The 2017 Berkeley STARTALK (nonresidential)Teacher Program will continue into 10th year, offering a 13-day online program (June 12-28, 2017) and a 2-week onsite program (June 29-July 14, 2017, no class on weekends and July 3rd and 4th). It offers 3 continuing education units. The online portion will offer 1) workshops, exercises, and discussions on National Standards, STARTALK Endorsed Principles for Effective Teaching and Learning, Chinese linguistics/pedagogical grammar, backward design for unit and lesson planning, and using the target language to teach; 2) Demo lesson critiques (using short lessons taped in mentor teachers' classrooms and/or STARTALK Classroom Video Collections; 3) Unit and lesson planning in groups with support from mentor teachers; 4)a technology workshop introducing technology applications for the 2017 STARTALK Program and for Chinese language classrooms.
The first week of the onsite program will focus on reinforcing online learning with hands-on projects including, 1) unit and lesson planning in groups with support from instructor and mentor teachers; 2) trial microteaching using lessons designed in groups; and 3) an information session focusing on the tests and courses required for the California Teaching Credential (licensure).
The second week of the onsite program will include mentor teachers' teaching demos and teacher participants' microteaching in the real classroom setting. In order to provide microteaching opportunities for every teacher participant, the 2017 program will recruit volunteer middle and high school students to be taught by the teacher participants in a real classroom setting during the second week of the onsite program (July 10-July 14).
The 2017 Berkeley Startalk Teacher Certification Enrichment Program
The 2017 program will continue to invite Berkeley STARTALK Teacher Program graduates holding California Teaching Credentials (licensure) to serve as mentor teachers for the teacher participants. They will assist participants with lesson planning and microteaching. They will also offer demo teaching for the participants, both online and onsite, and will work with the same group of teacher participants during the entire program. This approach proved very effective and was noted in the 2014 site visit report "What is working well" section: "The consistency of small group of participant teachers with the same mentor teacher throughout the online and onsite program... [helped to] develop a strong sense of community within the small groups." Since all mentor teachers are from previous STARTALK programs, a sense of "family" continues to grow each year. The 2017 program will continue to offer a 1-day post-program workshop for all previous Berkeley STARTALK Program graduates and Teacher Certification Enrichment Program candidates to share new lessons and teaching strategies. This will build up leadership capacity in the field, recruit certification candidates, and will provide opportunities for networking and connections within the Berkeley STARTALK family.