In Baotou, I participated in intangible* cultural heritage activities and visited a local school for professional and cultural交流. In Ordos, I explored the Xiangshawan Desert and visited a cashmere factory, where I learned about environmental sustainability, regional resources, manufacturing, and international trade. In Hohhot, I visited Yili Health Valley and the Inner Mongolia Museum to learn about modern industry, regional history, and ethnic diversity.

In the short term, I will use photographs, stories, and observations from the journey to make my Mandarin lessons more authentic and engaging. In the long term, this experience will help me develop more interdisciplinary and inquiry-based instruction, build educational connections, and help students understand China as a large and culturally diverse country.

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Section 2: Questions

1. How have your knowledge, skills, and capabilities grown?

I gained a deeper understanding of Inner Mongolia’s geography, ethnic diversity, educational system, traditional culture, and modern economy. I also strengthened my ability to connect Mandarin instruction with history, geography, environmental studies, and economics. Experiencing these places personally allows me to teach these topics with greater accuracy, confidence, and cultural understanding.

2. How will your instructional practice change as a result of your experience?

My teaching will become more visual, experiential, and inquiry-based. Instead of simply presenting cultural facts, I will use authentic photographs, stories, and materials from my journey. Students can compare Mongolian yurts with their own homes, explore how people adapt

to grassland and desert environments, and examine how cashmere moves from animals to the international market. These activities will combine language learning with cultural understanding and critical thinking.

3. What is the greatest personal accomplishment of your fellowship?

My greatest accomplishment was stepping beyond my familiar understanding of China and fully experiencing a very different region. Riding a horse, staying in a yurt, participating in nomadic cultural activities, and adapting to frequent travel required courage and flexibility. I learned to approach every experience as both a participant and an educator, always thinking about how I could bring what I learned back to my students.

4. How will your experience positively impact student learning in new ways?

My students will gain a more authentic and complete understanding of China. They will learn about grasslands, deserts, border communities, diverse ethnic traditions, schools, museums, farms, and modern industries. My photographs and personal experiences will make these distant places feel more real. Students will also have new opportunities to use Mandarin to describe, compare, investigate, and present cultural topics.

5. What are your plans to work collaboratively with colleagues?

I plan to share my photographs, lesson materials, and cultural observations with other Mandarin teachers and with colleagues who teach history, geography, environmental science, economics, and art. Possible collaborative topics include desertification, sustainable tourism, ethnic diversity, traditional arts, and cashmere production. I also hope to use the educational connections developed during the journey to support future virtual exchanges or student projects.

6. Are there issues or challenges that you feel better prepared to address with your students?

I am better prepared to address cultural stereotypes, environmental responsibility, global interdependence, and the balance between cultural preservation and economic development. Inner Mongolia provided meaningful examples of each of these issues. I can now help students understand that people within one country may have different histories, traditions, languages, environments, and ways of life.

7. How has the fellowship changed your personal and professional perspective?

This fellowship showed me that China cannot be fully understood only through its largest cities or its majority culture. Inner Mongolia revealed the diversity of China’s landscapes, communities, traditions, and industries. It also reminded me that teaching Mandarin is not only about vocabulary and grammar. It is about helping students understand people and perspectives different from their own. I returned more curious, flexible, and committed to serving as a bridge between my students and the wider world.

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*“intangible cultural heritage activities” are hands-on workshops led by traditional artisans whose skills have been passed down within their families for at least three or four generations.  Some of these traditional crafts include  sugar painting, dough figurine making, and embroidery. These artisans are recognized as inheritors of China’s intangible cultural heritage.

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