The Bad Chinese Teacher Podcast

Katrina Perito has two degrees in French, but don’t ask her if she’s planning on becoming a French teacher anytime soon, because she’s living proof that being multilingual can open up far more career opportunities than just teaching language. Katrina currently works for the French government as a Trade Advisor for Sports, Culture, and Tourism with the trade mission of the French Embassy, where she...

On air March 16th, 2020. Recorded March 16th, 2020. We’ve made it to the end of the first season! Times are weird, but hey — thanks for sticking around. I’ve mentioned here and there that I was applying to master’s programs in education this year. The decision to apply was one largely defined by self-doubt and the legitimate fear that — given my unimpressive undergraduate record, basement-level GP...

On air March 9th, 2020. Recorded March 7th, 2020. This week, I sat down with my good friend April Zhu to talk about her recent article for The Elephant on sinophobia and the coronavirus. Both of these topics have been discussed to the point of exhaustion in recent months (including on this very podcast), but April’s unique position as a Chinese American, Nairobi-based journalist who fluently speak...

On air March 2nd, 2020. Recorded March 1st, 2020.   You had questions, and I answered them. This episode features some very unqualified responses to topics like:   - What’s the best way to study Chinese when you’re stuck in a non-Chinese speaking environment? - What is “Taiwanese language,” and who actually speaks it? - How do you deal with coronavirus-fixated racists? - How do you talk...

On air February 25th, 2020. Recorded February 24th, 2020. This week is an impromptu bonus episode because Patricia just got back from another Model Congress conference with 15 of her students, 10 of whom brought back awards, six of whom reminded her what it means to teach at a Christian school, and all of whom made her cry on the last night of the trip. Patricia has a lot of feelings and is also v...

On air February 17th, 2020. Recorded February 13th, 2020.   Well, folks — it happened. This week, I hit one of the most important teaching milestones of my career: crying in my classroom for the first time.   It’s been a hard week, but hard weeks rarely exist in vacuums. Like many other professions that deal in the business of vulnerable people, teaching often carries a moral weight that...

On air February 3rd, 2020. Recorded February 2nd, 2020. No news item has dominated international airwaves than the coronavirus outbreak that originated from Wuhan, China late last year. With more cases emerging outside of China each day, the world seems to be holding their breath — both literally and figuratively. Adjacent to the media chatter about death tolls and rates of infection is an equally...

On air January 27th, 2020. Recorded January 26th, 2020. I’m not gonna lie: if there was ever a Lunar New Year equivalent of the Grinch, I’d probably be it. It’s not something I like to admit, but I’ve come to terms with the fact that despite being ethnically Chinese, I don’t have much emotional attachment with a holiday that I didn’t really grow up celebrating — and truth be told, a big part of me...

On air January 20th, 2020. Recorded January 19th, 2020. This week, schools all over the United States are honoring the life of Martin Luther King Jr. and his legacy of advancing civil rights and racial equity. Social justice has long been a centerpiece on discussions regarding teaching culture through authentic materials in the world language classroom. But has that discussion fully reached the Ch...

On air January 13th, 2020. Recorded December 23rd, 2019. Katrina Perito has two degrees in French, but don’t ask her if she’s planning on becoming a French teacher anytime soon, because she’s living proof that being multilingual can open up far more career opportunities than just teaching language. Katrina currently works for the French government as a Trade Advisor for Sports, Culture, and Touris...

On air January 6th, 2020. Recorded December 22nd, 2019. We’re wrapping up this two-part episode on TPRS methods with an in-depth discussion on what really keeps students motivated and engaged (hint: it’s not always “culture”), how to promote language learning in cultures where second language acquisition isn’t necessarily prioritized, and why equity and access matter so much in the Chinese languag...

On air December 30th, 2019. Recorded December 24th, 2019. We’re on break this week for the holidays, but what better time than the holidays to sit down by a metaphorical fire for storytime? In this first (and only) edition of Patricia’s Momentary Brushes With Fame, Patricia recounts the time she wrote a blog post about Hamilton creator and King of Twitter Lin-Manuel Miranda — which he later found....

On air December 23rd, 2019. Recorded December 22nd, 2019. It’s the end of the semester, which marks four months of Patricia implementing TPRS methods in her middle/high school Chinese classes. Prior to this, Patricia bulldozed her way through five years of classes using legacy methods, teaching her students Chinese the same way she learned Chinese. It didn’t work. By moving to TPRS (Teaching Profi...

On air December 15th, 2019. Recorded November 29th, 2019. There aren’t many things that can compel a group of people to wake up before 9am the day after Thanksgiving to record a podcast, which is why I’m so grateful and glad that these five good high school friends were game to guest on this week’s episode. We’re coming up on ten years since we graduated high school, and we spent a couple of hours...

On air December 9th, 2019. Recorded November 26th, 2019. By the time you hear this episode, Patricia will likely be in a stress-induced coma due to having just returned from chaperoning a four-day Model Congress conference with 35 of her students. (Listen to Part 1 of the Model Congress special episode for further context.) Fortunately, Patricia also had the foresight to record this week's episode...

On air December 2nd, 2019. Recorded November 29th, 2019. There aren’t many things that can compel a group of people to wake up before 9am the day after Thanksgiving to record a podcast, which is why I’m so grateful and glad that these five good high school friends were game to guest on this week’s episode. We’re coming up on ten years since we graduated high school, and we spent a couple of hours...

On air November 25th, 2019. Recorded November 24th, 2019. This week marks the first installment of a new segment called “It’s Been A Hard Week,” which is a space to just talk about life, and the clumsy, messy parts of getting through each day. In this episode, Patricia talks about finding out her actual Myers-Briggs type, the struggle of keeping on top of work and responsibilities, coping with fai...

On air November 18th, 2019. Recorded November 9th, 2019. Rachael and Patricia took Spanish classes together throughout middle and high school, only for their paths to reconverge ten years after graduation under their shared identity as high school language teachers. After finishing her bachelors and masters at Quinnipiac University, she became a Spanish teacher at Valley Regional High School in Co...

On air November 11th, 2019. Recorded November 8th, 2019. Chander Tseng originally hails from Taitung, Taiwan, but his upbringing in this small, quiet coastal city bore a classic hallmark of any American childhood: watching Disney movies. Through films like The Lion King and Aladdin, Chander developed an interest and keen ear for English language at a young age, which eventually blossomed into a pr...

On air November 4th, 2019. Recorded November 2nd, 2019. US Democratic Presidential Primary candidate Andrew Yang is best known for his advocacy of universal basic income and his plan to give every American $1,000 a month. But before entering politics, Andrew Yang was just another Taiwanese-American kid forced to go to Chinese School on the weekends. In a recent campaign video, Andrew recalled his...

On air October 28th, 2019. Recorded October 27th, 2019. Patricia talks about how she accidentally became a Chinese teacher, her language learning journey, and why the name of this podcast isn’t just another example of self-deprecating millennial humor. Teaching often feels like a high-stakes career, and it’s so easy to feel like you’re doing a bad job. Is there room for imperfection? What business...

On air October 28th, 2019. Recorded October 20th, 2019. Gio Esposito joins Patricia to recap their experiences debuting a choral work in Chinese at Carnegie Hall earlier in the month. Written by Pulitzer-prize winning composer Zhou Long, Men of Steel and the Golden Spike commemorates the 150th anniversary of the completion of the transcontinental railroad, and tells the unrecorded stories of the f...

On air October 28th, 2019. Recorded October 19th, 2019. In the debut episode of The Bad Chinese Teacher Podcast, we look at Chinese-American journalist Lenora Chu’s book Little Soldiers and how traditional Chinese methods of classroom instruction inform Mandarin language teaching outside of China today. Why do some native-speaker Chinese teachers struggle in Western classroms? Should Western cultu...

On air October 25th, 2019. Recorded October 19th, 2019. There are so many — SO MANY — people learning Chinese these days, but there’s so much more to learning Chinese than just, like, memorizing characters. Taiwanese-American millennial Patricia Liu is an actual, living, breathing high school Mandarin teacher here to help you make sense of it all. This podcast is where you’ll find frank, honest di...