Adam's Page

Iʻm from San Francisco, CA. I originally hail from Buffalo NY, and lived in Seattle WA for over 20 years, a city is still near and dear to me. (I left my heart in Seattle?)

I work as a Chinese curriculum and tech integrator at the Chinese American International School (CAIS), a bilingual education K-8 school in the heart of SF. I also co-teach two online courses in advanced Chinese for CAIS grads when they are in high school. In the summer months, I work as a STARTALK Team Leader curriculum and evaluation consultant, and visit programs in critical languages across the country.

One thing that you should know about me is I have been a language geek since high school, and have dabbled in studying a number of languages, including Italian, Spanish and Japanese. Mandarin Chinese, however, is the foreign language I speak best. I also love to travel, and even had a 7-month, round-the-world adventure five years ago. Other hobbies of mine include cooking, tennis and choral singing.

A key idea or experience that has significantly influenced my philosophy of teaching and learning is the belief that students need to be engaged often in clearly articulated, learner-centered tasks, and PBLL is a key instructional method to make these tasks meaningful and relevant to students. At CAIS, we work to build much of our curriculum around the experiences students will have in international programs in 5th, 7th and 8th grades, and we wish to make PBLL more of an integral part of this curricular integration, which is not always an easy task with middle school-aged students!