Fellow:Tianyue (Emma) Lang


Name Tianyue (Emma) Lang School (Cohort) Swarthmore College (2023 cohort) Majoring in Sociology & Anthropology, Art History Country China Email Special:EmailUser/Langtianyue

Bio

My name is Tianyue Lang. At the age of 15, I gave myself an English name Emma by flipping through the dictionary, and has been since remembered by friends as Emma. Growing up in Hangzhou, China, a city known for being “near Shanghai” and having beautiful lakes and history, I feel the city grows in me with an appreciation with culture, nature and community. I’m grateful for having most “liberal-arts” secondary education I could ask for with open-minded teachers and space for creativity in the traditional Chinese education system. At the age of 18, I came to the US to study at Swarthmore College to continue my liberal arts education.

During the pandemic, I came to realize that education is a powerful force of social change, especially in the times of changes and crisis. In order to explore the boundaries and possibilities of education and lifelong learning, I took a gap year in 2020 and volunteered and interned in different education organization and companies in China. I first got exposed to body-centered pedagogy when I was working as a volunteer in a non-profit organization in China called Bright & Beautiful. Centering its service on adolescent girls from rural China facing serious mental health issues and gender discrimination, Bright & Beautiful integrate performing arts, visual arts that focus on body to help girls build up self worthiness and confidence. I led several camps at Bright & Beautiful and helped develop curriculums using cameras and exhibitions as a way for girls to reexamine their environment, their relationships with others and themselves. Through exhibitions, they also found an outlet they expressed themselves to the communities around them. This experience made me realize the importance of highlighting the inner creativity of the girls themselves, and educators’ role in bringing them to realize it.

Later that year, I interned as the academic project researcher and manager in an Education Technology startup X ACADEMY to explore the possibility of education technology. X ACADEMY holds annual summer program, and always push for innovations every year to enhance students’ experiences. During my time there, I researched about the current education obstacles and student learning challenges in China, and designed with my team several projects to improve the academic experience of the summer program. However, when the pandemic hit Shanghai, it created both uncertainties and challenges. I was in charge of the whole academic team with more than 200 people. Facing the unknown, I felt overwhelmed but also excited to turn the challenges to opportunities.

One of the major project I worked on was to improve the programming of the Capstone experience during the summer program. Within the 12-days summer program, students work in a team of 4 to 5 people and develop a Capstone project that can be a software, a robot, a creative film production, a research project, and so on. However, since Capstone is a highly collaborative project that requires constant communications, the online environment may present huge challenges for its implementation. After numerous conversations with my team, we decided to take a leap of faith to turn the challenges to our opportunities for growth.

When I was researching about future education requirements, I realized a lack of connection between X ACADEMY’s academic program and the real world problems. Problem-oriented learning and social responsibilities become more and more important in today’s youth education, and Capstone can serve as an important window to build the bridge. Researching into numerous workshop models, I came up with the idea of building community partnership with organizations and companies with our summer program. Given the convenience of online environment and their enthusiasm for education, I successfully invited 5 socially-engaged companies in different fields, in technology, museum, nonprofit and research institutes. They gave talks about the problems that their organization or companies are aiming to solve, shared reflections of their experiences and solutions, and offered suggestions for the Capstone projects. They also became some of the judges of the final Capstone presentations. I also collaborated with the development team to develop an online immersive Capstone exhibition experience for our online education platform Hyper EX. Mimicking the real life experience, we design the chat room based the distance where people have conversations. The result turned out to be very rewarding for students. Students collaborated with each other to develop innovative projects and many of them wrote in feedbacks the exhibitions of Capstone was the most memorable experience.

Inspired by abolitionist thinking, I hope to keep exploring the possibilities of higher education through the opportunity of University Innovation Fellowship.

Achievements

During the pandemic, I came to realize that education is a powerful force of social change, especially in the times of changes and crisis. In order to explore the boundaries and possibilities of education and lifelong learning, I took a gap year in 2020 and volunteered and interned in different education organization and companies in China. I first got exposed to body-centered pedagogy when I was working as a volunteer in a non-profit organization in China called Bright & Beautiful. Centering its service on adolescent girls from rural China facing serious mental health issues and gender discrimination, Bright & Beautiful integrate performing arts, visual arts that focus on body to help girls build up self worthiness and confidence. I led several camps at Bright & Beautiful and helped develop curriculums using cameras and exhibitions as a way for girls to reexamine their environment, their relationships with others and themselves. Through exhibitions, they also found an outlet they expressed themselves to the communities around them. This experience made me realize the importance of highlighting the inner creativity of the girls themselves, and educators’ role in bringing them to realize it.

Later that year, I interned as the academic project researcher and manager in an Education Technology startup X ACADEMY to explore the possibility of education technology. X ACADEMY holds annual summer program, and always push for innovations every year to enhance students’ experiences. During my time there, I researched about the current education obstacles and student learning challenges in China, and designed with my team several projects to improve the academic experience of the summer program. However, when the pandemic hit Shanghai, it created both uncertainties and challenges. I was in charge of the whole academic team with more than 200 people. Facing the unknown, I felt overwhelmed but also excited to turn the challenges to opportunities.

One of the major project I worked on was to improve the programming of the Capstone experience during the summer program. Within the 12-days summer program, students work in a team of 4 to 5 people and develop a Capstone project that can be a software, a robot, a creative film production, a research project, and so on. However, since Capstone is a highly collaborative project that requires constant communications, the online environment may present huge challenges for its implementation. After numerous conversations with my team, we decided to take a leap of faith to turn the challenges to our opportunities for growth.

When I was researching about future education requirements, I realized a lack of connection between X ACADEMY’s academic program and the real world problems. Problem-oriented learning and social responsibilities become more and more important in today’s youth education, and Capstone can serve as an important window to build the bridge. Researching into numerous workshop models, I came up with the idea of building community partnership with organizations and companies with our summer program. Given the convenience of online environment and their enthusiasm for education, I successfully invited 5 socially-engaged companies in different fields, in technology, museum, nonprofit and research institutes. They gave talks about the problems that their organization or companies are aiming to solve, shared reflections of their experiences and solutions, and offered suggestions for the Capstone projects. They also became some of the judges of the final Capstone presentations. I also collaborated with the development team to develop an online immersive Capstone exhibition experience for our online education platform Hyper EX. Mimicking the real life experience, we design the chat room based the distance where people have conversations. The result turned out to be very rewarding for students. Students collaborated with each other to develop innovative projects and many of them wrote in feedbacks the exhibitions of Capstone was the most memorable experience.

Inspired by abolitionist thinking, I hope to keep exploring the possibilities of higher education through the opportunity of University Innovation Fellowship.