What does it take to turn a notoriously difficult language into a beloved subject? To Chinese teacher Ms. Yi Lee, the answer is 10,000 hours of meticulous preparation and creativity. According to the Foreign Service Institute (FSI), the government’s training center for diplomats and foreign personnel, while ranking languages closest to English in Tiers I (closest) to IV (furthest), Chinese ranks as a Tier IV language in while languages like Spanish and Latin are classified as Tiers I and II, respectively. Despite this significant difficulty gap, students in the Chinese program continue to excel, thanks in large part to the systems, resources, and classroom environment Ms. Lee has built.
Part of the course’s success lies in the classes’ material and speed.
“We don’t move too fast, so students can learn effectively. The foundation of my PowerPoints is based on Integrated Chinese, a college-level textbook used at Harvard, Yale, UCLA, and many other American universities,” Ms. Lee said.
“It’s a very well-structured curriculum. We cover about five lessons [½ the book] in a year, whereas in college, they cover a whole book in one semester. ”
When designing the class curriculum, Ms. Lee’s goal was engagement.
“I was the kind of student who always questioned my teachers, asking, ‘Why are we doing this?’ So when I became a teacher, I tried to do everything I wished my teachers had done. That’s how my lessons developed—I design them based on what I would enjoy. When I took Japanese in high school, there was too much free time. All we did was chit-chat and work on worksheets; there were no activities,” Ms. Lee said.
Since Chinese is a strenuous language, classes must be comprehensible and easy to learn. Ms. Lee spends a significant amount of time making her presentations visually engaging, minimal in text, and enriched with relevant images, pop-culture references, and interactive activities that support student learning.
“It took a long time to make my PowerPoints. In my first eight years of teaching, I would go to bed at one o’clock and sometimes wake up at 6:30 to finish them. A one-hour lesson probably took me over eight hours to prepare,” Ms. Lee said. “Now I just edit them to keep them relevant, which doesn’t take as much time, but overall building a curriculum from Chinese I to Chinese V took over 10,000 hours [over thirteen years].”
Many Chinese students don’t even realize the amount of work that goes into making the Chinese curriculum.
“People don’t always realize I made the worksheets myself. Students often assume they were bought or provided by a publisher, like a textbook,” Ms. Lee said. “The activities we do in class, like word searches, dialogue practices, and worksheets, I created.”
Few teachers have spent thousands of hours perfecting their curriculum, but Ms. Lee feels it is important.
“I’m an overachiever. I’m a perfectionist, and I like things to look a certain way. I cannot stand some AI-generated PowerPoints; they feel like a joke. I have high expectations for myself and my work,” Ms. Lee said.
Ms. Lee’s presentations have even grown into a successful side business, including selling PowerPoints to over 200 teachers and, most notably, to the Punahou School in Honolulu, Hawaii, which former President Barack Obama attended.
“Three years after I started teaching in 2009, I already had a work portfolio. People saw my PowerPoints, liked them, and wanted to buy them. That’s when I started my side business selling PowerPoints. It also motivates me to make them as good as possible,” Ms. Lee said. “I use Facebook advertising—mainly through open public Facebook pages. Whenever I see interesting ideas, I share them, and I also post the materials I create. As soon as I [started] sharing my presentations here, a lot of teachers have reached out asking if they could buy it, so since then it’s been doing pretty well.”
Before Haverford, Ms. Lee was the Chinese teacher for eleven years at the Henry J. Kaiser High School—an International Baccalaureate World School in Honolulu. At Kaiser, teachers were assessed one to two times per year using the Tripod Survey, an anonymous research-based K-12 feedback tool that collects perceptions from students, teachers, and families to assess teachers.
“Having high-quality, engaging PowerPoints was a direct motivator for me to create strong presentations. By 2017, my scores were very high—100% for engagement, classroom management, care, and comfort—while the school [Tripod survey] average was 56%,” Ms. Lee said.
Ms. Lee also faces the challenge of being the only Chinese teacher.
“It’s very challenging because I’m one of the only teachers on this campus teaching five different classes, even though some class sizes are small. A two-student class takes as much preparation time as a seventeen-student class. This year, unlike previous years, I work on weekends and sometimes at night. Sometimes it feels like I’m a beginning teacher again,” Ms. Lee said.
“Teaching Chinese helps students become better global citizens and respect different cultures. It helps them understand that priorities and practices differ across countries.” – Ms. Yi Lee
Conversely, Ms. Lee enjoys the independence of being the only upper school Chinese teacher.
“I like having complete control of the curriculum for all the upper school classes. I don’t have to discuss my lesson plans with other teachers, and that autonomy is very nice,” Ms. Lee said.
Whether it be engaging presentations or fun activities, Ms. Lee’s end goal is to set her students up for success.
“I try to make learning as easy as possible. With retake policies, students can redo assignments, so they not only earn some credit back but also really learn the material, and they can always come to me after school or during lunch for extra help. I find that students who engage with these opportunities make the most progress,” Ms. Lee said.
Reflecting on her teaching career so far, Ms. Lee feels successful.
“Teaching Chinese helps students become better global citizens and respect different cultures. It helps them understand that priorities and practices differ across countries. Most students made me feel 成就感—very accomplished. My interactions with the students have been really rewarding,” Ms. Lee said.
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