Basak Altan
Honoring A Century In A Meaningful Way
Basak Altan
What is your plan for casting your vote in ...
What is your plan for casting your vote in Turkiye's upcoming elections?
Basak Altan
DAY 6 OF BTF EARTHQUAKE RELIEF FUND UPDATE
DAY 6 OF BTF EARTHQUAKE RELIEF FUND UPDATE
Basak Altan
DAY 5 OF BTF EARTHQUAKE RELIEF FUND
DAY 5 OF BTF EARTHQUAKE RELIEF FUND
Basak Altan
Celebrating Turkish Republic Day.
Celebrating Turkish Republic Day.

WE ARE ON A ROLL !!! SPRING 2017 SEMESTER, HERE WE COME!

We thank all those who attended and participated at our open house and registration event this morning.  It was a great venue for many reasons.

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.

On the first day of school we will be asking our parents to sign up for the following:

  • Monthly Parent Classroom Coordinators
  • 2 Library Coordinators for the semester
  • BTS Ambassadors for:
    • Hosting Fundraising DInners
    • Organising Mothers' Day Brunch
    • Graduation Day Celebration & Gifts for Children
    • Hosting Teacher Appreciation Dinner

If you are interested in registering for this semester, please make sure to fill out our online registration here by JANUARY 25th, 2017.

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.

2017 Open HouseSM.jpg

Wrapping up another semester at the Berkeley Turkish School

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.

Teacher Appreciation Fundraiser Dinner Hosted By Leyla & Ross Benson

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.

MINDFULNESS WORKSHOP BY IREM RADZIK

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

CELEBRATING REPUBLIC DAY TOGETHER

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 also had great participation for our Fall Fundraising Initiative. We have so far raised $3160 dollars, with 56.4% participation! If you haven't donated yet, please do so online. Our fundraiser ends on November 15th. 

 

Thank you for your donations! Berkeley Turkish School Has New Library Books!

THANK YOU FOR YOUR CONTRIBUTIONS !

We are very happy to announce that our BTS library just received a new shipment of brand new books, and they look amazing!!!

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:

cemal kitabevi <cemalkitabevi@gmail.com>

 

 

 

A FANTASTIC SEMINAR ON MULTI CULTURAL PARENTING

Thank you Neslihan for an amazing seminar on multi cultural parenting that was extremely resourceful and full of laughter!

We again had a full participation, with lots of great questions and thought provoking issues raised. We feel that this was just a beginning and would love to have Neslihan visit our school again. For those of you who are interested in connecting with her, please email her directly at Neslihan Pinar: nespinar@gmail.com. We will soon share the forms as well as her presentation that Neslihan had shared with us at the end of her workshop.

Thank you all for participating!

A POWERFUL AND FULLY PACKED KIDPOWER WORKSHOP!!!

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.

 

Cheers to a great beginning at BTS!

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.

A great turnout at our Open House today!

We are very excited about the great energy and new faces that joined our school today at our open house and registration event. We also thank everyone for coming and registering their children as well as helping us prepare for this special day.

It is no doubt that this will be a very exciting new academic year at the Berkeley Turkish School. WE have a lot of newness and The number of students registered so far is the best turnout we have had since we opened our doors.   If you haven't registered yet, please do so online this week, so our teachers can prepare their class materials in advance.

Looking forward to seeing everybody on September 11th, our first day of classes!

 

New Shipment for our New Library

We are very excited as we just received our new shipment of our books for our new library from Turkey today. As we are preparing for our Open House & Registration on August 27th, we are inviting you all to begin registering your child on our website today. This will help our teachers plan better for September 11th, when the first day of school begins. Looking forward to seeing you and your family this fall at the Berkeley Turkish School! For More information regardin

Building our School's Library

Hello! We hope you are having a great summer!

This semester we are very excited to start our own school library! During the summer we were busy purchasing great Turkish Books for our students to read as a part of our school's curriculum during the semester. The cargo boxes began arriving and we are busy uploading the amazing selection to our online digital library. We have also established a great relationship with a bookstore in Izmir, who will be shipping us our books as we order new sets.

This semester each classroom will have their own library and BTS students will be able to checkout books.

If you would like to see our online library here is it link:

http://btslibrary.libib.com/

We are uplading new books as they arrive, and hope to be growing this great library with the help of our community. If you have any books that are in good condition, please bring them with your child to your classroom teachers. We are happy to add them into our library!

 

 

June Curriculum Meeting with our growing teaching team

Yesterday we held our June Curriculum Meeting with our Berkeley Turkish School teachers. Among us were our new teachers who will be joining us in the fall making this team one strong power house! Our teaching staff will be busy over the summer revising and re-designing our school's curriculum by incorporating the feedback from our survey results that our program coordinator Guney shared. We are excited ever more about the upcoming fall semester at BTS. Stay tuned for our early registration dates!

Celebrating together the ending of another year at Berkeley Turkish School

This past Sunday was our graduation ceremony at the Berkeley Turkish School as we celebrated the end of another year full of adventures, changes and festivals.

On behalf of the Berkeley Turkish School we wanted to say a big thank you to our students, parents, teachers and to our extended community for supporting us in our efforts to grow together as a community school. We could not have gotten this far without your endless support in believing in us and joining hands in achieving our mission.

In the next few weeks we will email more details about some exciting changes that we are planning for the fall semester to add better value to our education at BTS. Please stay tuned for early registration which will be opening in a few weeks.  Our open house will be held on August 27th, and our first day of fall semester classes will begin on September 11th, 2016.

Have a lovely summer and hope to see you and your family in the fall !

Educational Products Designed for Berkeley Turkish School

This Sunday, we had quite the excitement! Basak Altan’s California College of Arts Industrial Design Students delivered their final products that they have been developing during the course of the year in partnership with the Engage Program.   BTS students have been providing feedback on the products that focused on teaching culture through creativity. As a result, today was the day to receive the hand-over of these amazing games and educational tools that BTS will cherish during the semesters to come. One of the games, designed by Patrick Hill, was called a Mariner’s Odyssey exploring the coastal waters of Anatolia while the other was focusing on Turkish cuisine, designed by Bobbie Morris & LingFeng Hua.

Gulten Hanim’s class travelled from San Francisco to Istanbul with a plane that Gulten Hanim drew- Ofcourse they had their tickets and Turkish Lira’s ready.  Taliha Hanim, our science teacher, demonstrated lab experiments showing the buoyancy of salt water vs fresh water. Hopefully all of this will be handy information while some of our students are preparing to head off to the Mediterranean with their families.

Bay Area Turkish Society is a secular 501 (c) (3) nonprofit organization and is not associated with any other non profit or political movement.