Founders
Cindy Xianqian Huang & Chunyuan Zou
Cindy Xianqian Huang
Founder and CEO
Cindy is also known as Huang lao shi ("Teacher Huang") to students. Cindy has been working with children since 2014 in various capacities and settings including in Romania, Malaysia, Morocco, China, and the United States. After getting a Master’s Degree in International Education Development from the University of Pennsylvania, she came to Whittle School & Studios and helped build their Chinese immersion curriculum. After that, Cindy became a kindergarten teacher at National Presbyterian School where she dove deeper into early childhood education and philosophy to teach literacy, math, and science. Her favorite way to teach Chinese is to combine what students learn and talk about at school, such as art, science, physical education, and even Orton Gillingham's Multisensory approach, with immersion language learning. Students find it fun and easy to learn about similar content without realizing that they are speaking a completely different language - Mandarin Chinese!
This belief became stronger and stronger until one day Cindy decided to leave her teaching job and start Chia Chinese Learning Program. Besides education, Cindy also loves cooking, hiking, gardening, going to museums, and farmers’ markets.
Chunyuan Zou
Co-Founder and Director of Learning
Chunyuan Zou, known to students as Chunyuan lao shi (“Teacher Chunyuan”), is the Co-Founder and Director of Learning at Chia Chinese. With over 12 years of full-time experience teaching Chinese across various age groups in Thailand, China, and the United States, Chunyuan has developed a deep expertise in effective language teaching methodologies, particularly through seven years of immersion program experience.
Chunyuan holds a bachelor’s degree in Teaching Chinese as a Second Language from China and a master’s degree in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Maryland, USA. She is currently pursuing a second master’s degree in Positive Psychology and Happiness Studies, a field that fascinates her, especially in relation to student well-being. She strongly believes that children need to learn not only academic knowledge but also essential life skills such as finding purpose, maintaining physical well-being, growing from challenges, nurturing relationships, and managing emotions.
Chunyuan is passionate about integrating these principles into the curriculum at Chia Chinese to ensure that students thrive both academically and personally. She is also the Vice President of The Chinese Language Teachers Association – National Capital Region (CLTA-NCR) and has been a lead presenter at prominent conferences such as the IB Global Conference and the National Chinese Language Conference. Chunyuan’s teaching philosophy is guided by her favorite quotes: “Children learn best when they are happy” by Nel Noddings, and “Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all” by Aristotle. She looks forward to creating a nurturing and enriching learning environment for your children.
Why do we start this Chia Chinese program?
Faculty
Mintong Zheng
Immersion Instructional Coach
Mintong began her teaching career as a lead Chinese teacher at Washington Yu Ying Public Charter School in 2014 and served as the PreK leader of the International Baccalaureate Primary Years Program. She has led workshops for teachers, presented at foreign language conferences, coordinated and designed theme-based curricula for Chinese summer camps also served as a mentor to many new educators. Mintong enjoys facilitating children's learning by providing them with open-ended and inviting learning experiences where children create and explore in a language-immersive environment. Having diverse experience working with students aged 3 through 18, she constantly applies effective strategies to make learning engaging and to fit students’ needs and learning styles.
She grew up in Beijing, China, graduated from Beijing International Studies University with a Bachelor's Degree in Russian Language and Literature; and spent a year in Russia studying and traveling. She graduated with a Master's Degree in Foreign Language Education from the University of Maryland, College Park with a Prek-12 teaching certificate. Mintong enjoys facilitating children's learning by providing them with open-ended and inviting learning experiences where children create and explore in a language immersive environment. She enjoys playing the piano (started playing at age 4), writing traditional Chinese calligraphy, and recently she has got into indoor rock climbing as a new way to challenge herself.
Administration
Beth Lester
Advisor
Beth Sidhu is the Chief Brand and Communications Officer for Stagwell Inc, a top 10 global marketing services network. In her professional life, she works with marketers in more than 20 countries, providing global perspective on new ways to move brands forward. Beth believes that learning Chinese – or any new language – will help provide her most darling children with important perspective and encourage them to grow into global citizens.
Chia Chinese Learning's Mission
We want to help kids to be self-confident and open-minded, to embrace mistakes, to be who they truly are, to culturally succeed in a multicultural and changing environment, and to make the world better than we found it.
Our Educational Philosophy
Language is not only a tool but a cultural thinking approach. This approach helps kids to understand the world from a different perspective, to be open-minded, and to adapt to new people and things in a fast-changing, globalized world.
​
At Chia Chinese Learning, the students learn Chinese language through building projects, reading stories while enhancing critical thinking skills, and expressing themselves through arts and games.
All of these are rooted in a loving, caring, and safe learning community, where children can confidently take risks, make mistakes and learn from them.
​