Sophie Yang

1. Tell us a bit about yourself. Where are you from and what were you doing before arriving at THINK Global School?

I grew up in China and went to Gettysburg College in the US to study psychology and international affairs. After graduation, I worked in Washington DC for a year in the media sector, before pursuing a master’s degree in international education at Columbia University. My work experience in the education space includes edu consulting, higher edu admin, social justice edu, and NGO work.

2. What do you love most about teaching?

It can be a dynamic process of mutual learning with the students that promotes creativity and celebrates freedom.

3. What aspects of THINK Global School’s educational model do you find most appealing?

Complementary to one another, the experimental, interdisciplinary and individualized learning aspects of our TGS model provide students with great opportunities, at such a critical age, to constantly test their dreams of ideal against projects of practice. It forms a positive and reflective cycle that fosters student capabilities to make real changes in today’s complex landscapes of communities, cultures, and societies.

4. If you could make one major change to global education, what would it be?

I wish to diversify the narrative of global education, which requires more integration of different educational philosophies and practices from across cultural backgrounds.

5. Describe your teaching style or philosophy. Do you have any unique teaching methods you use to keep students engaged?

Teaching to me is both the science of strategic structuring and the art of immersive intuition. Hence it is a craft that takes time and reflection to master the balance in every specific educational context.

6. Which of our core values do you feel you most embody, and why?

Meraki is important to me because I want to live wholeheartedly, bringing my creativity and spirituality to all that I do. Work time takes up such a large piece of our life, that the way you treat it shapes how it will transform you.

7. Tell us about your favorite teaching experience pre-TGS

In a UN youth training program in NYC, I participated in designing and facilitating sessions to introduce SDGs to a group of visiting Chinese students. Given my shared cultural background with them, it became a memorable process to teach international frameworks through Western concepts within the context of modern Eastern societies to ESL students in English.

8. If you could visit anywhere in the world, where would it be?

I can’t believe I still haven’t visited Japan or Korea as of 2019!

9. What is your favorite book, and why?

Sophie’s World is a book that first revealed to me the secret garden of philosophy when I was little. I am still amazed by how it never fails to inspire me, whenever I go back to reading it, even as I grow up thinking I know more about the world.