I am a Chinese Pre-K teacher at the International School of the Peninsula at Palo Alto in California. I work with a team of colleagues in an environment with different cultures and teaching through inquiry according to the International Baccalaureate® Primary Years Programme (IB PYP) framework, while also ensuring foundational skill acquisition, and collaborating extensively with English, French, and Chinese teachers.

Before that, I was an associate teacher in Lansing School District at Lansing in Michigan for 10 years. As an associate teacher for the Post Oak Elementary School Chinese Immersion Program, I taught Mandarin and built close relationships with both the students and their parents. I trained new lead teachers by providing teaching best practices on lesson plans, classroom norms, tasks management, managing cultural differences, and cross-cultural communication skills. I was the director of the after school dance programs for school from Pre-K to sixth grade by teaching and choreographing traditional Chinese dances. In addition, I have completed the IB PYP level 3 training. I have utilized the IB PYP concepts in class during my time in Post Oak Elementary School to encourage students’ critical thinking ability.

From 2013 to 2018 as the Chinese Instructor for Michigan State University’s Center for Language Teaching Advancement (CeLTA), I developed Chinese immersion teaching materials for children from ages 3 to 5 and for adults. I hosted a one-week summer camp focused on Chinese language and culture in Summer 2017 and 2018 through utilizing traditional Chinese music and dance.

There are five main sessions in my portfolio including teaching philosophy, curriculum vitae, pedagogical skills, experiential model, and reflection. You can find them in the horizontal menu on the top or through the table of contents.

This portfolio gave me an opportunity to demonstrate my competences as a Chinese teacher including planning, creating, assessing, experimenting and reflecting. Throughout the MAFLT program, I become an effective teacher in Chinese teaching and built my personal curriculum. There are so many evidence collected in this portfolio demonstrating my pedagogical skills including administration, assessment, culture, language proficiency, and technology. The experiential module is great example to showcase the evidence of my teaching competencies. I still continuously write down ideas, attend workshops, record teaching video, photograph lessons in action, create lesson plans, take language certification tests and do field work and keep them in my working portfolio. Please also find my reflection of studies in the MAFLT program.