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You joined BIM this summer. Before that, you worked in both the United States and China as an administrator, an educational consultant, and a teacher in elementary school, middle school, high school, and college. Quite a resume! How did you get into education? What was your journey to teaching?

My journey as an educator began after I had finished my bachelor’s degree. I started doing volunteer work in Chicago for a Saturday morning ESL class, and I just loved it. I loved the teacher; I liked the whole feeling. That was the turning point.

I looked into graduate programs. I settled on doing a program in applied linguistics at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Near the end of my program, I had been doing research on the pedagogy of writing, and specifically, what happens in university writing centers. My paper was accepted at the International Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) Conference in Vancouver. That was the place to go if you wanted to teach overseas.

Now, I had no intention to go overseas. At that time, I was planning to teach writing classes full-time at a community or local college. I had begun my higher education at a community college, so I had an allegiance to that whole process and what the people who start there can do. So that was my plan. But while I was at the conference, I thought, this is sort of silly to not go to the job fair to practice my interview skills and to see what it’s all about. I whipped up a resume, got several interviews, and ended up getting an offer from China. And long story short, it just made no sense, but I ended up accepting a job to go teach in Guangzhou. This was insane because several months before that, I had turned down a job in Iowa because I thought, “That’s too far from home. I’m from Chicago.”

So you went to China and that was your first time abroad. What was it like living and teaching there?

When I first went there, I told myself, I don’t know if I’ll even last the year… but I loved, loved, loved China.
When I first arrived, I was pretty new to elementary school teaching since during graduate school, my teaching experience consisted only of university and adult education. But upon arrival I was assigned to teach second grade in a bilingual school. They didn’t speak any English—and it was the first time I really had to deal with classroom management for kids—but I loved it. They were silly, they were naughty, they were amazing. And then at the end of that year, I got an offer to become principal of the English language center, responsible for about eleven teachers, three or four teaching assistants, and maybe 70 kids from grade one to grade 12. I was the principal of that little sub-school, and I truly enjoyed that.

I met my husband in China, and we came back to the States for a few years. I was teaching part-time at various colleges, Las Positas College in California, and Utah Valley University in Utah. It was usually in the English Department or sometimes the ESL department. And then in 2008—we had had three kids by then—we went back to China, and that’s when I started working at the American International School at Guangzhou.

Much of your early research and writing centered on teaching writing. Obviously, that’s a huge part of education and a big part of what we do at BIM. Tell me about your approach to writing.

I think it comes down to the combo of legitimate rigor and creating a classroom community where real writing can actually happen.

What struck me about teaching at the international school was that it was this sort of regimented Language Arts curriculum, where students read eight novels; they read each one, they do these pre-made comprehension questions, and they have little packets that go with them. And then everybody writes an essay. Around the same time I started teaching there, I was starting to study on my own about the Reading and Writing workshop out of Columbia University. The way that they approached writing was so welcoming and so down to earth, yet also really rigorous. And so that first year, we kind of revamped the reading and writing program. So, middle school students would have 10 minutes of independent reading at the beginning of class. And I thought that was really valuable if done right. Students were given more choice in writing, more time to read and write, and began to think about their audience. We wrote in a wider variety of genres, and we gave writing the time it deserved. I saw huge returns right away.

Then I moved down to primary school, to third grade, and began implementing a workshop approach there. We started using Reader’s and Writer’s notebooks. “Let’s do your reading, and then let’s make this cool notebook that you get to personalize, and let’s keep track of what you’re reading. Let’s write about your reading; you don’t have to do a book report, you’re not writing a full summary. This is more of a reading response—for you. What did you like, not like?” This was a huge change, and students really responded well. Their reading and writing improved so much. At that point, I’d taken some graduate courses at Columbia University, specifically around literacy and the Readers and Writers Workshop. It was great—my family came to New York City for the summer. My husband would take the kids to the museum every day, and I’d go to Columbia and study and write and just get super inspired. And then I was able to take that back and teach the other teachers this approach.

What did you take away from the Readers and Writers Workshop? What did it look like when put into practice in a classroom?

For example, with the writer’s workshop in third grade, first you establish the classroom routine, so everybody knows what to do. They come to the carpet, and the students are all seated in a certain spot. They’ve got their readers’ or writers’ notebooks in hand. And then, after I’ve introduced the teaching point for the day, for example, inference, we then have an opportunity for them to stop and reflect. They then go back to their tables, and maybe at that point, students are brainstorming lists of “first times” in their lives because we just read about how Brian baked a pie with his mom for the first time. After brainstorming, they might choose one of those first times, and write, and here’s the key: you’re going to use a pen. We’re not erasing-we are crossing out, and it’s okay to change our minds as we write. We’re not looking at spelling right now. This is about ideas. This is simply idea generation. It’s fast and furious writing; it’s just getting it on the page. It’s drafting, not editing at this point. Students need to know the difference.

That small moment stuff, that idea generation, that building, that community, it works. You build a community of writers where it’s safe and effective, and everyone’s going to try.

I love that. And I know that you not only teach writing, but you are also a writer yourself. Your memoir, How Sweet the Bitter Soup, was published in 2019. Can you tell me a little more about your own writing?

When I first moved to China, I was writing these weekly letters I would send to folks back home about what was happening. And then I had the idea that I should put this into a little book so that my kids would know the story of how my husband and I met. So really, that became the motivation for them to know the backstory. And then once I started putting it into book form, I realized that there were some themes there that certainly transcend me or China or a love story or cultural adventure. It really was more about overcoming obstacles.

The first time I put it together and thought, I’m going to send this to an agent and see what they think, was 2005. We went back to China in 2008, and I still had not published it. Then, after moving back to the States in 2018, I said, if I don’t have an offer to publish this within one year, I’m just going to put it aside… and it got published in 2019.
Are you writing anything else?

I’ve started two books. One is about health and transformation, and kind of more practical things. And then two years ago, I decided that I was going to try fiction. I did a draft, and I still like that book and want to do something with it. Before writing more books, though, I need to finish my dissertation. I just have to find the time.

Speaking of time, I don’t want to take any more of yours. I’ll let you get back to it. Thank you so much!

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