We are excited to introduce Mr. Nate, or Nate Lao Shi, MACL’s new Chinese teacher. He started learning Chinese at Oak Creek East Middle School, and continued in Oak Creek High School. Mr. Nate moved to China to attend NYU Shanghai for a four year degree.
He has been teaching for a total of seven years, including ESL, Spanish, and Chinese. At MACL, Chinese classes for younger students involve lots of movement, whether it be the Chinese equivalent of head, shoulders, knees and toes or other movement-learning exercises. Middle school Chinese classes follow a rigid lesson, including a daily slide presentation to review previous learning, followed by activities based on new vocabulary. Mr. Nate finds that competition drives passion, so he incorporates spinner games, the elimination game, or other fun and competitive activities to keep students engaged. Mr. Nate’s goals for the MACL Chinese program go beyond a mere attainment of conversational level speaking for his students. Teaching a language is one thing, but instilling a passion for another country, its culture, and its way of life is a different thing altogether. More than anything, his goal is to make China less foreign to the students here, to make it attainable, and perhaps some day, build the foundations for his students to explore it in depth like he did.