Lead English Teacher 5th Grade & Teacher Assistant Kinder
Iris attended Western Washington University for her B.A. in Environmental Studies and Elementary Education. She has a Washington State certification in elementary education, grades K-8th. After her graduation from Western, Iris received a Fulbright grant to teach English in Taiwan for one year. She gained many valuable experiences from the Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) methods of bilingual education in Taipei.
Following her experience in Taiwan, Iris was accepted into the Early Language Education for Intercultural Communication Master’s Program at the University of Eastern Finland. Her co-authored thesis was called “Global Citizenship Education in Early Language Education: A comparative study of fourth-grade language curricula and students’ attitudes towards global citizenship competencies from three countries: Colombia, Finland, and the U.S.A.” While in Finland, Iris helped to develop and implement a global citizenship curriculum for students at the University Teacher Training Schools. Her most recent teaching experiences upon returning to the US have been in the Issaquah and Lake Washington School Districts.
Now, Iris is excited to embark on this next journey as a teacher at G.I.S. She looks forward to continuing to learn and grow as an educator. Iris hopes to foster an attitude of lifelong learning, determination. and creativity within her students. She aims to encourage them to take ownership of their learning and embrace their potential in all aspects of life.
Iris was adopted from Guangzhou, China when she was 16 months old and raised in Mount Vernon, WA. During her undergraduate studies, she co-founded the WWU Adoptees Alliance and collaborated with a fellow adoptee on their capstone honors project which consisted of research and resources for the adoptee community in the form of an online platform. She also self-published a YA novel titled, “Switched,” based on her experiences as an adoptee and competitive swimmer. Iris is currently working on a second novel that incorporates mythology from her travels abroad and her love of baking.