Katherine Hsieh's
Teaching Portfolio
360 km
Detroit Urban Immersion Program
This was a cooperative program between Michigan State University and Detroit Public Schools. It was a seven week teaching fellowship opportunity during the summer to help give students an extra boost.
I enjoyed spending five days a week with my students in the classroom and on various field trips.
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I had my lower education from kindergarten to 8th grade in Taiwan.The summer before 9th grade, my family and I immigrated to the United States. We came straight to Michigan, and I went to Okemos High School. When I came, I barely knew any English. During my first year of high school, I had four English classes out of six. I spent a lot of time on translating textbooks, readings, and memorizing vocabularies.
Throughout high school, I also spent every weekend as an assistant teacher at Lansing Chinese School. This was when I became passionate about teaching.
Chinese schools are usually founded by the governments in China or Taiwan to help Chinese heritage students overseas maintain their language skills and cultural knowledge. These are non-profit after school programs on the weekends.
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Teaching Philosophy
1209 km
About me
Lansing Chinese School
I started out as an assistant teacher in a cultural craft class for the 2007-08 school year. I volunteered to be the lead teacher from 2009-12. I also taught a class of Chinese as a Second Language from 2011-13.
This was when I found a lot of fulfillment that I had not experienced. I realized that I had a passion for teaching!
Internship at Fairview Elementary School
This was almost an entire school year of intern teaching with a mentor teacher in a third grade classroom and being a full time student taking graduate level courses at Michigan State University.
My portfolio shows experiences from my internship year. I hope you enjoy the collection I have put together.
Learning is a life long process and experience, and it will never have an ending. I believe teaching is the same way.
My Teaching Philosophy:
Why do I teach? I think teaching is a life long learning career. My objective is to create a comfortable and fun, but challenging learning environment. My classroom will be where students can exchange thoughts, share opinions, enjoy discovering new knowledge, display expected citizenship, be curious, understand the world better, think from different points of view, and not be afraid to make mistakes. I think that students should feel that this is a safe environment to make mistakes and think differently, but also a learning environment where they crave to always challenge themselves to be better, to know more, and to accept others.
Also, I think learning experiences, in the most part, should be personalized. Each student has their own talents, preferences, strengths, and weaknesses. I believe a good teacher should this information about each student and use this knowledge in their teaching. There are multiple ways to teach students and include modifications in each subject as needed.
I expect my classroom and students to be full of curiousity. It is my job to initiate the curiosity of children by giving students lots of opportunities to explore, discover, ask, organize, analyze, reflect, and present.
Maximizing my students' self confidence and concern about what they are doing and who they want to be is also very important. I would assist my students in setting and reaching their personal goals. I believe my classroom should be a learning environment where the teacher and students learn from each other. I plan to guide my students to view the world as an on-going, growing community where there is always something new to learn and value.
Ann Arbor Chinese Center of Michigan
I was hired as the youngest teacher and assigned to teach 4th grade in August 2010. I taught there for three years. Every Friday, after classes at Michigan State University, I would take the bus to Ann Arbor to teach.
The second year, I was able to drive to Ann Arbor. I enjoyed this experience, and I believed my students did, too. My students appeared to be motivated to come to Chinese school and were willing to practice their Chinese at home.
Online Portfolio Navigation
About me:
Personal background, brief teaching experiences, and teaching philosophy.
Curriculums:
Evidence of teaching and lessons in Math, Science, Reading, Writing, Chinese, and Art. Beliefs I have toward teaching each subject.
Classroom:
Classroom management, atmosphere, relationship with students, and citizenship.
Professional:
Resume, certificates, and letters of recommendation.
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