Wendy Liu

My story

My name is Wendy Liu and I teach at Haines Elementary School. This is my 9th year of teaching, and I am currently a third grade bilingual teacher. I was born and raised in Taiwan and moved to St. Louis, MO for high school. Since I only had limited vocabulary to communicate with others during my high school years, it was difficult for me to connect with other classmates and my teachers. After becoming a teacher, I wanted to make sure that my students won’t have the same experience as me. Therefore, I take time to build relationships with them and their family and get to know my students’ interests and strengths. It is essential to understand each individual learner in order to provide the right resources and materials for them to thrive.

My equity challenge and how I work on it

There are many components to guide student agency, including voice, choice, engagement, motivation, self-efficacy, purpose, and ownership. But how do I incorporate all of these elements into my classroom and make sure that my students are demonstrating mastery? That’s when I start implementing personalized learning with my third graders. Through personalized learning, I am able to set goals with my students and they get to decide on how they want to achieve the goals. During the process, I collect their feedback, which helps me to plan personalized pathways to meet their needs. For my capstone project on “Genius Hour,” students create their passion projects based on their interests and curiosity. This project gives students ownership and helps them to understand who they are as learners.

Quote/motto or one piece of advice for a teacher who is thinking about doing this work

Don’t be afraid to try new things! Test it out with your students and let them know that you are learning with them through the process.

Resources used to drive equity work

I get my resources from Cult of Pedagogy: Jennifer Gonzalez offers blog posts, podcasts and videos. I also subscribe to Edutopia to get educational articles.