Getting to Know Our Community: Zhong Laoshi, 1st Grade Chinese Teacher

One of the things that makes our school special is that almost all of our teachers have come here from other parts of the world, bringing their own languages, cultures, and stories with them. This week, we sat down with Zhong Laoshi, our 1st grade Chinese teacher, to learn more about her journey from a small town in China to our classroom.

Where She's From

Lynne was born and raised in Xingning, a small town in Meizhou, Guangdong, China. It's in the Hakka area, and she grew up in a small community where everyone knew each other really well.

Her town had about 42,000 people, and Zhong — her last name — is a very common family name there. People here might never guess that she was kind of a little celebrity as a kid! Her family had lived in the same place for generations, so almost everyone knew her. And, she says, “Maybe I was just a pretty cute kid, too — ha! Everywhere I went, someone seemed to know who I was.”

If Lynn could take you anywhere from her childhood, she'd take you to her parents' home, which is also her family store. They have lived there for many years, and her neighbors and even many longtime customers watched her grow up. Every time she goes back, she still sees people who have known her since she was little.

Growing up, Lynn spoke Hakka with her friends and family, and heard a lot of Cantonese from watching TV. Later, when she left for school and work, she mainly spoke Mandarin. Growing up surrounded by different Chinese languages felt completely normal to her.

How Lynn Ended Up in the US

There's a story Lynn likes to tell about how she ended up in the US. When she was little, her mom took her to have her fortune told a few times, and different people told her mom the same thing: "Your daughter will marry someone very far away." Lynn didn't believe it — she thought, how far could she possibly go?

Well, she ended up marrying an American! So the fortune tellers were right — it was pretty far.

The practical story is simpler: she met her husband while he was working in China. They married in China and had their children, then moved to the US when their oldest was four.

They arrived in the US on October 30, 2017 — the day before Halloween! She didn't speak English at the time. Part of their decision to move was that they worried the Chinese education system focused too heavily on strict academics, and they wanted more balance for their kids.

What Was Hard About Moving Here

Language was a challenge, but Lynn expected that. What she didn't expect was how many different American accents there are — Lynne explained, “Before I came, I somehow thought everyone in America sounded the same!”

The harder adjustment was the diversity itself. So many different cultures, religions, and family backgrounds — there's no single way of being here! Learning to understand and respect all those differences, and realizing you never quite know how someone will respond, has been one of the biggest lessons of living here.

For example, Lynn’s daughter once had a teacher who told the kids, "You can call me Mom!" Some parents were upset — they'd worked so hard to be a good mom, and now their child was calling a teacher "Mom" too. Lynn was confused and said she asked her husband about it. He walked her through the different perspectives people might have. That helped her understand that everyone here comes from a different place, and that's okay. In this way, she became deeply interested in and respectful of different perspectives and experiences people might have.

Lynn told me a funny story about her early time in the US. She said she didn't like going outside by herself at first — not because it felt unsafe, but because she was afraid of running into her neighbors. If she saw someone coming outside who might want to chat, she would suddenly pretend to be busy with her kids, or pretend she was on the phone — anything to avoid speaking English. Lynn laughed, “It's funny now, because my job is literally talking to students, parents, and coworkers all day long.”

The one thing she truly misses from home is her parents' cooking, especially their Hakka food. She has tried to recreate it here, and says that sometimes it's okay, but it never quite tastes the same. When she asks her parents how to make something, they always say, "Add a little of this and a little of that" — but apparently, their "little" and her "little" are not the same!

One tradition Lynn still keeps just for herself: before Chinese New Year, she makes Hakka-style sausage the way her family does back home. She can't find it anywhere here, but eating it during the New Year makes it finally feel like the New Year to her. She also stays closely connected with her family, even though they live so far apart.

Finding Her Way to Teaching

As a child, Lynn loved dancing and teaching others to dance, and she thought she might want to become a dance teacher. Later, she studied music in high school and college, and taught piano along the way.

After college, she taught for a short time — but honestly, she wasn’t crazy about it. So she left teaching and worked at a technology company instead.

Later, she became a mom and stayed home with her kids, teaching them to walk, talk, write, and draw every single day. After they moved to the US, her daughter's preschool teacher encouraged Lynn to give teaching another try. She went back into the classroom, and this time, she fell in love with it.

She reflected on that: “What made me fall in love with teaching wasn't a single person — it was my students and their families. Their kindness, their trust, and watching the children grow little by little made me truly love this work.”

On Language, Culture, and Connection

Coming to the US and struggling with a new language herself has shaped and informed how she teaches, especially how she teaches a second language. Lynn understands exactly how hard it is to learn a new language and a new culture, because she lived it.

When she was learning English, she studied it constantly, but she says she was too afraid to actually use it with people. Lynn sees that her students are braver than she was — they make mistakes and just speak out anyway. She tells them: speak out, don't be afraid. That's always the first step.

There's so much in Chinese that doesn't translate easily — poems, idioms, sayings, entire ways of thinking. A simple example: "你吃了吗?" literally means "Have you eaten?" But often it's not really a question about food — it's a way of saying hello. In English we say, “How are you?” And this expression is also a way of showing you care. It can even be an invitation to share a meal. Learning Chinese isn't just learning "Chinese-style education." It's a way to understand the world through a different lens, because language is so much more than words and grammar.

One of her favorite classroom moments happened at the start of the school year. When her students line up, Lynn says, "立正" — it means "stand straight, get ready." One day, some students from the German immersion class heard her say it and they stood up straight too! Lynn said that made her so happy, realizing they understood her as well. Now, sometimes students from other classes still do it too, and Lynn thinks it's really cute.

Lynn reflected, “Watching a child understand something in my own language for the first time feels a little like hearing your own child say "Mama" for the first time — it never stops being exciting.”

The Bigger Lessons

If Lynn could teach her students one thing that has nothing to do with the curriculum, it would be how to solve problems. She thinks, “When something is hard: calm down, ask what you can do, what you can try. It's okay to show emotion, even to cry — but don't give up.”

She tells a story that illustrates this important lesson. A couple of years ago, Lynn had surgery and was still recovering when her husband started having symptoms of his own. She had to help him get to the hospital and figure out what was wrong — and in the middle of all that, he was laid off! It was an incredibly hard time. But they faced it together, and their neighbors helped enormously — they cooked for her family for an entire month. Lynn was overwhelmed by their kindness. And she learned that you're never really alone when you're facing a challenge; you have family and neighbors around you. And she wondered if part of why her neighbors showed up is because they had shown up for their neighbors before. Lynn calls it karma. Be a good neighbor, do good work. That experience also taught her that she was capable of handling hard things as an adult, and that support goes both ways. She thinks that was the first time she really felt like an adult and all grown up.

Lynn also tries to remember that she is a teacher, and a mom, and a person — all at once. When she was young, she said she made plenty of mistakes: she would ruin her nice clothes playing, she would fall into ponds, climb trees she shouldn't have. Lynn says she is who she is today because of the kind people who helped her learn from her mistakes. And she carries that lesson forward—that's what she tells her students: it's okay to make mistakes, and it's okay to break a rule sometimes. Lynn says, “Just tell me why — I want to understand you so I can help you work through it.”

One Message to Her Younger Self

I asked Lynn, if she could send one message back to herself on the day she first arrived in the US, what would she say? Lynn thought about that and said, “I would say to myself, ‘Don't worry so much about what other people think of you. Believe in yourself, and take good care of yourself, too. The rest will come, little by little.’”