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How do the different places and environments you have learned and taught in compare to one another? 

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How do the different places and environments you have learned and taught in compare to one another? 

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“I do like this country more than China governmentally. You have a lot more freedom here than a place that's ruled by one party. I'm not a very political person. I would never say being political is part of my identity, but it does really affect you and your family. I'm thinking my the future of my children. I want them to be somewhere that they have freedom to choose. Instead of being told what to do for their whole lives like what I went through. I love my culture and my people, but I don't like the political system in China, where you have absolutely no speech freedom and don’t have the right to vote. Those things do really affect every aspect of your life and it's by God's grace that I'm here today. I still can’t believe sometimes how I end up being here, from such a controlling place; so, overall, I like it better here. I have the freedom to believe in God, I have the freedom to choose schools I want to send my girls to, and I feel like there is a higher level of trust between people here than people there.“

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Are there any practices that may seem ‘traditional’ in your current institution that differ from previous institutions? -Are there practices from your culture that contradict practices in your current environment? -Are there practices from your culture that are represented in your current environment?

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Are there any practices that may seem ‘traditional’ in your current institution that differ from previous institutions? -Are there practices from your culture that contradict practices in your current environment? -Are there practices from your culture that are represented in your current environment?

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“In my culture it's a very communal culture versus the culture here is very individualistic. So, in my culture, we regularly get together with family and friends, even in the last minute, they would just drop everything and then hang out with you. But here it's more about, ‘oh, you need to plant things like 3 months ahead so I can make sure I am available to you at that time.’ That has been a little bit difficult for me. So, collective, meaning we really value friends and family. I think people here do too, but we value to the point that we could just drop our own personal life to be with others. So, in my home that will look like hospitality, right? We have friends and family over, like almost every single night. Maybe like five nights out of seven days of a week.”

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How does your culture, religion, etc. play into your conventions and values as a teacher? 

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How does your culture, religion, etc. play into your conventions and values as a teacher? 

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"I mean that really permeates all aspects of my life. That's my core values, so that affects what kind of mom I wanted to be and what kind of teacher I want to be. My religious belief is very important to me and I should say that is the most important identity for me: To be a believer. My core value is to love people, love people despite their differences because everybody is created out of the image of God. Therefore, everyone needs to be treated with dignity and respect. Some of my students may believe in very different things from me, but that doesn't hinder me from loving them."

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In what ways has your experience and practices as a teacher been enriched or impacted by your bilingualism?  

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In what ways has your experience and practices as a teacher been enriched or impacted by your bilingualism?  

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"I'm able to, to compare the two educational systems I have been through now so I can see the good and bad from both. So, I'm able to balance between two different systems and you know just take what's good from each and then use them both to my own advantages or to the benefits of my students. I think that part is definitely an enrichment."

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How do you feel your identity has played a role in your teaching practices? In your relationship and understanding with students and peers? 

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How do you feel your identity has played a role in your teaching practices? In your relationship and understanding with students and peers? 

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"I'm a completely different person before and after I become a mom. So, before I became a mom, I think I was a lot more inflexible with my students. I'm a person with high expectations for myself, but sometimes I get frustrated when my students don't share the same expectations that I have for them. So, I tended to get frustrated with them easily. But after becoming a mom, I see how little kids learn. I feel like I've become more empathetic with my students. Knowing when you first start learning something, it's a process and you have to be patient with people you. I think I'm just a lot more gracious and patient with my students now, so my identity as a mom definitely helped me become a better teacher. I would say in many ways, more gracious, more patient, even with my adult students, because I know when you first learn something we're all kind of like little kids."

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Being an immigrant in this country and how that affects my teaching: Like I mentioned earlier, it's the fact that you didn't grow up in the local culture. Sometimes it is a little troublesome. Differences that cause misunderstanding between you and your students and your coworkers. As we talked about in this class, our ways of thinking are so different because of different culture contexts we grew up. So, maybe, it's a way of me showing my care for students that may be interpreted as getting into people's personal business. But in my culture, that might be our way of showing you care. For example, in Chinese culture, you will greet people by asking people ‘where are you going?’ or ‘have you eaten?’ That's our way of showing our care for, for people. But here when you ask people that they're like, ‘do I have to tell you that?’ That translates to misunderstandings between me and people who grew up in this culture and in terms of academic understandings. There are times I struggle with what to say because English offer all is not my first language, and especially when I'm tired, I struggle with coming up with the words or sentences I want to. Sometimes my words don't accurately express exactly what I want to say. So, I say it a lot, ‘is this making any sense to you?’ ‘Am I being clear?’ because I was afraid that my students didn't understand me because of my language limitations.

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Tell me about yourself and your identity.

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Tell me about yourself and your identity.

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"I was born in China in the Hunan Province and I immigrated here in 2012. I came here to become a Chinese teacher at American public, but I trained and became certified and found my passion in education. After I ended my contract with Little Rock schools I pursued my doctorate in education and this is what landed me here in Fayetteville. So, I am a first-generation immigrant, a teacher, a mother, and a Christian."

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"I would say being an immigrant here has taught me a lot over the years. Sometimes it can be pretty challenging because you have a different set of culture references and of course Arkansas is still not as diverse. Sometimes it feels difficult to talk to people who don't have a global or worldly vision, and don't have many international or different experiences."

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"To me, as a bilingual person, I share with you [students] all the time, ‘in China, this is what we do.’ You know, hopefully my students were interested in learning about me. You know I think, generally speaking, people want to know more about others or other cultures. I hope it wasn't just extra to them, but it was actually beneficial to them or help them, maybe. Hopefully in the future when they encounter a Chinese person, they have remembered something I said. Maybe that helped them to reach out to that person better, you know."

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“Since I moved here, I learned that's not how everybody functions. So when I first heard about it, I was like, ‘well, you're just by yourself, why don't you want to do something with us together?’ But to them as American, ‘that's my plan, I will stick with it, no matter if I'm doing something by myself or with other people.’ In Chinese culture, it's we're very flexible.”

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"Nobody wants to leave their homeland unless they have to, because after all, you have to get used to a different environment, and not being able to always fully understand people and their culture. It's just such a struggle."

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"I think nowadays people kind of put an equal mark between love and agreement, but we all know we can still love somebody without having to agree with them. I disagree with my daughter like 100 times a day, but I still love her more than anything."

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What has been your experience in the school system? As a student, a teacher, and a parent?

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What has been your experience in the school system? As a student, a teacher, and a parent?

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"I would say as a teacher it was a big culture shock. I will never forget the first year of my teaching career. In American school systems engagement is very important, you want to make sure your students are engaged, you have fun, and have interactive activities. Where as in Chinese education system its a lot of spoon-feeding and direct teacher and you don't get to interact with the teacher or each other a lot. Its mainly the teacher acts as the authority of knowledge and you just learn the knowledge they have to pass on to you, so it is very different. It really is fascinating to me, and that is why I became so passionate about understanding more about how education works in this country, because I like it much better than what I went through as a student in the Chinese education system."

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"I like it when teachers engage you and care about you. I don't like the 'just sit there and get', just sitting and 'getting' knowledge from the teachers. The learning became just about passing tests, getting good scores, and not really about learning. Learning was not fun, it was just lots of work. After I became a teacher here I wanted to make learning fun, meaningful, and engaging to my students. I truly believe each individual student brings their own unique assets to the class, so why not utilize that? Even peers can be great teachers."

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"Here its more about understanding why we learn what we learn and how can you learn even when the teacher is not around. You're not learning for the teachers, you learn because you enjoy learning."

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"Being bilingual helped me understand people's struggles better. Like if I have students who come from a different culture to speak a different language at home, I'll be like, ‘wow, I know it does take a lot more effort for you to learn something than people who already speak the language.’ So, I have students in high school who speak Spanish, or Marshallese. I understand sometimes it may take them longer to do something because of linguistic and culture differences. I've always I have also seen how that serves as enrichment to them as well. Students in my Chinese class, who already speak 2-3 different languages, they pick up Chinese the quickest. They understand how languages work better. I mean, the textbook, it says ‘the more you know, the easier you know.’"

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"You know, there are things that are unspoken, and are invisible struggles to immigrants; things people who grew up here may never experience and t's kind of hard to explain to people as well because they never experience themselves. There are opportunities that you don't get just because you don't speak the language and know the culture. It's all the invisible things."

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"I will say being bilingual or trilingual definitely is precious. I mean it really makes you a better learner and better teacher. Yeah. In the future, I hope I share more of my culture and language heritage with my students. No matter what I teach."

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"I’ll give you an example: humor, right? Americans really love humor, like during conversations. It would be so great if you understand each other and you pick up on jokes., but when you are foreign, you speak a different language. It's hard to understand and most of the time you just kind of stand there either pretending that it's funny or not. So it's hard for you to make that connection. There are times people are talking about movies that they grew up watching or music that they grew up listening. But you grew up listening completely different music. You're like, what are you guys talking about? I've never watched that movie. It's just kind of hard for people to continue that day-to-day or even deeper connections and shared experiences. You feel left out, you feel left out in the conversation or in the activity because your culture upbringings are different."

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"I think it would really help if everybody is more open minded and took the time to be inclusive. Just slow down, explain to them and say, ‘would you like to watch that movie sometime together?’ Or ‘I could explain it to you?’ Instead of being dismissive and excluding them. Like it's not worth the time to just include you in the conversation. That would be a seemingly small thing, but very hurtful.

That's why I think it's important for everybody to have that experience of being a foreigner, then you understand what it's like when you don't speak the language and don't know the culture. When you go to a different country. You're immediately humbled as a little kid. You have to ask people for all kinds of things. You're not as independent as you wish you could be anymore. That's how we feel. A lot of times.

Well, and I feel like that's one of the things of social norms, you feel like you get figured out too and then you meet somebody who's an outlier and they act completely different and you're like, ‘well, did I figure it out or not?’ It's kind of hard to navigate. "

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"You know, there are hateful people everywhere. If you think your culture is better and you judge people who are different from a higher place, that is very disconcerting and disrespectful. I think a lot of times when people have prejudices, they think because you are different or don't speak English, then you're less intelligent. But if you really genuinely think, ‘OK, we're just from different cultures. Different doesn't mean deficit or weird, it's just they have different ways of doing things.’ or ‘I genuinely want to learn from you. I genuinely want to help you’. Sometimes that help seems to be a little awkward, but I still feel appreciated because we understand you do it out of love instead out of judgment."