For the seventh consecutive year, Dr. Benjamin Semple, director of the Paris Program, French professor, and 16 year member of Gonzaga’s faculty, was awarded $90,000 from the National Security Agency’s STARTALK initiative, a grant program which is subcontracted through the University of Maryland. The program awards grants to those teachers who are willing and qualified to instigate a summer language program in which one of the strategic languages, such as Chinese or Arabic, is taught to K-12 participants.
Dr. Semple, a 25-year language teacher, is in charge of directing Chinese instruction funded via STARTALK here in Spokane. His role is to apply for the grant, and once accepted, finds faculty, students and a lead instructor who speaks Chinese, for the program. The grant money goes towards payroll for the teachers, teacher assistants, administrators, and other staff, and classroom materials like textbooks. Together, they construct a curriculum for their summer students.
This summer they are expected to have, and usually do have, six different classes separated by age and language proficiency. The program is carried out here on GU’s campus during a 3-week session for elementary students and a 4-week session for middle and high school students.
A student works on a Chinese assignment during last year’s STARTALK Chinese Program, a summer course organized by Dr. Semple.
One of the challenges Semple and his colleagues face is the size of the program, saying that seventy students during the summer course is a lot to handle. But they do it gladly, and, as Semple says, “[The program] pushes me to stretch my skills. It’s really good for my own teaching.” Semple says his involvement in the STARTALK grant has given him a chance to reflect on his own teaching practices, enabling him to undergo what he views as another apprenticeship in the middle of his career, something he calls “unexpected but beneficial.” During the two conferences STARTALK recipients are required to go to yearly, Semple has the chance to network with other language faculty nationwide and receive training. In turn, he injects that training into the instruction he gives to the teachers of the summer Chinese courses here in Spokane. Undertaking this responsibility has shown Dr. Semple the significant value and importance of total immersion in his own French classes. From day one in his lower level French classes, Semple speaks 90% French, working gradually towards 100% immersion. This takes “a tremendous amount of preparation,” Semple says. “You have to be working with a limited vocabulary and non-verbal support materials. You have to be ingenious in coming up with activities that are appealing to students when they are trying to learn this language.”
Not only has the STARTALK grant been beneficial to Semple and learners of Chinese, but it has also impacted the school districts in Spokane. Semple says he has already seen one high school offering Chinese instruction where there was not any before STARTALK. There is also rumored to be a second. The level of interest in Chinese instruction is beginning to be recognized, and to respond to that, Semple will focus this summer’s networking and instruction on working with the Spokane school districts.
In addition to watching expansion of language teaching occurring in Spokane, the highlight for the summer course is typically the final performance, says Semple. The second grade class performs a song about pandas, wearing panda paws and hats; the animation of that age group, Semple says, is so much fun to be around. Furthermore, Semple can see the language learning taking place. “Something I’ve always believed,” he says, “is that language learning can be taking place so much earlier.”