District News
Startalk grant helps teachers become certified in critical languages
Seattle Public Schools has received its sixth consecutive grant award, worth just over $124,000, for a summer-only Chinese, Arabic, and Hindi teacher certification program.
Known as the Startalk program, it is a project of the National Foreign Language Center based at the University of Maryland, and includes an elementary school language camp in those three languages.
The program will take place July 2-13 for the language camps, and July 16 to August 3 for the certification program.
Of the nation’s more than 130 Startalk programs, only Seattle Public Schools, in conjunction with Pacific Lutheran University, takes teacher candidates of the critical languages through teacher certification from start to finish.
To date, the program has helped 21 critical language teacher candidates become Washington state certified teachers. They teach in public and private schools, non-profits and community colleges across the state. Others are teaching nationally needed languages based on qualifying for conditional teaching certificates. Funding is made possible under the National Security Language Initiative, signed into effect in 2006.
The Initiative has two goals:
1) increasing the numbers of students studying critical languages, and
2) providing professional development for teachers of the critical languages, defined as Arabic, Chinese, Dari, Farsi, Hindi, Portuguese, Russian, Swahili, Turkish, and all Turkic languages.
Seattle Public Schools chose to work on teacher certification because to increase the numbers of students studying critical languages, there must be a supply of qualified and certificated teachers.
Critical languages are needed for local and national priorities in business, diplomacy, and national security.
Within Washington state, Chinese is especially important because China is one of our most important trading partners. As the most trade dependent of all the states, being conversant and knowledgeable in other languages is a foundational 21st century skill for our students. Hence, the importance of support for the District’s language programs and international schools.
For more information about language camp or critical language teacher certification, contact Betty Lau at belau@seattleschools.org.