Meng-Jinn Laoshi

I teach Man­darin lan­guage to kindergarten-age chil­dren at the Tzu Chi Acad­e­my, an affil­i­a­tion of the Tzu Chi Bud­dhist Relief Foun­da­tion. Pre­vi­ous­ly, I worked as an admin­is­tra­tor at GMIS, a Man­darin immer­sion Montes­sori preschool. In April 2009, I vol­un­teered as a Chi­nese teacher at the Instill­ing Good­ness School at the Gold Moun­tain Monastery in San Fran­cis­co. As my involve­ment in teach­ing increased, my desire to work with young chil­dren grew. I enrolled in cer­tifi­cate pro­gram to sharp­en my lan­guage teach­ing skills.

I have a mas­ter degree in Pub­lic Health from UC Berke­ley and a Ph.D. in Behav­ioral Sci­ence from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, San Fran­cis­co. I have worked on var­i­ous research projects cen­ter­ing on social and envi­ron­men­tal influ­ences on sub­stance use and oth­er prob­lem behav­iors among youth.

I teach Man­darin Chi­nese at after-school lan­guage pro­grams to ele­men­tary school chil­dren for sev­er­al years. My expe­ri­ence includes teach­ing dif­fer­ent lan­guage lev­els (from begin­ners to advanced 3rd grade equiv­a­lent Chi­nese). I help sup­ple­ment stu­dents who attend Man­darin immer­sion school pro­grams as a pri­vate tutor.  I am famil­iar with Kangx­u­an, Nan-Yi, and Mei Zhou Hua Yu cur­ricu­lum mate­ri­als. I improve student’s read­ing abil­i­ty and teach writ­ing com­po­si­tion to help kids write their own sto­ries in Chi­nese.

Heather Hsieh Plumberg / 謝宏媛女士

Heather spent 15 years work­ing in Taipei, New York, Hong Kong and Sin­ga­pore as a jour­nal­ist and a cor­po­rate and mar­ket­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions pro­fes­sion­al con­sult­ing with multi-national com­pa­nies head­quar­tered in East Asia, the U.S, the Mid­dle East and Europe. She is also a moth­er of a bilin­gual child who is grow­ing up in this dig­i­tal age inun­dat­ed with mobile gad­gets, fake news, and con­tra­dic­to­ry infor­ma­tion. Com­bin­ing her work and life expe­ri­ence, her per­son­al pas­sion in his­to­ry, and a mis­sion to fos­ter glob­al cit­i­zens that are well-informed, tol­er­ant, and inde­pen­dent thinkers, Heather start­ed “Mrs. Plumberg’s News­room” in 2017 offer­ing coach­ing, work­shops and one-on-one tutor­ing to com­mu­ni­ties in the San Fran­cis­co Bay Area. Heather holds a Bach­e­lor of Arts degree in Jour­nal­ism and His­to­ry from Taiwan’s old­est and most pres­ti­gious jour­nal­ism pro­gram at Nation­al Chengchi Uni­ver­si­ty, and a Mas­ter of Arts degree in Jour­nal­ism and Mass Com­mu­ni­ca­tion from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wisconsin-Madison. She lives with her hus­band and son in Albany, Cal­i­for­nia. For more infor­ma­tion about Heather, click here.

Yukie Chan / チャン幸恵

I have stud­ied Man­darin as my major for four years when I was uni­ver­si­ty in Japan. Also, I joined a sum­mer Man­darin pro­gram in Qufu province, Main­land Chi­na dur­ing my sopho­more year. After I grad­u­at­ed, I have worked at Japan Air­lines as an air­port ser­vice agent for three years and a half and was assigned to han­dle the flights to Chi­na, Tai­wan and Hong Kong. After this job expe­ri­ence, I want­ed to improve my Man­darin and deep­en my knowl­edge, I stud­ied abroad at Tai­wan Teacher’s Uni­ver­si­ty in Taipei brush­ing up my Man­darin for a year. I had expe­ri­ence of teach­ing Man­darin at junior high schools in Japan.

In addi­tion, I am also a cer­ti­fied yoga instruc­tor there and US.
About my yoga career, see my bio on the Han­wen School Yoga page.