Helping Students
GROW Language and Culture with Mandarin Teacher Rui Shu
E
veryone speaks a different language, says Rui Shu, Commonwealth’s Mandarin teacher since 2016. Sometimes the difference is literal; other times, metaphorical. Regardless, studying another language reminds students that there are other worlds, other experiences, that they know nothing about—a lesson too often forgotten, she says. “Stay curious and stay open-minded by taking a foreign language, no matter what the foreign language is,” Rui urges. “You gain access to a whole different culture. I think that’s amazing and really, really rewarding.” Ms. Shu grew up immersed in and enamored with education. She says watching her father, a college professor of civil engineering in Beijing, and having excellent middle- and high-school teachers inspired her to consider teaching as a career. Becoming a language teacher, specifically, appealed to her because of what it represented: connection. “I want to be that bridge to bring two cultures together,” Ms. Shu says. “I had so much fun learning English and had it open up a new world, both in terms of interacting with real people and also being able to read a lot of things in English that I wouldn’t have access to in Chinese. That was really liberating.” Combined with a hunger to explore the world beyond her home in Beijing and a fascination with the intricacies of language, her career path became clear, and she majored in teaching Chinese as a foreign language at Beijing Foreign Studies University. She then earned a master’s at the Harvard Graduate School of Education here in Massachusetts. But the path to post-grad employment became a bit murkier, given the logistical challenges of having a student visa. “A lot of schools or companies don’t sponsor for a work visa, so it’s extra hard to find a job, but luckily I got an offer in Houston,” Ms. Shu says. There she taught Mandarin in a charter school for a year before coming to Commonwealth. (She learned of the open position from another alumna of her master’s program, Commonwealth’s then–Mandarin teacher Stacy Tan.) Happy to return to Boston, Ms. Shu’s challenge became making the curriculum her own—and overcoming Mandarin’s notorious reputation as an inaccessible language for non-native speakers. That’s a mindset and misconception she would like to change. “I just hope that students know that even though a lot of people say that Chinese is difficult to learn to a point where it is impossible, it is not,” Ms. Shu says. Furthermore, the challenges of learning Mandarin can foster a growth mindset, helping students—with the keen and caring oversight of teachers like Ms. Shu—learn how to persevere. “You’re not always going to be good at something or bad at something,” she says. “As long as you put in the work, you can see the results.”
30 CM Winter 2022
