About DW Center
The DW Center for Language Education and Culture Exchange is pioneered and directed by Dr. Wobus, in a joint effort with the "MLP Chinese" author Dr. Liping Ma, and authorized by Dr. Ma as the only training program for teachers of MLP Chinese program. Dr. Wobus, aka Zhang Laoshi., a very experienced educator of Chinese language and culture in the greater Washington region. The mission of the Center is to benefit more schools, more students and families, and more teachers with Dr. Wobus's 10-plus years experience of teaching and managing language education and culture education programs.
The DW Center provide education related services that can best be understood in the following questions the DW Center will answer: 1. MLP Curriculum and Teacher Training
3. Chinese language or Chinese culture study and tutoring
About the Founder and the Teacher/Trainer In the mid 1980's Dr. Wobus followed her dream to the U.S. to pursue graduate studies in Education and obtained a M.Ed from Trenton State College and a Ph.D. from University of Maryland at College Park. While working in the fields of education research and later health services research, she kept teaching English and Chinese in her spare time. In the late 1990's, Dr. Wobus joined a team of American educators and Chinese entrepreneurs to establish an international K-12 school in China and served as the Chinese-counterpart principal in charge of curriculum development and teacher training, including screening and hiring licensed international educators and the headmaster. For about ten years since 2004, Dr. Wobus taught Chinese to speakers and non-speakers in different capacities including heritage weekend schools such as Hope Chinese School and American Chinese School in Maryland. In 2005, Dr. Wobus introduced the Ma Liping Chinese Curriculum to her current weekend Chinese school--American Chinese School, and set up the teaching team dedicated to teaching it. She painstakingly documented every step in her preparation and delivery of the lessons, which became the basis for an online workshop for teaching Chinese language and culture. She frequently published articles about her teaching, sharing her thoughts and experience (see samples in Chinese and English). During the first fours years of teaching MLP Chinese curriculum, she designed an effective delivery system that helped materializing the potential of the curriculum to achieve good learning outcome in students. In the years that followed, she kept expanding and updating the system. The system now has the capability of not only helping teachers in preparing lessons and becoming effective in delivering the materials but also contains an entire array of Internet resources to enhance the outcome of the teaching. As of fall 2014, the system is capable of helping teachers of Grade 1 through Grade 10 plus SATII and AP Chinese courses of Ma Liping Chinese Language and Culture curriculum and has served over 200 teachers from the four branch campuses of American Chinese School as well as about 100 teachers from over 20 Chinese schools worldwide.
Dr. Wobus's effective and inspirational teaching is well liked by her students and their families, which made her one of the most desired teachers of Chinese language in the area as well as among schools that teach MLP Chinese curriculum. The MLP Chinese Information Center, an online system for disseminating MLP curriculum and sharing experience, created and hosted by Dr. Wobus and her Chinese school, is highly regarded by the author of MLP Chinese curriculum and is listed as the go-to place and consultation center at Dr. Ma Liping's website for all schools in the US and abroad teaching MLP Chinese curriculum. In Dr. Wobus's own words, "Spearheading the implementation of this curriculum gave me a great flexibility to create and experiment a series of teaching techniques and management strategies to support the delivery of the curriculum. Heading the entire team has given me invaluable experience in training teachers and managing teaching resources and sharpened my skills in student management including entrance and exit assessments."
Dr. Wobus is considered by her peers and administrators as experienced in effective organization of lessons, motivational delivery of content, professionalism in communication, and outcome evaluation and research. Her mastery of classroom instruction skills, distant learning strategies, superior Chinese and English language, her experience in connecting with students, and most importantly her educator instinct made her one of the most desired Chinese language and culture educators for any education programs.
Dr. Wobus has also been very active in her community life for the past 20 years, involving herself in her child's elementary, middle, and high school parent-teacher organizations as a leader and volunteering in various local educational and cultural organizations and events that involve working with youths. She was instrumental in motivating high school students to volunteer for local political campaigns and setting up student club dedicated to involving Asian students into local political life. She is also a major contributor to youth leadership programs.
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Dr. Wobus actively organizes her teahers to share their teaching experience with the community to help parents and students understand the curriculum and learn how to study Chinese effectively. She has been a frequent contributor to local Chinese language publications by sharing her own insights and experience about the curriculum and teaching experience. Some of her articles have been translated into English (English title underlined with a link).
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