Learning Creatively 

All languages in the world are interesting. But Chinese is nonpareil, in that it’s a unique blending of music and painting, as spoken Chinese is singing: music, and written Chinese, painting: fine art. So when the two wed, it becomes a fascinating language that possesses a special visceral quality, as opposed to the cerebral Western languages. Led by Ben Wang, Senior Lecturer in Language and Humanities at China Institute this workshop is designed for K-12 educators to advance our understanding of the uniqueness of Chinese pictographic characters as a foundation of Chinese language and culture. This virtual workshop is presented by Confucius Institute at China Institute in collaboration with the New York University Project Developing Chinese Language Teachers (DCLT). 

On October 17th 2020, DCLT invited Yusi Gao, Helio Andres and Susanna Brock to present a compelling, interactive and humanistic approach to teaching language through drama, focused on remote teaching as we were all on Zoom! This workshop shows us how to bring fun and creativity into our classrooms -- for language teaching and other content areas! Many great idea for making Zoom interactive for children of all ages. 

Yusi, Helio and Susanna are graduates of the CUNY Masters program in Applied Theater, where they met and began to develop this workshop. 

On May 1st and 15th, 2020, DCLT hosted two virtual forums which focused on visuals for online teaching. After a month of online teaching, teachers were eager to share about their experience. Videos, resources and teaching practices that worked well during online teaching were shared in these forums. 

Discover China Through Art (DCTA) is a beloved art program that mainly draws on each of China Institute Gallery’s exhibitions to provide a lively experience for learning Chinese art and civilization. Join DCTA, China Institute and NYU Project DCLT for a special virtual field trip to the Art of the Mountain: Through the Chinese Photographer’s Lens. This exhibition presented 63 photography works from 27 photographers to illustrate the complexity of Chinese mountains, from their significance to sentiments. The virtual field trip will be followed by a discussion of how to use art and field trips in the teaching of language and culture. *There's no recording for this event.

Intercultural competence is the ability to interact and communicate with people from different cultures in a respectful and effective way. It is the bridge between diversity and inclusion and is key to creating welcoming learning environments for children of all backgrounds. This series of professional development events includes three events focusing on strategies to develop students' intercultural competence through a powerful tool: music. This series is cohosted by China Institute and NYU DCLT.