News Details

April 25, 2026 – Tradition Meets Innovation: CLTA-SC’s 2026 Spring Teaching Conference Concludes Successfully

The Chinese Language Teachers Association of Southern California (CLTA-SC), in partnership with La Salle College Preparatory, successfully hosted its 2026 Spring Teaching Conference on April 25, 2026. Centered on the theme “Tradition Meets Innovation: The Future of Culture-Based Pedagogy,” the conference brought together 98 educators for a full day of professional learning, collaboration, and exchange.

The program featured the CLTA-SC general membership meeting, a tour of the La Salle Innovation Center, in-depth conversations between textbook authors and classroom teachers, the National Lesson Plan Competition Awards Ceremony, and presentations by distinguished local educators on innovative approaches to cultural instruction and the practical application of artificial intelligence in teaching. Together, these sessions connected educators with valuable ideas, resources, and classroom-ready strategies.

Perry Martin, President of La Salle College Preparatory, opened the conference with welcoming remarks. He highlighted the school’s recent innovations in language and culture education and praised the vitality and accomplishments of the Chinese language program led by Tina Wang. He also encouraged Chinese language educators to continue advancing their teaching practices in an increasingly digital and AI-driven era.

Mr. Zheng-Han Li, Director of the Education Division of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Los Angeles, also addressed the attendees. During the general membership meeting that followed, CLTA-SC presented an overview of its recent accomplishments and featured an engaging report from the student-led Mandarin Moments project.

One of the conference highlights was a special textbook forum featuring Yamin Ma, author of Easy Steps to Chinese and representative of Beijing Language and Culture University Press, and Baocai Jia, a guest from Vista Higher Learning. For the first time, CLTA-SC brought together representatives and authors from multiple educational publishers for direct dialogue with classroom teachers. Participants engaged in thoughtful discussions about the principles behind textbook development, feedback from classroom implementation, and opportunities for developing future instructional resources. The session generated lively and productive exchanges.

During lunch, attendees enjoyed a thoughtfully prepared vegetarian meal provided by the Tzu Chi Foundation. The highly anticipated Lesson Plan Competition Awards Ceremony followed. The competition was led and coordinated by CLTA-SC board member Fei Li of Marlborough School. Working closely with the judging committee, she helped recognize eight educators whose lesson plans demonstrated exceptional quality and innovation:

Shiang-Yun Wu, Ruijie Anita Ying, Dan Li, Jingshuang Liu, Pei-Ying Lin Gosselin, Hsiao-Yun Liao, Wei Yang, and Muriel Mengyu Zhang.

The award recipients later presented their winning lesson plans in breakout sessions, sharing their instructional goals, design processes, and classroom applications with fellow educators.

The conference also featured a series of practical and engaging presentations:

  • Yuping Zeng shared differentiated instructional strategies for teaching Chinese food culture to students from diverse backgrounds.
  • Shulan Yang and Yulin Shen demonstrated an immersive, hands-on lesson that integrated environmental awareness with the art of Chinese floral design.
  • Li Xu explored how to balance and integrate traditional and contemporary cultural instruction in college-level Chinese heritage language courses.
  • Angela Liao presented practical approaches to using generative AI to enhance community-based curriculum development.
  • Lizhao Liu demonstrated how Gemini and NotebookLM can improve the efficiency of lesson planning for immersive language instruction.
  • Jingyan Zhang introduced strategies for using contemporary news topics and guided reading activities to inspire students to take greater ownership of their Chinese language learning.

This conference marked CLTA-SC’s 11th professional development event of the year. Its success reflected the thoughtful planning and close collaboration of the organizing committee, whose members included Eddie Liu of Florence Nightingale Middle School, Jiabei Li of Mark Twain Middle School, Jingshuang Liu of Sierra Madre Middle School, Joyce Chu of TCMLEFCI, and Na Wang of La Salle College Preparatory.

With 348 members representing K–16 education, CLTA-SC serves as a vital professional network for Chinese language educators throughout Southern California. With the generous support of its community partners and sponsors, the association continues to build a collaborative ecosystem centered on Chinese language teaching and dedicated to the sustained advancement of Chinese language education. The success of this conference once again demonstrated CLTA-SC’s professional leadership and its commitment to guiding the field forward in an era shaped by digital innovation and artificial intelligence.

‍