As a professional Mandarin instructor with almost two decades worth of teaching experience in American schools, I came to recognize how language-learning in a school setting is only one step in the long journey of acquiring a foreign language. I felt a need and urge to bring my profession beyond school, and I believe professional teaching should be accessible to anyone at any point in their life. It is with this belief that I founded MAD Mandarin LLC in 2018 with the goal to incorporate the latest teaching methods with my own innovative approach of Mindful-Active-Dynamic to positively achieve the best language-learning results.
A teacher must first be a learner.
“Learning is too important to be taken seriously —— it should be fun.
”
宋老师，
一个有想法，一直在想办法的中文老师
“My goal is to prepare you to use Mandarin in real life and for true needs. I am not a tester, judger, and evaluator, but I am your HELPER. ”
Teaching is not a job but a mission.
“You are a born teacher,” I heard it a lot from my supervisors and my studetns. “Am I?” I asked myself. I appreciate the compliment, but maybe I am not.
When I first became a teacher at age 17 in China, after three years of teacher training, Song laoshi (teacher Song) was the title I did not like that much. However, leaving my teaching job was not a choice because it was my livelihood.
The chance to leave teaching came 20 years later after I received my BA from UC Berkeley. Surprisingly, I heard a firm and robust voice from my heart: “Stay!” I did not know from what point I started to be passionate about teaching. It seemed like that after traveling thousands of miles, I found the starting point was indeed my destination.
Actually, my role as a student revealed to me the merits and values of being a teacher. While studying in the US for my AA, BA, and MA degrees, I held several responsibilities: a full-time student, a part-time teacher, and a new mother. It was challenging.
I could not dare to start my learning ambition without my teachers’ understanding and encouragement; I could not succeed without my teachers’ help and believing in me. The power of being a teacher is to reveal others’ riches to themselves and help them become who they want to be. I wanted to be like the great teachers who helped me grow.
Also, my love and desire to learn are satisfied by teaching, which requires constant learning. My learning is not limited to language teaching but extends to any field that helps understand teaching and learning. For example, studying human behavioral transformation at Duke University gave me the knowledge and skills essential to form my innovative teaching approach of Mindful-Active-Dynamic. Besides, I have been studying Russian and French languages to understand language teaching from a learner’s perspective.
Teaching is not just about qualification, it is also about the heart. Only after discovering the meaning and value of being a teacher, I become a teacher.
