‘I was one of them’
HS teacher empathizes with Chinese immig students
AS AN immigrant herself, Franklin Delano Roosevelt High School teacher Xiumin Dong says she shares a special bond with the Chinese kids at her Brooklyn school.
Dong is passionate about her students and relates to them on a personal level, earning her a nomination for a Hometown Heroes in Education award.
For the dedicated teacher, the goal is always helping kids stay in touch with their native culture while learning a new language and adapting to a new life. “They all work so hard,” said Dong, who was born in Yinchuan in China’s Ningxia region. “I want them all to graduate.”
Dong graduated with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and education from Shanxi University in 1985 and taught psychology at Xinjiang University, before obtaining her master’s in education from Beijing Normal University in 1999.
She then served as a guidance counselor at a high school in Beijing — and that’s where she met her husband, Scott Menscher, who was on an exchange trip to China in 2000. Menscher, who teaches at Edward R. Murrow High School, also in Brooklyn, encouraged Dong to immigrate.
They came not long after the Sept. 11, 2011, attacks. Dong, 54, said it was a scary time to be an immigrant coming to America.
It was also challenging for her to break into teaching in America, despite having almost 15 years of teaching experience in China.
“I really see a difference between here and China,” Dong said. “Teachers have to work much more. Students have their own individual personality and speak out here.”
She said she would teach up to 70 kids in her classes in China. Most city classes have half as many students or fewer.
After six months in America, Dong landed a job at FDR as an aide and was insistent on sharpening her English to get a teaching position. In 2010, she finally became an Advanced Placement Chinese instructor at FDR, where she teaches sophomore, junior and senior Chinese-language classes. She said she focuses mainly on making her students feel comfortable. Some of them have spent only one to three years in America, and she empathizes with their struggles.
“The language barrier is how I connect with my students,” Dong said. “It makes them shy and quiet . . . they feel embarrassed, and I was one of them.”
One method Dong uses to engage her students and prompt them to learn the language is by screening movies with English subtitles. She’s even used “The King’s Speech” and “Good Will Hunting” to make students aware that everyone struggles with new concepts, and she says the movies make students feel included.
“It’s a way to speak clearer,” she said of using subtitled movies. “The kids really love it. Sometimes the mothers and fathers of these immigrant kids are too busy working to help kids learn English, and the movies really open their eyes to it.”
Along with her movie class discussions, Dong introduces cooking classes to her students to celebrate Chinese culture, and part of the class includes students making their own dishes, filming it, and explaining how they prepared it.