.png)
Staff Introduction
Jenny Liu (Director)
The founder of Loving Tree Academy, Ms. Liu was working as a Scientist in a Biotech company developing novel drugs for many years. After moving to the bay area, she founded the East Bay Bilingual Book Club. Within a few years, the kids in the book club not only expanded their choice of reading but also greatly improved the comprehensive, public expression capability and interests in reading. As a mother of two young kids, Ms. Liu showed consistent enthusiasm in education. She reads tons of education books and is good at using a variety of teaching methods to help children reaching the study target. She is especially good at science and language classes. As a university drama club president, team member of badminton, pingpang and dancing group, Ms. Liu wants to bring her optimistic and positive attitude towards life to her favorite children .
Ms. Liu taught Biology in Peking University for three years. While in graduate school in US, she worked as a teaching assistant for another three years. The enthusiasm and desire for education led her to research the existing after-school learning institutions. She used large amount of time to volunteer in many well-known after-school and elementary school and has accumulated rich experience in teaching. She found that due to lack of systematic scientific arrangements, many children's afterschool time can not be fully utilized. Many parents have to send their kids to participate different tutoring classes over the weekend, such as Chinese, math etc., which caused a huge waste of time and money. Due to this situation, Ms. Liu decided found this non-profit education center and really to educate children to achieve academic success.
Ms. Liu believe that "walking can never farther than seeing, doing can never more than thinking." Get kids see farther and think more, can help kid learn about the world at higher perspective and help child better choose the future path in life. Based on this goal, the curriculum in the Loving Tree Academy is to help kids to better understand the meaning of learning, experience the fun within study, develop independent learning and thinking habits. Ms. Liu wants to work together with parents in bayarea to create a better future for the children!
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Guolan Chen (Director of Education)
Ms. Chen graduated from Hunan Normal University, and she obtained Master of Laws from California Western School of Law. She holds attorney licenses of both China and New York State. As a mother of two young kids, Ms. Chen started focusing her interests and energy on cultivating kids since 2016. She studied related programs such as Children Psychology, Early Childhood Education and etc.; she volunteered in AWANA Program for Children during weekends, and obtained loves from children in her classes. As a Chinese mom, she is passionate on teaching Chinese as a language and Chinese culture. She is firm believer that a child can build up his/her confidence through learning the culture of his/her heritage; and the best way to learn the culture of his/her heritage is through learning the language. Knowledge of languages is the doorway to wisdom, and Ms. Chen believe Chinese is a doorway to Asia wisdom.
Ms.Chen is committed to build the team of high quality instructors; to organize our instructors to attend the seminars in the area of Children Psychology and teaching skills etc.; to build the bridges between our instructors and the parents of our children so that we can together raise children with high self-esteems and strong social skills.
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
James Feng (Financial Director)
Mr. Feng received his Bachelor degree of Business in Finance from University of Iowa and Master of Science degree in Finance from University of Texas at Dallas. He accumulated abundant internship experiences back in China which gave him a solid foundation of different management style experiences. As the management analyst of Loving Tree Academy, Mr. Feng will have overall fiscal and management responsibility, ensuring that the business is financially sound and attains its planned goals. He is especially good at identifying operation issues that arise in management of service operation, facilities planning, materials management, and operation planning and scheduling from financial perspective. With the strong background of financial management, statistics for strategy problems and operation management, Mr. Feng will be participate actively in evaluating management efficiency.
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Kelly Wang (Educational Administrator)
Kelly got a bachelor's degree in finance and psychology at the University of Denver, Colorado, and then she decided to continue her studies in the psychology field. Due to the love of children, she gave up a number of business school offer, chose to study at the University of Texas at Dallas, and eventually achieved a master's degree in human development and early childhood disorders. During her internship at Dallas, she spent six months in an autism agency in Dallas, the tough experience with children who were diagnosed with autism didn't make her flinch and she was not tired of children neither. On the contrary, she knows that regardless of healthy or not, each child is different and they are the most precious gift that their parents brought to the world. Kelly used to be a children English teacher and TOEFL writing teacher in Tianjin New Oriental school. This teaching experience has helped her accumulate diversity of language teaching experience. She found that children learn language much faster than adults, and children have their own set of memorizing method. So she created her own teaching methods and helped children learn Chinese in the process of doing more with less. In addition, Kelly began to practice piano when she was three and this helped her laid a great music foundation. She has been trained in professional vocal music, during the phase of teaching in Yunnan for three months, Kelly present the junior music teacher and English teacher.
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Yijing Wu (Tutor)
After graduating from Nanjing University, Yijing chose to go to a graduate school in California for further studies and has been awarded with full scholarships. Since 2014, she has been actively participate in volunteer activities in both schools and community, such as organize fundraiser for children who are struggling with hunger and collecting books and other materials for the children who need help. In graduate school, Yijing used to be part-time Chinese and gym teacher in different after schools. After obtaining a master's degree in Statistics, she still keeps passion for children and education. So she quit from an top level finance and insurance company in the United States, and she spent a lot of time and energy in the Loving Tree Academy to help children become more interested in learning Chinese. At the same time, Yijing has a deep foundation of dance, and she has been the president of Nanjing Scarlett Dance Company for three consecutive years. She is good at breaking down each dance step and imparting it to the children in children's preferred language, making it easier for children to understand and memorize. Even though she started teaching in Loving Tree Academy for just a few months, she has became good friends with many of the children.
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Ningsheng Yu (Tutor)
Ms. Ningsheng Yu received her Bachelor’s Degree majoring in Chinese from Changchun Normal University, and received her Master’s Degree in Business Administration from Macau University of Science and Technology. Ms. Yu used to be a Chinese teacher in middle school. She has developed her own creative way to teach students, and she was very good at communicating with them. By playing games and communicating often, students were easily to remember and apply the knowledge. Ms. Yu soon became one of the most popular teachers at school.
Starting from 2009, Ms. Yu entered the field of Psychological counseling. In 2011, she became a National Second-level Psychological counselor in China. Ms. Yu also participated in the training of Youth Sunday School for 2 year from 2009 to 2011. Beginning in 2011, she participated in the Marriage and Family Therapy Program at the Graduate School of Psychology at George Fox University in the United States. She completed 30 course studies, including marriage counseling, parent-child education, child development psychology, and games therapy.
Ms. Yu loves every child. She is willing to understand children. She can well balance the discipline and praise. She not only pays attention to the study of knowledge, but also helps children establish good character and good habits.
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Gong Zhang (Tutor)
Ms. Grace Zhang received her Bechelor’s Degree from Zhejiang University with a major in journalism and her Ph.D. from the Institute of Journalism and Communication at Zhejiang University. She has worked in Zhejiang Youth Daily, Zhejiang Daily, Zhejiang TV Station, China Xinhua News Agency for many years. She used to be a workaholic until her child was born. For the first time, she realized that she loves children so much, and for the first time, she found the importance and significance of early childhood education. In order to be a good mother, she used her spare time to learn the course of Children’s Psychology, Preschool Education and Early Childhood Autism Intervention and successfully graduated.
Incorporating infinite energy and happiness with her children, Ms. Zhang finally decided to change her original career plan and join the big family of Loving Tree Academy. She is patient, gentle, careful, and most importantly, responsible. She loves all the children as she loves her own child, and she hopes to accompany with these children to grow up happily and healthily. In addition to teaching children the basic knowledge of the books, she also hopes to pass on more positive energy to the children and cultivate their correct attitudes and methods for things. Ms. Zhang believes that every child is a unique seed. They are born out of the desire of life. They have their own thoughts, their own independent personality and soul, as well as unlimited potential and hope. Ms. Zhang wished to learn and grow together with the children of Loving Tree Academy!
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Joyce Lin (Administrative Director)
Joyce received her Master of Science degree in Material Chemistry in France. Besides Chinese, she is proficient in English and French. She has a lot of passion in teaching and loves spending time with her students. She teaches her students to be problem solvers by giving them enough space and encourage creative play. Joyce also loves and good at music. She believes it’s better to motivate them learning knowledge in a happy and lively environment. Her teaching philosophy is firmly grounded on teaching each student well in accordance with their aptitude. As a teacher, she takes a big responsibility of cultivating her students to help shape their lives, to help them discover they are important as individuals.
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Siwei Luo (Tutor)
Mr. Luo got a bachelor’s degree in elementary education at University of Iowa, Iowa. Growing up in Shanghai, China, Mr. Luo was heavily impacted by his parents who both used to be Chinese literacy educators, and the family atmosphere made him feel fascinated in the field of education. During his college years, Mr. Luo attended practicums that included literacy, math, science, and whole class instruction. He also spent over a year in a kindergarten classroom as a tutor and volunteer, which made him realize the importance of having a right start at a young age even more. Mr. Luo did appreciate how the standard American education allowed students to be themselves and build up interpersonal skills, and he also believed that “Practice makes perfect” and he was really into guiding students to make real world application based on the knowledge they learned. Mr. Luo believes every single student is and will be different, and his teaching philosophy is to be fair, friendly, and have high expectation to each student. Every child has special gifts, and it’s the teacher’s job to discover, activate, and maximize these amazing potentials.
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Shuhao Liang (Curriculum Specialist)
Shuhao graduated from Nankai University, and he obtained Master of Education degree from University of Florida. As a teacher who has learned different cultures, he understands the great importance of different cultures to the growth of an individual. Therefore, when he is teaching language, he would emphasize the culture behind the language. Shuhao loves Chinese culture deeply. He believes, every character is the essence of Chinese wisdom; every stroke displays the history of Chinese civilization. He has the responsibility to convey the wonder of Chinese culture to students, letting them truly learn and accept Chinese culture. Besides, Shuhao also hopes that his students could learn widely from other cultures and grow up as a knowledgeable citizen of the world, with great cultural-awareness and broad vision. Shuhao develops and designs curriculum materials, and recommend instructional materials to be used by educators and instructors to meet student educational needs and district standards; besides that, Shuhao plans and conducts teacher training programs and conferences dealing with new classroom procedures, instructional materials and equipment, and teaching aids.
