Chinese teacher educates from home country

A new semester brings new teachers, new classes and new people. Fourth block CIS Chinese 3031 brings all of these as well as an interesting twist. 

Students were welcomed with an international skype call from their teacher, Ms. Mang Wang, World Language, teaching them all the way from China. Inquiry spreads throughout the room as confused students sit down.

Ms. Wang is teaching from her hometown just outside of Wuhan, where the Coronavirus outbreak started. 

Chinese officials put 16 cities on quarantine, starting with Wuhan, where the virus started to spread into other major cities, including where Ms. Wang resides. A quarantined city stops all public transit including buses, trains, planes and transportation outside of the city. 

Since Ms. Wang is living in one of the quarantined cities, she isn’t able to fly into Minn. to teach her classes. As a better substitute than a substitute teacher, she skypes them. 

“It’s made it kinda weird, especially at first when we were on Skype with her and we didn’t have a real teacher exactly,” said Stuart Fish, junior. 

Fish has been in the Xing Xing program for 11 years. Throughout this time all of his teachers have been native Chinese speakers, yet he has never experienced anything like this. 

As of right now, Ms. Wang will only be able to leave her hometown if the quarantine is lifted, but there is no news whether this will happen any time soon. 

“We got a new teacher that we’ve never met before and she teaches slightly differently than the other ones, but it’s nice having a teacher in person,” Fish said.  

Ms. Na Ye, World Language, was able to step in, from the elementary school.