Hello, Words Alive community, my name is Xipei Zhuang! I am thrilled to have this opportunity to join this organization and to work with such a group of lovely people who are passionate about helping people to learn and grow! In the interest of connecting with you all better, let me briefly introduce myself to you.
I am an international student in United States, originally from Quanzhou, a beautiful coastal city that located in the Fujian Province in China. I started my learning journey as a community college student in North Seattle College, majoring in Business Administration. Then I transferred to University of Washington, where in one elective course called, “Seeking Educational Equity and Diversity” I learned about different identities like gender, sexual orientation, nationality, and ethnicity and how they can negatively impact people in a multitude of ways. It was also the time I decided to major in education because I am so grateful for everything I have today, therefore, I want to make positive impacts in the lives of others.
Recently, I earned my Master of Science in Education from University of Pennsylvania majoring in Learning Sciences and Technologies with a passion for understanding how the use of technologies can make learning more accessible and efficient for learners. Right after I graduated, as a learning design intern who mainly focusing on supporting the process of curriculum development at Words Alive, I strongly believe that reading is one of the most powerful ways for people to fight for social justice, and I am so proud that I am doing the most ordinary but important thing in my daily here!
What intrigued you about Words Alive? Why did you want to join the team?
Words Alive’s creative approach to pair each book titles with learning kits and classroom guide to provide children, teens, and families resources and knowledge is something intrigued me the most about Words Alive, more surprisingly, all the curriculums here are produced by volunteers who are the kindest people just passionate about helping people out!
Before starting my internship at Words Alive, I have been doing volunteer work in a rural area of China to provide food and clothing resources to girls who are abandoned by their parents. While I was doing routine volunteer work there, one day, a child approached me by asking, “Sister, what school is look?” That moment I started to realize most of these girls were almost uneducated and even illiterate. And what I was doing every day is very limited and insufficient. What they deeply in need is a way to education so they can change their lives by exercising their own agency. Therefore, the moment I read the mission of Words Alive on LinkedIn, I applied to the internship opportunity right away as I know this is a perfect non-profit organization I want to work with and learn a lot of from.
I am more than willing to join the team due to three main reasons. The first and the foremost is my personal value is perfectly aligned with Words Alive’s value as I can see we both passionate about helping people to learn and grow. As a student majoring in education, I learned that there are a lot of systematic issues such as racism, gender, and disablism that are impacting people, especially those come from the underserved communities. So, when I came across Words Alive and learned that their mission is to empower people through reading books that focus on different themes, I knew I want to get involved for sure.
The second is that I am feeling myself being valued because I have the knowledge and skills to make immediate impacts for the team. With academic backgrounds in both business and education, as well as skills in time-management, communication, and teamwork, I am confident that I can deliver high quality work on time.
Last but not least, as an international student, I want the opportunity to challenge myself by stepping out of my comfort zone, to gain hand-on experience in applying what I learned from school to a US professional work environment.
What are you most excited about in your new position?
I have been doing my internship at Words Alive for two months now, as a learning design intern, one thing that I REALLY LOVE about in my position is that I get to support the whole process of creating high quality curriculum produced by our skilled volunteers, which is core to our programming. This including but not limited to, helping to manage and onboard volunteers,
replying to any inquires volunteers and our curriculum leads have, and helping to manage any data related to curriculum development in Airtable. In addition, I love attending the curriculum leads monthly check-in meeting in which everyone will share about our success, potential obstacles, and anything we can do to improve the process of curriculum development. Despite being as an intern, I feel that my voice and efforts have been recognized and the team is really leveraging strengths of everyone to make sure the process of curriculum development is better and better at Words Alive.
What is your relationship with literacy and learning?
My most vivid relationship with literacy and learning was the time I learned about the real definition of literacy, the ideological model of literacy, in one of my graduate classes called “Literacy in Action”. Specifically, the ideological model of literacy believe that literacy is not only a skill taught to people, but also it is a social practice that enables people to achieve something specific and meaningful to them. When I was working as a kid writing assistant at a preschool in Philadelphia, I noticed there were different activities held in the classroom to improve the literacy for children. One that left me with deep impression was the election activity being held in a pre-k classroom. Instead of teaching children the complex idea of election, the teacher showed children two types of bread so that they could pick their favorite one by circling it on a piece of paper. After children made their choice, they were guided to put their piece of paper into a box that labelled as “voting”. From that experience, I learned that literacy can be build up by immersing children into doing daily literacy activities. And I was super glad to find out that Words Alive is doing similar thing as we are trying to make a learning kit for each book read by children, so they can internalize the information they read from the books!
What are your currently reading?
I recently chose to read the book, Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner, because this is a popular book that suggested by many people on Chinese social media. This is a memoir that the author documented her complicated relationship with her mother, who passed away from cancer. Although I have not yet finished reading it, as an international student who is far away from my family, this is a best pick for me whenever I get homesick.
