About

Each semester I tutored a self-directed study group focused on close reading of great works in a seminar environment.

In the Meaning of Stories elective, students explore why people tell stories, learning how to identify the author’s intent through dramatic elements.

In my Journalism English elective, students learn the basics of putting together a TV news item.

Students in my Tourism English elective learn all the ingredients of a travel experience and design a mock brochure for a tour group.

My language-specialization students learned introductory persuasive, narrative, and expository writing, as well as critical reading skills such as discerning facts and opinions, identifying audience, and determining authorial intent. 

Video of teaching observation in regular class, April 19, 2023, used for teacher training in the Taoyuan senior high schools foreign English teacher program.

I like to use reassembling scrambled text as a tool for reading comprehension practice. Here, students describe the outline structure of MLK’s “I have a dream” speech before I scramble the sentences. Using the outline structure they’ve memorized as a guide, they quickly put the text back in order.

It was not easy for me to learn these moves, but I will do almost anything to support my students.

Coming from different homerooms, students in elective classes can be pretty shy. I like doing a speed interview activity in the first class session so they can all get a chance to interact with classmates they might not know very well. It also gives me an opportunity to observe everybody’s skill level and comfort with English.

Nothing beats a messy, hands-on activity. The language-specialization students practice pumpkin carving during the lesson about Halloween. In four years, we had only two minor injuries.

For regular students I taught AMC and LiveABC magazine articles selected by the local teachers and designed lessons on topics including self-introductions, daily routines, giving directions, small talk, making plans to go out, Christmas traditions, and Saint Patrick’s Day. Video of my Saint Patrick’s Day lesson has been used for training in the Taoyuan foreign English teacher program. 

In addition to article-based classes, for language-specialization students I taught a series of introductory composition lessons touching on persuasive, narrative, and expository writing, as well as critical reading skills such as discerning facts and opinions, identifying audience, and determining authorial intent. 

I also gave increased attention to these students’ oral and aural skills, teaching attentive listening in tandem with presenting in front of the class, for instance. Mastering the subtleties of sentence emphasis and cadence was a particular focus. Students’ recitations were recorded at least once each semester, to enable progress tracking through the year and over their senior high school careers.

In addition, I gave them expanded cultural lessons such as Christmas cookie decorating and Halloween pumpkin carving.

I designed several elective courses. In Journalism English, for example, students wrote and filmed 90-second TV news packages, and in Travel English students wrote and designed a brochure for a hypothetical group tour to Taiwan. In addition, in The Meaning of Stories, scheduled for the 2024–25 school year, students would read Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” and selections from Maxine Hong Kingston’s Woman Warrior, producing a report introducing one of the texts. The Meaning of Stories syllabus sprang from my self-directed study groups for second- and third-grade students.

My self-directed study groups for second- and third-grade students focused on enhancing their reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills through close reading of primary texts. In addition to Jackson and Kingston, the groups read and memorized passages from Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, The Gettysburg Address, and the “I Have a Dream” speech of Martin Luther King, Jr. The group produced a short exegetical video about Macbeth’s “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” soliloquy in Autumn 2022, and another about “No Name Woman” from Kingston’s Woman Warrior in Spring 2023.

For physical education students I adapted conversational and cultural lessons from regular student curricula, and designed original lessons suited to their level and interests, such as Rules of the Game, introducing language about competition and sportsmanship, as well as sports and equipment, both familiar and unfamiliar.

Read on the New York Times website.

Read on the Washington Post website.

Over my nine-year tenure, I held positions of increasing responsibility in fundraising, culminating in my promotion to director of development operations. In this role, I led a reorganization that shifted resources from redundant back-office to expanded donor-facing functions.

As operations manager, I was responsible for optimizing performance and production of a 72-seat outbound fundraising call center, consistently increasing the team’s average gift by double digits year over year.

As chief of staff, I oversaw California’s inaugural Cesar Chavez Day in 2001, managed development counsel, and served as technical advisor on a short documentary film about Cesar Chavez.

As a member of his campaign’s National Advance Team, I helped Al Gore win the popular vote in the 2000 U.S. presidential election.

As political affairs manager, I led sponsorship of the 2000 Democratic and Republican national conventions by the tech company profiled in the Hegedus-Pennebaker documentary “Startup.com.”

I produced the inaugural conference of Stanford University’s Institute for International Studies; I managed the University of Chicago’s transition from small graduation ceremonies in the chapel to large ones on the quad; for the World Affairs Council of Northern California I produced large public lectures by the presidents of Mexico and the U.S. I also advanced domestic and foreign travel for U.S. president Bill Clinton and vice president Al Gore. Events ranged from small parties to multi-lateral summits. Typical examples included a party for donors at the Silicon Valley home of a venture capitalist, featuring Gore singing and his wife Tipper playing drums with the Grateful Dead; Gore’s private dinner with British prime minister Tony Blair at Chequers; and Clinton’s participation in the 1999 OSCE summit in Istanbul.

I produced quarterly graduation ceremonies and events hosted by the president of the university, ranging from small dinners in the president’s home to large public lectures. Speakers included Saul Bellow, Toni Morrison, Polish president Lech Walesa, and U.S. vice president Al Gore. Typical VIP guests were trustees, principal donors, endowed faculty, and exceptional students.