One way of us reaching out beyond the Berkeley Turkish School Community is hosting parent seminars and inviting other schools. This Sunday, BTS hosted a fantastic workshop with Kid Power. Over 42 participants attended this seminar where both parents and children learned and practiced about safety plans. Check out our events page for more seminars to attend at our school.
On this busy day we also celebrated our fabulous co-founder Başak Çakıcı Adams's birthday. We are so lucky to have her and her lovely family as a part of our community. Cheers to many years together Basak'cim!
Here are some photos from our day.
This past Sunday, Spring was in the air at the Berkeley Turkish School. Here are some images from Elma Agaci classroom...
During turbulant times like these, we are reminded of how important it is to belong to a larger community that values diversity and peace. While our little global citizens joined their classmates with their teachers in their classrooms, we the Berkeley Turkish School Parents brainstormed together over coffee about what this community school means for each of us. We elaborated on what and how each one of us could help to achieve these goals as a community school. Out of this very valuable brainstorming session came out some great insights, and information. We realize this is just the begining and it takes diligence, commitment and time to deliver on these. However we are confident that they are attainable, because we all witnessed the level of commitment and energy behind all of our parents who participated. We are very excited to report that we now have key parents leading certain tasks to grow our community school.
Thank you for being a part of this meaningful community. We couldn't do without your support and dedication.
As we receive photos from our first day we will be posting to our blog. See you all next Sunday!
Our teachers and directors just completed a fruitful and productive leadership workshop last week, conducted by Roxanna Draddy, a professional executive career coach. Roxanna will also visit our school in March to hold a seminar for parents. Irem Radzik also introduced our teachers to mindfulness practice to help in their teachingand she will be visiting our classrooms for numerous activities/exercices with our children. This was a great opportunity for our team to get to know each other better, and strengthen the foundations of our core team.
Here are some photos from our event.
We were excited to meet new faces, and catch up with old friends. It was also great to hear from our teachers whom each gave an overview of their classrooms' goals and activities for the semester and how parents can support their efforts. We also went through what is new this semester.
Our teachers will be preparing for their classroom needs based on this roster, so please go ahead and sign up now. First day of classes are on February 5th, 2017.
Thank you and looking forward to a great semester together.
On this brisk December morning with some recent sad news from Turkey, we sang along to songs accompanied with one of our parents Tuğsan and his guitar that warmed our hearts. We watched slide shows that reminded us how much we had all grown together and how much we all had accomplished in such a short time. We enjoyed lovely conversations over coffee while tasting delicious suböreği, pide and many more Turkish treats our parents brought. Together, we managed to squeeze a lot of meaningful moments of appreciation of this community, hugs, laughter and a few tears here and there. As we wrapped up the ending of another semester at the Berkeley Turkish School we were yet reminded of how precious life is. Here are some scenes from the day. Wishing you Happy Holidays from all of us at The Berkeley Turkish School.
We thank our lovely Leyla and her husband Ross Benson for hosting an amazing evening with the most delicious Turkish food prepared by Leyla's lovely mother Nil Hanim. It was truly a lovely get together for a very meaningful cause. Lovely company, lovely conversations and much appreciation of what a supportive community our small school has...Here are some images from the evening. We also thank all of our school parents who donated to this event but couldn't be there with us this evening.
We had an amazing mindfulness workshop by Irem Radzik. We were given many reminders as parents, and simple ways in which we can bring mindfulness to our daily life. It was so great that we returned back to the workshop for a second session after snacks. Irem provided our parents minfulness exercises and games for our kids. We are looking into incorporating these amazing new skills into our own classrooms with our teachers in the spring semester.
Thank you for all who attended!
"Yesterday's the past, tomorrow's the future, but today is a gift. That's why it's called the present." Bill Keane
Together we celebrated the Republic Day on this rainy day at the Berkeley Turkish School. While the Elma Agaci and Manolya classrooms sang along to "Bak Postaci Geliyor " accompanied with Tugsan's guitar, The Cinar Agaci Classroom sang and danced along with their parents to the republic march. The Ceviz Agaci classroom was busy playing games.
No "Bayram" would be complete with delicious "su boregi" and helva along side of coffee.. so thank you Yildiray Bey for the delicious food!
We are very thankful for our 4th classroom teacher Zeynep Civcik's parents who have generously offered to carry our books from our bookstore in Izmir... The cost of shipping is sometimes equivalent to the cost of ordering the books. We really appreciate our community's help in carrying our books for us. This is one of the great examples of how your donations to our school, return back to your children, and your community.
Incase you would like to order Turkish books for your children, we work with a great modest bookstore in Izmir. They hand select great children's books for us and are also kind enough to personally box and mail your shipment. You can email them directly, place your order and they will ship it to you. You can also reference our library for titles and names.
The bookstore contact is:
As the Berkeley Turkish School we hosted our first Kid Power seminar this past weekend. We had an amazing turnout, 36 parents and friends of BTS attended. Everyone was fully engaged with the valuable techniques that Zoe shared with us. At the end of our seminar we received many requests from our parents to continue the series, so we have began the planning of the next seminar already! Thank you all for coming and taking part in this important seminar!
In the event you have missed this workshop, we purchased 4 books from Kid Power for our library. 2 of which are great comic books for you to read with your children. The other two books are excellent guides on what adults need to know about bullying.
If you like and endorse events like our educational parent seminars, we encourage you to support our Fall Fundraising Event so we can continue them at a lower cost to our community.
We spent some outdoors time finishing off the day with lots of games outside. It was yet another beautiful fall weather. We thank many families who have began donating to support our fall fundraising! Here are some scenes from the garden as well as from inside of our classrooms.
This weekend Gulten Hanim's Elma Agaci classroom had a visit from our science teacher Dr. Taliha Pasaoglu. Here are some scenes from our first October Sunday.
Today was the first day where our students checked out their first BTS library books and went home with their new canvas bags. Hurray to new books, new stories, andnew beginings! Here are some scenes from today, enjoy!
Cheers to a great beginning of the 2016-2017 Academic year at the Berkeley Turkish School. It was a fun day full of great energy, excitement and many new faces. We thank all of those, especially our teachers, who have been working really hard in the background to prepare for this great start. We have 49 students registered for the fall semester. Thank you on behalf of the Berkeley Turkish School for joining our growing community where we teach culture through creativity. Here's a few scenes from our first day.
We will be opening the doors of our school in two days, and we already have 45 students registered!!!
If you haven't done so, please register online so our teachers prepare for their classrooms.
Looking forward to seeing everyone at the school at 10.
Remember to arrive early!
Looking forward to seeing everybody on September 11th, our first day of classes!
Bay Area Turkish Society is a secular 501 (c) (3) nonprofit organization and is not associated with any other non profit or political movement.
