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ISSN #2331-6845 

 

Learning to teach again, in China 
 

By Lisa McLeod-Chambless 
Georgia State University 

lmcleodchambless1@student.gsu.edu    
 

Teaching English abroad provides an opportunity to travel the world however, it 
can also be a challenging endeavor. Having limited exposure to and 
understanding of the culture adds to the intensity of the challenge and the 
inability to navigate daily living in a new environment can be a painful disorienting 
experience that often results in culture shock. Young Yun Kim’s (2008) theory 
outlines a developmental model that presents the trials of cross-cultural 
adaptation as a dynamic and transformative process through which intercultural 
personhood can be developed. Kim (2008) argues that the stress of acculturation 
and deculturation is an opportunity for growth manifested in cycles of stress-
adaptation-growth. This account of a three-year experience living and teaching at 
a public high school in China applies Kim’s (2008) model to demonstrate how the 
difficulties of cross-cultural experiences can be the catalyst for transformation 
and development of intercultural identity. Developing an understanding of the 
cultural context through awareness and reflection facilitates the ability to teach 
students from other cultures. Educators in Georgia, particularly ESL teachers, 
are likewise challenged by cultural differences with their students and can further 
develop their intercultural skills regardless of location.   

Keywords: education, cultural studies 

 

When I began my career as a teacher, I was intentional in my choice to work in 

a school located in the inner-city neighborhood where I lived. The cultural 

background of the students, and most of the other teachers, was vastly different 



 
2         GATESOL in Action, Fall 2018 
 

from mine, and my understanding of how to navigate the cultural differences was 

limited. While my teacher education program familiarized me with multicultural 

education, I learned that the ability to address the challenges of cross-cultural 

education is developed gradually through awareness and reflective practices. My 

efforts to understand the lives of my students through my relationships with them 

and my colleagues helped me to gain a broader perspective and provide context 

for instruction, and I began to develop an intercultural competence that facilitated 

my ability to teach in that environment. 

After 11 years of teaching I began to wonder about how I could further 

pursue my passion for educating adolescents. My love for teaching and 

commitment to students were still strong but I wanted to extend myself beyond the 

realm of my collective experiences as a secondary school social studies teacher; I 

enrolled in a doctoral program planning to build on my teaching experiences and 

become a teacher educator.  When an opportunity to teach in China was 

extended to students in my graduate school program, it grabbed my attention. The 

idea of living abroad had always appealed to me; I had traveled to China as a 

chaperone for a middle school trip and was fascinated by what I had experienced. 

As a teacher in this university partnership, I could also function as a research 

assistant for the initiative to prepare Chinese high school students for their 

educations in the United States. Additionally, I would be able to bring my son and 

felt that the opportunity for him to learn through the experience would be 

invaluable. 



 
3         GATESOL in Action, Fall 2018 
 

I was thrilled by the prospect of expanding our life experiences through an 

immersion in Chinese culture. I had a longstanding desire to develop a deeper 

understanding of the rest of the world by living abroad. I envisioned being 

immersed in the culture as a two-year learning experience for my son and me that 

would afford us a broader, more global perspective on the world. I quickly learned 

that the excitement of our adventure would be tempered by the difficulties of being 

a foreigner.  

Learning to teach in China felt like my first years as a teacher. When I 

began my teaching career I had had a basic understanding of pedagogy; but, it 

was through my experiences in the classroom and an increased understanding of 

the students’ culture that I reconstructed my identity as a teacher. Although I was 

an experienced teacher and had studied Chinese culture, I found that teaching in 

my new environment was quite difficult. However, the trials that I encountered 

were the catalyst for my growth as a teacher and for the development of my 

intercultural identity.  

My Experience 

Preparations and Assumptions 

The international program is a collaboration between a Chinese public high 

school, the university, and a private company. There are approximately 3,000 

students in the school which is located in China’s third largest city, Guangzhou. 

The university recruited three teachers (Language Arts, Math and Social Studies) 

who would prepare the students for attending college in the United States. In the 

program, the students spend two years taking half of their courses from the 



 
4         GATESOL in Action, Fall 2018 
 

American teachers and half of their courses from Chinese teachers on the 

school’s faculty. The goal of the program is to facilitate the Chinese students’ 

transition through an educational experience that provides English language 

instruction while incorporating student-centered teaching and learning strategies. 

In preparation for my endeavor, I tried to develop some understanding of the culture, 

plan for the courses I would teach, and gather things that I thought would ease the 

transition to my new world.  I had never been to Guangzhou, and I lacked substantive 

experience with the culture, I needed a crash course on living in China. I gathered 

information to build background knowledge on the culture and tried to anticipate the 

tangible cultural differences that were ahead of me. The language was the most obvious 

obstacle to our adjustment, so my son and I took Mandarin lessons; but, while he 

developed a basic level of proficiency, I acquired only a few words. To understand the 

context for teaching social studies I read books and articles about the politics and 

history of education in China. Along with the other teachers, my son and I attended 

briefings on the history and culture of China.  In a university course on intercultural 

communication I studied scholars of Asian culture and explored my cultural background. 

I examined my cultural identity in an effort to understand my biases and lay the 

groundwork for building relationships with my future students and colleagues in China. 

My work in this course was the beginning of a reflective process that has been an 

invaluable part of my experience. Using the framework provided in Intercultural 

Communication (Scollon & Scollon, 2001) as a lens for considering my approach to 

teaching and day-to-day interactions with the local people gave me a perspective that 

extended beyond intercultural communications taking into account differences in 



 
5         GATESOL in Action, Fall 2018 
 

gender, generation, and sociolinguistic systems. According to Scollon & Scollon (2001), 

differences in discourse patterns are the primary source of intercultural 

miscommunication, and because professional communicators are simultaneously, 

members of multiple discourse groups there are several factors to consider as we 

interpret inter-group communications.  

Throughout my preparations for teaching, I tried to anticipate the learning 

environment. I thought that my greatest challenge would be coaxing the “reticent” 

Chinese students to take part in student-centered learning activities. While I tried 

to resist assigning stereotypical characteristics to my images of my future 

students, I could not imagine them otherwise, given my view of the highly 

structured environment of the traditional Chinese education system.  

I developed my syllabi for World History and American Culture using the 

Georgia Performance Standards (GPS) and Common Core Standards (CCS) as a 

framework. To begin, I planned to use the strategies I had employed with my 

students in Atlanta who were reading below grade level: building background 

knowledge through vocabulary instruction and the use of visual images, 

differentiated instruction, and cooperative learning. Having been warned that 

internet access would be limited (no YouTube!), I packed books and digital 

resources that I had used in the past. As I considered the content, I was given a 

list of topics that I could not discuss. It was not particularly difficult to navigate the 

restrictions because they were explicitly communicated.  However, there were 

times when the appropriateness of course content was extraordinarily hard to 

discern due to a communication strategy where administrators avoided direct 



 
6         GATESOL in Action, Fall 2018 
 

introduction of their topic.  This approach to addressing communication when it is 

unclear that the listeners will be open to the speaker’s conclusion or when the aim 

of the discourse is to require the listener to take a particular action (Scollon & 

Scollon, 2001). 

Cross-Cultural Adaptation  

A goal for this cultural exchange has been for the participants to have 

experiences that facilitate cross-cultural understanding. In his theory of cross-

cultural adaptation, Kim (2008) states that identity develops throughout life, and 

we can learn and change through intercultural communication experiences. He 

posits that intercultural personhood evolves as individuals adapt to living in a new 

and different culture or subculture. Having extended intercultural experiences 

challenges individuals as they face others’ different ways of thinking, in response 

their cultural identities can evolve as they move beyond their cultural boundaries 

and ways of thinking and seek similarities to solve problems. 

 Kim (2008) further explains that cross-cultural adaptation is the product of 

the reciprocal relationship between acculturation and deculturation. Acculturation, 

the acquisition of new cultural practices, is a learning process that requires the 

active engagement of an individual. Deculturation is the unlearning, if only 

temporarily, of cultural practices in order to adopt new habits. Experiences of 

continued acculturation and deculturation are accompanied by stress from the 

internal conflict that is created by the push and pull between the old and new ways 

of doing things. For Kim, this stress is “an opportunity to search deep inside 

ourselves for new possibilities to recreate ourselves (2008, p. 363).  



 
7         GATESOL in Action, Fall 2018 
 

Stress-Adaptation-Growth  

My personal experiences and observations of the experiences of the other 

teachers and students support Kim’s (2008) theory that intercultural identity 

evolves through the adaptation to a new living environment. Kim (2008) illustrates 

the stress-adaptation-growth dynamic as the product of the conflict between the 

need for acculturation and the resistance to deculturation. The stress can result in 

emotional lows (confusion, uncertainty, anxiety) commonly referred to as “culture 

shock” (Ward, Bochner, & Furnham, 2001).  Sahlins concludes that it is through 

the desire to overcome difficulties that people learn to adapt to their new 

circumstances (as cited in Kim, 2008). The growth follows the “successful, long-

term, and cumulative management” of the stress and adaptation (Kim, 2008, p. 

364).  

In retrospect, I can identify many cycles that began when I faced a 

surprising or unfamiliar situation and experienced the stress of not understanding 

something or not knowing how to address a problem. There were many difficulties 

that I did not handle very well initially. However, because of the cyclical nature of 

the adaptive process I began to learn new ways of operating as I came to 

understand the local practices. At the same time, I learned to let go of some of my 

familiar ways of being.  

Stress 

At first, my excitement about our adventure and new surroundings 

overshadowed many of the challenges I encountered, but even during that 

honeymoon period there was evidence of the challenges ahead. After a month or 



 
8         GATESOL in Action, Fall 2018 
 

so, I began to realize the inadequacy of my cultural competence. Many of my 

expectations about the school and teaching turned out to be off-base; I was 

unprepared for the complexities of navigating daily life; and intercultural 

communications were far more complicated than I had expected.  

 The new experiences of our first weeks were full of excitement and wonder. 

When the American teachers moved into our apartments in the teacher dormitory 

a week before school began, the students were already on campus for their 

mandatory military training. They began training at 7:00 a.m. and practiced 

marching drills until lunch when they took a two-hour break to eat and rest. After 

lunch they continued to practice drills until the dinner break, and they practiced 

again in the evenings until 9:00. From our apartment I could hear their chants and 

cadences. The training was run by soldiers from the People’s Liberation Army 

(PLA) and it appeared to be grueling work under the hot sun. The American 

teachers were invited to meet our new students, and the students and 版主任ban 

zhuren asked us to participate in a musical performance as part of a show on the 

last night of the training. For me, the invitation was completely unexpected after 

observing the formality of the military training, and I was even more surprised 

when the students chose a Bruno Mars song to perform with us. Some of the 

students were as shy as I expected them to be. However, several students were 

quite excited about our performance and participated in the planning and practices 

enthusiastically.   

The evening of the performance was surreal. The stage in the gym was the 

setting and the gym was dark, the stage lights were bright, and the sound system 



 
9         GATESOL in Action, Fall 2018 
 

was blaring. My senses were overloaded. Having no understanding of the 

language I was relying on body language to interpret what was happening. During 

the show the atmosphere and energy in the gym was far different from the 

militaristic environment that I had observed throughout the week. Most of the 

classes sang and some danced to popular Chinese songs; the students in the 

audience clapped and cheered after each performance. I was surprised when two 

groups presented comedic skits mocking their PLA trainers; however, the 

students, teachers, and soldiers laughed and applauded. The soldiers gave the 

final performance of the evening. The synchronicity and beauty of their traditional 

martial arts routine drew a standing ovation. Standing in the midst of the 

applauding students, I realized that they had a great deal of respect for their 

trainers and they had developed a bond during their week together. I began to feel 

the full weight of the circumstances and it was clear to me then that I was going to 

encounter many new and unexpected experiences here.  

One of the more surprising discoveries was that while the school culture is 

based on traditional Chinese education, in many ways, the controls on students 

are far more relaxed than I had expected. For example, each class is assigned to 

a classroom and the students remain in their classrooms. The daily schedule is 

quite rigorous with classes being held from 7:30 AM to 5:00 PM each day and an 

evening study period from 7:00 PM to 10:00 PM. The teachers have offices and 

go to the classrooms to teach so the students are frequently unsupervised 

throughout the day and during self-study periods. I also discovered that many of 

my students did not fit the stereotypical image of Chinese students. I had 



 
10         GATESOL in Action, Fall 2018 
 

imagined that my students in China would be singularly focused on academics, 

and that they would be compliant and reticent in the classroom. However, some of 

them were inattentive during class and disinterested in school. Some of the 

students aspired to careers in medicine and some dreamt of being movie stars 

and singers, some were perfectionistic and overachieving while others were 

unorganized and only did the minimum amount of work required on assignments. 

Adapting to a new school environment and new students was a trying experience 

that required a great deal of patience at times. There are many things that did not 

“make sense” from a western perspective and I am not sure if I could have done 

more to prepare myself for that.  

While some of my advance work made some aspects of the transition go 

more smoothly, navigating the complexities of living in a new culture required me 

to develop a whole new skill set. As the novelty of being in China began to wear 

off, the culture shock began. Adjusting to our new living environment was more 

difficult than I believed it would be and providing for basic needs presented 

challenges that I was ill-prepared to face, I was completely unprepared for how 

helpless I would feel.  I was expecting to shop at a local market for food and dine 

frequently at local restaurants. But when we arrived in Guangzhou we found that 

the location of the campus was relatively isolated and was mostly surrounded by 

high rise residential buildings that were under construction. One small community 

was visible from our balconies; the buildings were stained and the road was 

unpaved and partially flooded. We were warned not to go to that village because 

of the people living there who “do not like foreigners.” Due to the ongoing 



 
11         GATESOL in Action, Fall 2018 
 

construction, there were no amenities such as shops, restaurants or grocery 

stores within walking distance of the campus. Without access to a personal 

vehicle the public transportation system was our connection to the local 

businesses and the larger commercial sections of the city.  Because the metro 

station is a ten-minute walk from the campus, there were no quick trips to shop for 

groceries. A one-way trip to the nearest supermarket entailed walking to the bus 

station and a twenty-minute bus ride. At the supermarket there were more 

challenges to face. Many of the products were unrecognizable to me and their 

labels, written in Chinese, were impossible to decipher. We had to make three 

trips to the supermarket each week because we could only buy as much as we 

could carry.  

There were psychological challenges, too. The phenomenon of being an 

outsider can be disorienting. Typically, foreigners stand out in contrast to the 

homogenous population with 91.6% of the citizens being of Han ethnicity (The 

World Factbook, 2017). My son and I often drew attention in public spaces. My 

tall, blue-eyed, Chinese speaking son achieved something close to rock star 

status while we were there. As we rode on the subway, walked down the street, or 

shopped for groceries people used their cellphones to take photos of us. We were 

approached directly by people who wanted to have a conversation in English or 

take “selfies” with us. On several occasions, we were approached by students 

who had been assigned the task of talking with a native English speaker as their 

homework. On the other hand, it was surprisingly easy to feel anonymous and 

isolated in the midst of the crowds of people. The language barrier was an 



 
12         GATESOL in Action, Fall 2018 
 

obvious obstacle and making connections was impossible without enough 

language to engage with the people around us. The bewildering contrast of being 

on display to feeling invisible in a densely populated city of over 15 million people 

was an ongoing source of stress.  

The trials of working at the heart of this cross-cultural partnership were 

often related to communication and the cultural differences were equally 

perplexing. Language was the most obvious problem for the foreign teachers. 

While the International Program’s content courses were taught in English the 

primary language of communication is 普通话 Putonghua (the common language). 

All school business (including communication with parents) was conducted in 普通

话 Putonghua. Thus, we were rarely informed about daily operational issues such 

as schedule changes, school rules, and procedures.  

We could use our translator to communicate with parents and other 

teachers but it was difficult to be certain that our intended message was being 

transmitted accurately. For example, at the end of the first semester, the teachers 

were required to submit written comments on each student which were translated 

so that the parents could understand them. I wrote that a student was “frequently 

distracted” which was affecting her performance on some tasks. Shortly after the 

comments were given to the parents, I received a message from the student. She 

said that there must have been a mistake in the communication, the translation of 

the comments gave her parents the impression that she was not coming to my 



 
13         GATESOL in Action, Fall 2018 
 

class. Fortunately, her parents knew her well enough to know that she would not 

skip class but many difficult situations were not so easily resolved.  

Adaptation 

After a few weeks of teaching the inaugural group of students, I was 

approached by the department chair who shared her concern that the students 

were afraid of me. Taken aback, I candidly shared with her that I did not know how 

it was possible that I was frightening them. I was perplexed when she said that it 

was because of my directness; how could I manage my classroom any other way? 

The Chinese teachers were reportedly stern and strict, I wondered how they could 

be strict without being direct. I moved on without understanding what my 

department chair was trying to convey to me. Later, as I reflected on my first term, 

I realized the distinction between my directness and the directive aspect of the 

Chinese teachers’ instructional practices. As an illustration, my World History 

students were producing puppet shows on a story of origin. On this project, the 

students used cultural narratives about how the universe began and how humans 

came into being to write a script and perform the story using puppets they created.  

The students were assigned to small working groups and each member had been 

assigned a specific task. The progress of one group was not advancing at the 

same pace as the other groups; as I observed the group I saw that only one 

student, who was assigned the role of “producer”, was actively working and the 

other group members were talking and watching her. I chose that particular 

student to be the producer because she was very organized and diligent in 

completing her work. As I stood watching I assumed that efforts of the other group 



 
14         GATESOL in Action, Fall 2018 
 

members were constrained by her perfectionistic standards. I approached the 

group, with my stern teacher look on my face, and restated my expectation that 

each member had a role in the group’s efforts. Some of the students laughed, 

then they all sat silently, when I let them know that they all needed to get to work. 

My stern teacher look had been an effective way of communicating with my 

students in the United States, so I was surprised and frustrated by their reaction. 

As I built relationships with the students and gained exposure to the school 

culture, I saw the circumstances in a different light. I began to understand why the 

department chair told me that the students were afraid of me and I realized my 

missteps in communicating with my students during that activity. The students 

were not accustomed to the facial expressions of the American teachers. The 

non-verbal mode of communicating with students using “a look” made the 

students uncomfortable; the laughter was an expression of anxiety or 

nervousness about the interaction (Scollon & Scollon, 2001).  Furthermore, the 

“producer” was also the 班长 ban zhang  (class monitor - a leadership position 

giving her elevated status in the school and with her peers) and my actions were 

equivalent to what we describe in the U.S. as “calling her out”. In the Chinese 

classroom, a student loses face if she is criticized publicly by the teacher 

(Schoenhals, 1993) so my reaction was out of proportion given the situation.   

Growth 

 Through the process of recognizing and reflecting on my cultural missteps I 

developed a new understanding of Chinese culture and my environment. As my 

perspectives shifted I became increasingly competent at living in China. The 



 
15         GATESOL in Action, Fall 2018 
 

internal boundaries that shaped my views expanded and softened.  As I 

recognized the shift in my perspective I felt more connected to my environment. 

During my first year, I struggled to survive in my new environment. The 

challenge of how to meet my basic needs exhausted me. Teaching in a new 

context and accepting my position as a foreign teacher frustrated me. And, the 

isolation that I experienced caused me to be anxious and frightened at times. At 

first, I tried to hold on to my cultural identity. I sought out familiar foods at specialty 

stores and Western restaurants, I made frequent trips to Hong Kong to soak up 

the Western influences there. I maintained my Western style of communicating 

directly with my colleagues and students. At the same time, I stubbornly refused to 

give up my desire to become a part of my new world. The two-hour trip to the 

supermarket was an ordeal at the end of a long day of work.  However, it required 

me to leave the insular school community and experience the lifestyles of the 

locals. Each outing was a cultural field trip where I experienced the world in a 

completely different way and I witnessed the ingenuity and fortitude that is the 

fabric of daily existence for the people living around us. Bicycles and motor 

scooters with myriad cargo moved in every direction. Peasants were selling fruit 

and vegetables from blankets on the sidewalk, a man setting up a stool as a 

barber’s chair to cut hair on the sidewalk of a busy street. Gradually, my curiosity 

delivered me from ineptitude as I explored the city and traveled to other provinces 

I observed people and their ways of life. I recorded my experiences in my journal 

and with my camera. I reflected on my interactions with my colleagues and 

students. I established relationships with local people that were open to educating 



 
16         GATESOL in Action, Fall 2018 
 

me about their culture. I struggled with learning the language, fortunately my son 

learned to speak and read relatively quickly. As he attained a level of fluency that 

allowed him to communicate with local people I noticed a shift in our interactions 

with them. Crossing the language barrier made daily transactions simpler and 

provided a way of connecting to the people around us.  We gained acceptance 

through our increasing familiarity with the community and our improved 

communication. After our first year, people in the community recognized us and 

greeted warmly when they saw us. 

My perspective on my work with the students also shifted. I had come to 

China expecting to use the same curricula and many of the same student-

centered strategies that I would typically use with my American students. While I 

was able to recognize my bias through efforts to prepare for intercultural teaching 

and learning, I did not fully develop intercultural competence until I had lived 

through and reflected critically on my experiences. Eventually, I grew to 

understand that preparing my students for college was not about teaching them 

with Western teaching strategies. I had to develop practices that incorporated 

those strategies in ways that were meaningful and beneficial to the students; in 

order to learn how to teach them I had to develop an understanding of the cultural 

context.  

Having limited exposure to and understanding of the culture before going to 

China added a layer of difficulty to the trials of navigating daily living. I found that 

adjusting to a new culture can be a disorienting and stressful experience. After 

two years of learning how to navigate my new world I gained a new-found 



 
17         GATESOL in Action, Fall 2018 
 

perspective; in my third year I was able to take more time to reflect on how my 

experiences impacted me. Without question, I have been transformed. I am 

certainly stronger and my experiences have taught me more about Chinese 

culture than I could have learned by reading books, but the most substantial shift 

has been the opening of the internal boundaries that shaped my identity. Because 

of my growth the divisions that once existed between myself and people with 

different cultural backgrounds no longer dominate my experiences.  Now, it is 

easier to see the world in terms of commonalities amongst people and appreciate 

different perspectives.  

Applications to Georgia 

In order to educate our students our knowledge of them must extend 

beyond the classroom into their lives and cultures (Freire, 1998). As teachers of 

English language learners, we face many obstacles that stem from cultural 

differences and we must learn to navigate cultural barriers to establish 

relationships with our students. Haddix and Price-Dennis assert that, “students are 

less likely to resist teachers when pedagogies are congruent with the cultural and 

linguistic identities of their communities” (2013, p. 250). We can become more 

effective intercultural educators by extending our education beyond coursework to 

include experiences that familiarize us with the cultures of our students.  

“One does not need to leave home to experience acculturation” (Kim, 2008). 

The school where I began my teaching career was literally two blocks from my home 

but the cultural differences between my students and me were significant obstacles 



 
18         GATESOL in Action, Fall 2018 
 

as I learned to teach. The first two years were quite stressful as I learned to adapt 

to my new environment. I found that I had to be intentional about gaining 

understanding of the lives of my students, and I learned the importance of spending 

time in their communities. These experiences changed my perspective and enabled 

me to connect with my students in the classroom; they were growth experiences 

that transformed me as a person and informed my teaching practices.  

In 2008, GATESOL in Action published an article on the work of teachers in an 

ESOL endorsement program in Georgia. The analysis of the Funds of Knowledge family 

literacy work provides detailed insight to the effects of working with refugee families in 

their homes. The teacher’s reflections illustrate how developing relationships with the 

families transformed their perspectives and shaped their teaching philosophies (Tinker 

Sachs et al., 2008). These statements, made by the teachers in this study, demonstrate 

the influence of their connections with the students’ culture on their teaching:  

Establishing relationships with the families is not only beneficial for the 
teacher, but also for the school. There is and always will be a connection 
between school and home. Building rapport and relationships of trust in 
both scenarios benefits not only you as a teacher, but also your students 
and their families; therefore, the social processes of teaching and learning 
can only be improved (p. 7).  
 
As I make my visits, I am a teacher and a learner, an insider and outsider. 
Only by experiencing the same living conditions and constraints of these 
families can a teacher truly understand the daily struggles faced by our 
students and their families. In this learning process, I hope to be able to 
transfer what I learned to the classroom, as a teacher who does not 
perceive my students with prejudiced social and cultural perspectives, but 
one who is empathetic, resourceful and truly effective (p. 15). 
 



 
19         GATESOL in Action, Fall 2018 
 

Conclusion 

We develop our intercultural competence when we seek to understand the 

cultural differences we experience in our daily lives. Kim (2008) asserts that a 

broader application of his theory of intercultural personhood is relevant in the 

context of the increasing intercultural exchange that accompanies globalization. 

The opportunities for developing an understanding of other cultures and our ability 

to communicate across cultural and physical boundaries are growing. In addition 

to experiential learning, mass media and technological innovation are avenues 

that expose us to cultures that are different from ours. Whether we are in or 

outside of the classroom, technological innovations and social media provide 

opportunities for learning from each other. Through these tools we can acquire 

new cultural information to support our efforts to become more effective 

intercultural educators.  

 

 

  



 
20         GATESOL in Action, Fall 2018 
 

References 

Central Intelligence Agency. (2017). China. The World Factbook. Retrieved from 

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/br.html 

Freire, P. (1998). Cultural identity and education. Teachers as cultural workers: 

Letters to those who dare to teach. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. 

Haddix, M., & Price-Dennis, D. (2013). Urban fiction and multicultural literature as 

transformative tools for preparing English teachers for diverse classrooms. 

English Education, 45(3), 247-283. Retrieved from 

http://www.jstor.org/stable/23364869  

Kim, Y.Y. (2008). Intercultural personhood: Globalization and a way of 

being. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 32(4), 359-368. 

doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijintrel.2008.04.005 . 

Schoenhals, M. (1993). The paradox of power in a People’s Republic of 

China middle school. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharp. 

Scollon, R. & Scollon, S. (2001). Intercultural communication (2nd ed.). 

Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers. 

Tinker Sachs, G., Hendley, M.L., Klosterman, S., Muga, E., Roberson, A., 

Soons, B., Wingo, C., & Yeo, M. (2008). Integrating funds of 

knowledge in the ESOL practicum: The missing element. GATESOL 

in Action, 21(2), 23-30. 

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/br.html
http://www.jstor.org/stable/23364869


 
21         GATESOL in Action, Fall 2018 
 

Ward, C., Bochner, S., & Furnham, A. (2001). The psychology of culture 

shock (2nd ed.). Philadelphia: Routledge. 


	Learning to teach again, in China
	By Lisa McLeod-Chambless Georgia State University lmcleodchambless1@student.gsu.edu

