University’s Dept. of Computer Science–but more importantly a dad who was looking for a Mandarin immersion program for his own kids. What he wanted to was a nice interactive map that would let him search geographically for the programs closest to his home, but nothing like that existed. Being a computer scientist, he decided to write one. Using the list of Mandarin immersion schools I keep updated on this site, he sat down and wrote one. Way to go Nathan!

You can see it at ChineseImmersionSchools.com  here. He’ll be adding a Submit School feature later. Or you can send email to me and I’ll add it to the database available on this site here. We’re now up to 127 schools nationwide.

His site is  hugely useful for parents looking to find a Mandarin program near them. Kudos to Nathan, I’m sure he’ll have many visitors.

It’s also fascinating to see so graphically see the emerging clusters of programs nationwide.

Nathan’s lucky to live in Utah, home to the largest cluster:

There’s also a nice one in the San Francisco Bay area:

And one in the greater Los Angeles area.

Next comes Minnesota:

There’s a developing cluster in New York, but otherwise most areas seem to just have one or two schools.

From: American Councils for International Education <American_Councils_for_Internatio@mail.vresp.com>
Date: Mon, Jan 7, 2013 at 8:08 AM
Subject: State Dept. Grant Opportunities for Schools
To: lctl@umn.edu

Hello,
My name is Stephanie Heard and I work for American Councils for International Education in Washington, DC. We implement a program to help U.S. K-12 schools start or build their Arabic or Mandarin foreign language programs. This program, called the Teachers of Critical Languages Program (TCLP), is fully funded by the U.S. Department of State and provides your school with a native language speaker from Egypt or China to teach Arabic or Mandarin for one year.

I’m inviting you to join me for a live, online webinar this week so that you can learn more about TCLP and find out from program alumni what the benefits were to hosting an Arabic or Mandarin teacher at their school. Just mark your calendar and click on the links below to join the class!

For Hosting an Arabic Teacher, join me on Tuesday, January 8 at 4pm EST
http://www.wiziq.com/online-class/1007419-january-online-live-chat-with-tclp-host-an-arabic-teacher

For Hosting a Chinese Teacher, join me on Thursday, January 10 at 4pm EST
http://www.wiziq.com/online-class/963235-january-online-live-chat-with-tclp-host-a-chinese-teacher

I would appreciate your assistance distributing these links to anyone who you think is interested, and I am happy to answer any questions you have about TCLP or the online webinars. My contact information can be found at the bottom of this email, or please visit our website at http://www.tclprogram.org.

Thank you in advance for your collaboration, and I hope to “see” you this week in a webinar.

Best wishes,

Stephanie Heard
Senior Progam Officer, Teacher Programs
American Councils for International Education
1828 L Street, NW, Suite 1200
Washington, DC 20036
Tel: 202.833.7522
Fax: 202.833.7523

Not of such interest to parents, but a great event for teachers and administrators in Mandarin immersion programs. – Beth

Registration Now Open for the 2013 National Chinese Language Conference: Engage the Future

This is from Project Pengyou (朋友), the alumni network of the 100,000 Strong Initiative, which is a campaign aimed at dramatically increasing the number and diversity of American students in China. The goal is simple: to reach 100,000 American students in China over four years.

PENGYOU PICKS: TOP 10 CHINA BOOKS