Teaching Mandarin I
Recently I taught a 7th grade Mandarin Class over in the Middle School called "Pinyin, Dialects, and Chinese as a Cultural Lens." My objective in it was to explain the complex history behind an everyday tool to the learning of Mandarin:Pinyin, as well as to provide some perspective-creating information about language in China that doesn't quite fit into the general Mandarin cultural studies elements of the curriculum. I had been pondering about what sort of lesson I would teach and to whom for a while, and doing further reading on globally-focused ideas in which I'd taken interest, and it was only in a conversation with my grandmother as she helped my sister with her Chinese homework that it dawned on me. Her family has roots in the Fujian province of China, and more specifically Xiamen as well as Taiwan, the Philippines where Hokkien is spoken. Her Mandarin education extended to a 5th grade level, and thus my sister and I were approaching her Mandarin proficiency