Instructors & Staff
Information on instructors and staff will be updated when available.
If you are interested in working at Hanwen School, check out our jobs page.
Teachers
Our teachers will have experience teaching Mandarin Chinese to young children, whether it is from weekend Chinese schools, or as Chinese teachers in Asia or as a Mandarin immersion teacher in the United States.
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Meng-Jinn LaoshiI 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. |
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Su LaoshiI 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. I enjoy teaching children and make sure learning Chinese is fun. Seeing their growth over time is very satisfying. My interest in teaching began when I volunteered at Alameda public schools to teaching children Chinese language and arts & crafts. I have taken Early Childhood Development classes and taught at a childcare center. I have a degree in Economics and studied video editing and multimedia design. |
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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. |
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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. |