Teaching and learning — why?
My teaching journey began when I prepared international students for the Ministerial Examination of College English (EEE); we analyzed short stories from authors like Ernest Hemingway, Edgar Allan Poe and Oscar Wilde.
I continued this path and started teaching CEGEP students all things related to written communication (humanities, philosophy, english, etc.)
While this happened, I had just switched my major to Finance where I discovered an interest for case analysis (love at first sight, kind of). I quickly subscribed to Bloomberg and New York Times, and followed my favorite companies on their latest news. This was the beginning of a successful love story between case analysis and I as I started teaching this course to international students.
As a Chinese born Canadian, teaching a formal class in Chinese was a completely different story than speaking it — economies of scale (规模经济 guī mó jīng jì)? economies of scope （范围经济 fàn wéi jīng jì)? Will they notice if I type on my iPad to translate words? Eek.
When it was time to teach this class, I prepared a script that I translated over and over again. I remember my mom telling me, “you’re getting paid 90$ for 16 hours of work, hmm”
Slowly, teaching became a major part of my life. I got to expand my small network of a few students to now twenty students on average per semester. In the book “I’m the Teacher, You’re the Student”, Patrick Allitt mentions how students become like family members, and you care for them more than you should, and this was exactly how I felt.
During these years, I listened to my students’ memoirs and have them relate short stories to their own story. My heart melted on so many occasions reading short stories with them and listening to them talk about the small things in their life.
Learning has always felt personal. When asking others for help, I feel like, in some way, I’m asking for them to be part of my life.
Favourite short stories:
- The Snows of Kilimanjaro by Ernest Hemingway
- An Easy Life by Bronwen Wallaces
- The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu
My grandmother was a professor in China, and so was my mom. When I first prepared my class notes late at night, I thought about my grandmother because I missed her. I wish I could ask my grandmother what it was like teaching in China. I would want to listen to her stories and hear what she liked about teaching, what she struggled with, and what she learned as a teacher.
