Rethink Learning Now

I'd always had a love of Chinese culture. Growing up in suburban Chicago, I heard, at an early age, my grandparents' tales of trips to Hong Kong and Taiwan. Then, when I was in middle school, my father started talking about his new Chinese students, fresh off the plane from Shanghai and Beijing. These students joined my family for Thanksgiving dinners, Passover seders, and 4th of July barbecues. Friendly and doting, they quickly became my role models.

When I started...

My learning story is also about teaching. After spending some years teaching high school English, I took a break to raise my two babies. During my pregnancies, I rediscovered and rededicated myself to my yoga practice. Yoga was one of those things that didn't come naturally to me but that I loved somehow, and pre-natal classes allowed for a gentle, welcoming reintroduction. After giving birth to two babies in two years, I found myself back on the mat. One of my teachers, Anna...

A great teacher's lesson can give you goosebumps and, if you're lucky, mindbumps too.

Marlene was my English Teacher and Choir Director in High School. She was everywhere. If your jacket smelled like stale cigarette smoke, she would let you have it. In the classroom, she shined some light into your lazy, dormant, misunderstood, overactive, apathetic or whatever-other-state your adolescent mind might've been in, and actually got you up in front of the class to act out...

Journalism was the most authentic writing experience my students every enjoyed and the best teaching I have ever done. My journalism students at Title One, urban schools in Southern California were almost all the children of immigrants or immigrants themselves. We always had at least three different primary languages on staff; one year we had seven, yet they regularly won prizes for quality of their paper. The students had a real audience, a real purpose and a real voice. They...