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STARTALK comes to Trantwood Elementary
A fortunate group of VBCPS fifth graders will be learning Chinese this summer! It’s true. Thanks to a $50,790 grant secured by Department of Curriculum and Instruction foreign languages coordinator Dr. Maria Still, Trantwood Elementary School will host the STARTALK Summer Elementary Chinese Academy, a unique summer camp. Through a partnership with the National Foreign Language Center (NFLC) at the University of Maryland, STARTALK is Virginia Beach Schools’ first foray into summer language education.

The STARTALK Academy is three weeks in duration and begins on Monday, June 29, and ends Thursday, July 16. Students attend the camp for four days a week, from 8 a.m. to noon. According to Still, 45 fifth-graders will attend and be selected on a first-come, first-served basis. Students will receive instruction in Mandarin Chinese for approximately 75 percent of their time in class. In addition to the language immersion experience, students will learn about the Chinese culture as an integral part of their language use. They will also have opportunities to learn first-hand about cultural differences and similarities.

Trantwood principal Dr. Patricia Slaughter will host the Academy at her school and Still will serve as the contact person for the initiative. Lead teacher of the camp will be Dr. Zhijuan Zhang, who teaches Mandarin Chinese at the Global Studies and World Languages Academy at Tallwood High School. Ashley Jie Lian, a substitute teacher for VBCPS, and Nora Benedict, the Japanese teacher at Salem High School, will round out the three-person faculty. In addition, Zhang’s students from the Global Studies Academy will serve as volunteer teacher assistants.

Editor’s Note: You might recall that Zhijuan Zhang was featured in the May/June 2008 edition of Kaleidoscope. The story, East Meets West at Trantwood Elementary, highlights an after-school enrichment class in Mandarin Chinese sponsored by Trantwood. Here is the link.

The goal of the STARTALK Academy is multifaceted. Long term it is hoped that the academy will increase opportunities for language learning in the elementary school; set a model for other elementary schools to offer languages; focus attention on Mandarin Chinese, which may prompt the expansion of the program through an increased enrollment at the secondary level; promote community awareness of the need to begin language study in elementary school; and remind stakeholders of the need to learn a critical needs language such as Mandarin Chinese.

STARTALK is a national initiative in summer language education, affiliated with the National Foreign Language Center at the University of Maryland, which is administering the program. It provides summer student and teacher language experiences, academic courses, curricula, and other resources for foreign language education in less commonly taught languages in K-16 educational settings. Among the languages taught are Arabic, Chinese, Russian, Korean, Hindi, and Farsi. For more information about STARTALK, go to the following Web site: www.nflc.org/projects/current_projects/startalk/.