Starting this fall, St. Christopher’s is now offering Mandarin Chinese language instruction for Middle and Upper School students. The first class consists of one eighth grader, eight freshmen and one sophomore and is taught by first-year Faculty Member Hanna Zhu.

Within the first few months of teaching at St. Christopher’s, Mrs. Zhu is already helping her students make global connections. At the start of the school year, she contacted a school in her hometown of Changsha, a city in Hunan province in China, to see if teachers and students there would be willing to participate in an exchange. The idea was to connect students from the two countries using video chat to help them practice their language skills and to engage in a dialogue about Chinese and American culture. The Chinese school agreed to participate, and students were paired up based on common interests and personality. Video chat sessions — which are held one-on-one every two weeks as a homework assignment — last between 10 and 20 minutes and are supported using an app called WeChat. 

For Mrs. Zhu, teaching Chinese at an American school has brought her full circle. “As a young student in China I always loved English and wanted to be a writer,” she explains. Eighteen years ago, she followed her passion to Illinois State University where she earned an M.A. in Special Education. She later spent four years as a residence hall coordinator at East Carolina University. Eventually, Hanna came to Richmond where she earned a master of divinity degree from Baptist Theological Seminary of Richmond. “My own journey brought me to learn from the outside ... now teaching Chinese has given me the opportunity to get back in touch with my own language and my own culture — and I find great joy in that,” says Mrs. Zhu.

Contact Mrs. Zhu zhuj@stcva.org for more information about the program.