When listening to Ms. Zuyi Wang speak about teaching and engaging with students, there’s a sense of excitement that is truly infectious. Pennington’s one and only teacher of Mandarin Chinese, and also a teacher of English for second-language learners, Ms. Wang has quickly made her mark since joining Pennington in 2021. 

Ms. Wang studied English linguistics and the teaching of English at the Education University of Hong Kong, earning a bachelor’s degree. Interestingly, after taking her entrance exam, Ms. Wang had been placed in the elementary education program. As Ms. Wang explained, “I didn’t have a choice because I would have chosen secondary education.” However, despite completing her student teaching in an elementary classroom, Ms. Wang has only ever taught high school students and adults. With some dozen universities and colleges located in Hong Kong, Ms. Wang thoroughly enjoyed the exposure to all the activities and cultural offerings that such a large university city had to offer.

After graduation, Ms. Wang went directly to Philadelphia, where she enrolled in a Master of Science in TESOL, the teaching of English to speakers of other languages. During her two years there, Ms. Wang also worked at the Center of Literacy where she taught English primarily to people who immigrated to the U.S. from West African nations. She found this work rewarding because she was working with people who needed to learn English quickly to negotiate their day-to-day lives.

With her master’s degree in hand, Ms. Wang taught at The Knox School, a day and boarding school on Long Island. There she taught Mandarin, all levels one through five, as well as English as a second language, and she lived on campus as a residential faculty member in a girls’ dorm.

During Covid, when Ms. Wang noticed an opening at Pennington for a Mandarin Chinese teacher, she saw an opportunity to join a larger school and a strong world language department in an ideal location. Since Ms. Wang enjoys traveling to both urban and rural destinations, she loves the proximity to New York and, of course, Philadelphia, where she had spent two years. She also loves the accessibility to nature; on her list of places to visit are this country’s national parks. 

A major focus of Ms. Wang’s third year at Pennington is the upcoming school trip to China. In March, Ms. Wang, along with Mr. Secrest and Ms. Roseen, will travel with ten of her eleven students to her home country. While Ms. Wang had been playing with the idea of organizing a school excursion, this trip was driven by donations from a group of Pennington parents! These ten students will travel for ten days, with four nights in Beijing and six in Shanghai, taking part in numerous cultural and language-learning activities along the way. It is the hope that generous funding for trips such as this will drum up even more interest in the Mandarin language program at Pennington.

Ms. Wang has thoroughly enjoyed working on the itinerary with her hosts. Highlights include studying architecture with visits to the Great Wall as well as a number of Buddhist temples. To expand on the topic of art and culture, students will take part in a seal design course whereby they will carve out a stamp in the image of their Chinese name. 

Visits to schools will also be part of the fun; students attend part of a day at a high school in Shanghai to learn more about the Chinese school system. Also, they’ll visit a university where they will meet visiting students enrolled in Mandarin Chinese courses to see how the pace of learning differs from their own high school experience.

Ms. Wang explains that even visiting Western restaurants such as Pizza Hut and TGI Fridays while in China is a cultural experience. It’s quite common for these restaurants to serve fancy soups and drinks, eliminating a great deal of that fast-food feel.

Ms. Wang is looking forward to taking this next big step in exposing Pennington students to Chinese culture. In her short time here, Ms. Wang has chaperoned several cultural trips to interesting–but significantly more local–destinations such as hot pot restaurants, Manhattan’s Chinatown, and even an early morning visit to nearby Princeton University’s Mandarin Chinese language classes. According to Ms. Wang, Princeton University is invested in organizing more activities with area high schools to help maintain interest in the continued study of the language.

Ms. Wang, who currently teaches three levels of Chinese along with English Language Lab, is always thinking of ways to connect her students to the language and culture. One great resource that she likes to take advantage of: our Pennington students who already speak Mandarin as a native language. Ms. Wang would also like to serve as a resource for our students who are heritage speakers of Mandarin, which in this instance means students of Chinese parents who have grown up in the United States but understand and even speak some Chinese. 

When Ms. Wang isn’t thinking about improving her program, she enjoys playing tennis (incidentally, Ms. Wang is assistant coach for our JV girls’ tennis team); engaging in English, Mandarin, and Cantonese through various media; and traveling to nearby parks and far away destinations such as Mexico City and China. Due to Covid, Ms. Wang’s trip to China last summer was her first visit in several years, so she certainly is happy to be returning this March.

Until then, if you find yourself on the third floor of Yen and see kids in the hallway having fun, it might very well be Ms. Wang’s students taking a brain break playing jianzi, a traditional Chinese hacky sack-style game where players kick an object much like a large badminton birdie! It is yet another facet of Chinese culture that Ms. Wang has generously shared with the Pennington community.