CSMP

BAFLP offers a tiered professional development program series of three levels followed by an invitational leadership strand  so teachers participate in long-term professional development in a deep and meaningful way. Each of these programs is designed to meet the No Child Left Behind goals to support teachers in the development of their academic content knowledge and pedagogical skills. The programs are also in alignment with the national foreign language content standards to promote student achievement. 

Strand A “Effective Strategies for the Foreign Language Teacher”  

#039;times new roman', times;">This content is designed for newer teachers (those who may need to have a review of the basic principles and practices of language teaching and learning). It focuses on lesson planning and design in conjunction with national foreign language standards, classroom management and procedures, student engagement strategies, and student assessment and evaluation.

Strand B, “Unit Design for the Foreign Language Teacher” 

Building upon what participants learned in Strand A, the goal is to enable participants to use an understanding of second language acquisition and pedagogical content knowledge to plan thematic units.  Presenters begin with the backwards-design planning model (Wiggins &McTighe, 2005) to guide the teachers into formulating their own essential questions and core understandings for the instructional unit they will develop in this strand.

Strand C “Academic Literacy and Assessment” 

The participants in this strand are in their third year of the BAFLP professional learning community. The core focus of this strand is on developing students’ academic literacy skills, examining roadblocks to literacy, and using assessment data to guide instruction.  This type of sustained professional development focuses on content-specific pedagogy that integrates higher-level skills into teachers’ curriculum; strategies shown to benefit student achievement (Wiley and Yoon, 1995).

Mandarin and Japanese Strands

BAFLP also sponsors distinctive strands for teachers of Mandarin and Japanese specifically designed to address the needs of the Asian language teachers in the region. The strand focuses on standards-aligned instructional design, class management and procedures, engagement strategies, and assistance in preparing students for the Advanced Placement (AP) exams either in Chinese or Japanese beginning in level one.

Leadership Development Strand

The Invitational Leadership Development (ILD) strand, by contrast with Strands A-C, is an invitation-only seminar series held in the summer and throughout the academic year. The Team selects exceptional participants who have demonstrated leadership potential from the previous years’ programs. These participants are invited to apply to the Leadership Strand. They submit a statement of intent to participate, an application form, a self and a peer evaluation on their teaching and leadership skills and a letter of reference.

Tech Strand

The participants in this strand will employ the tenets of the new California World Language Content Standards in conjunction with educational technology to maximize your teaching effectiveness.  This will allow them to become proficient with computer-based and web 2.0 tools to plan and develop highly engaging lessons containing a mixture of images, text, recorded audio narration, video clips and/or music to enhance the acquisition of communicative and literacy skills in the classroom. Presenters will demonstrate model lessons and then help you take your lesson ideas and facilitate the process for developing them into effective lessons for your students. In addition, we’ll assist you to incorporate strategies for supporting at-risk learners such as special education students and English Language learners so that every student in your class can make progress toward achieving greater language proficiency.

In addition to the strands offered, BAFLP is working closely low performing schools such as James Lick Middle School as part of the Regional Partnership Initiative of Region 4. The purpose of the partnership is to support Lick in reaching their Quality Education Investment Act (QEIA) goals by providing on-going, coordinated professional development for the teachers of all disciplines to support them in improving and assessing student learning. The overarching goal of Region 4 CSMP effort will be to increase student learning by enhancing teacher content knowledge, improving teacher instructional discipline-specific content strategies, growing teacher leaders, sustaining professional learning communities, and evaluating teacher and student progress. This partnership will serve as a model for establishing partnerships with other low performing schools in San Francisco, San Mateo, and Santa Clara.