Teaching

Pedagogical Values Statement

Knowledge is not gained in isolation; it is acquired through legitimate peripheral participation in communities of practice. My classroom is a living community where all participants seek to be in deeper community and experience more fully our distinct and shared humanity.

I reject the notion that knowledge can be transferred as water poured into an empty vessel. Learning is situated and negotiated. Every student who enters my classroom is by virtue of the public good, a legitimate participant. My job is to help them move deeper into the center of shared identities.

This is not romanticized theory, but embodied truth. When a first grader orders 两个包子 from the pretend baozi stand we built together, she is not performing for a grade. She is participating. She is becoming. That is learning.

Theoretical Framework

Knowledge does not live in textbooks. It lives in communities.

My work as an educator and scholar is grounded in Lave and Wenger's situated learning model, which positions learning not as the transmission of inert facts but as legitimate peripheral participation in communities of practice. The classroom I design is not a delivery system, but rather, it is a living community where students move from the edges toward full membership through authentic engagement.

I understand my role through Wenger's concept of the teacher as a nexus of relations: a connector who brokers access between learners and the communities they are becoming part of. Drawing on García's translanguaging framework, I honor the full repertoire of linguistic and cultural resources students bring. Informed by Krashen and Ortega, I create conditions where comprehensible input meets meaningful participation.

Theory without practice is empty. Practice without theory is blind. I am committed to both.

A Skeptic of Empiricism as Supreme Thought

I teach within the International Baccalaureate framework. It is not some new trend, but a coherent way of understanding the content delivery. While others chase the alphabet soup of STEM and STEAM, this more philosophical system quietly insists that inquiry, language, and human connection matter as much as coding. I resist the seduction of buzzwords and remember that human beings are more than future coders. Scientific thinking is a tool, yet it should never be adhered to like a theology.

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