APPLY TODAY for the 2024 Coccia-Inserra Italian Teaching Award!

Calling all Teachers of Italian at the K-12 Levels:

The Director of the Coccia Institute is delighted to announce the 2024 Coccia-Inserra Award for Excellence and Innovation in the Teaching of Italian (K-12). Recognizing the importance of acknowledging and motivating excellence in the teaching of Italian, the Coccia family and Lawrence Inserra, Jr., have established this significant award.

Our donors will be awarding a very generous prize of $5000 as the monetary component of the Coccia-Inserra Award for Excellence and Innovation in the Teaching of Italian (K-12) for the academic year 2024. These funds are to be allocated as follows:

a) $2500 is to be used exclusively to advance the Italian language and culture curriculum and programming within the recipient’s classroom;
b) $2500 is to be dedicated to the professional development of the winning teacher (for direct payment of academic fees to an institution of professional development in Italian language and culture at home or abroad).

We strongly encourage full-time language teachers certified in Italian who are teaching a minimum of two classes of Italian at the K-12 level to apply! Please note: The deadline for applications is extended until Sunday, September 15, 2024 at 11:59pm.

Our seventeenth annual Teaching Italian Symposium will take place on Friday, October 18, 2024 at the University Hall Conference Center at Montclair State University. The Coccia-Inserra Teaching Award will be presented on this occasion.

All applications and supporting material MUST be submitted electronically via this Google Form (one submission only per applicant). No paper submissions will be accepted. Applications will be considered incomplete if sent fully via email. For your convenience, attached is a copy of the guidelines for this year’s application. We recommend that applicants read the attached document first before submitting the Google form, as your work-in-progress will not be saved and the guidelines highlight all the required materials for a complete application.

If you would like additional information or have any questions, please feel free to contact Professor Mark Rotella, Director of the Coccia Institute, at rotellam@montclair.edu and Cristina Latino, Coccia Institute Program Associate, at coccia-assistant@montclair.edu.