U.S. K-12 schools can host a fully-funded teacher from Egypt, Morocco, or China with the help of Teachers of Critical Languages Program (TCLP) grants. TCLP is fully-funded grant sponsored by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the U.S. Department of State. Through TCLP, schools can start new critical language programs or expand existing programs by hosting teachers of Arabic or Chinese as a foreign language.
This grant is available to elementary, middle, and high schools (K-12). The exchange teachers teach English or Arabic/Chinese as a foreign language at their home institutions and are generally a mix of elementary and secondary teachers. All host schools are asked to cover the cost of applying for teaching certification (if this is necessary to teach at the school) and to locate a temporary, two-week homestay for the exchange teacher when they first arrive. In addition to these costs, there are three funding levels available for the grant:
- Fully-Funded: The host school pays no additional cost to participate in TCLP.
- Partially-Funded Level I: The host school cost-shares housing for the exchange teacher (i.e. homestay, apartment, rented room). All other program costs are covered by the grant.
- Partially-Funded Level II: The host school cost-shares housing and $32,000 to cover program costs.
Host schools may apply for a fully-funded grant up to two years. A chart with the full description of the funding levels and the grant’s provisions is available on the TCLP website.
To learn more about the program, you can attend a live webinar on January 4 at 4pm EST to learn about the fully-funded grant, the application process, and to hear from a U.S. school about the impact that a TCLP teacher had on its language program and community.
The webinar on January 4th will be an interactive roundtable with two alumni from the program who have hosted TCLP teachers at their schools and served as mentors for those teachers. Attendees will be able to ask the alumni guests questions about hosting teachers and about their experiences with the grant overall. This roundtable will last approximately 1 hour. There is also a 30-minute informational recording on the TCLP website that goes over the grant’s provisions, requirements and application process: http://tclprogram.org/host-school-application.
Interested parties can apply now to host an Arabic or Mandarin language teacher for the 2018-19 school year. The application deadline for TCLP host schools is Monday, January 22, 2018 at 11:59pm EST.
