Isaac Young

I am a 2020 Yale College graduate and former ESL teacher at Yali High School (a top-five high school in China).

Most recently, I served as a Yale-China Fellow in Changsha, China where I taught English at Yali High School (one of the top five high schools in China). Before arriving in China, I taught two semesters at Yali entirely online due to COVID-19 restrictions, regularly filming and editing video content for my classes while also participating in the CET Beijing program for a third time, this time online. In the Fall of 2021, I began teaching in person at Yali, where I was one of just four foreign English teachers. We instructed all first-year students and interacted with the entire student body through our daily English Library Hours and yearly English Musicals, which we directed ourselves. Together we comprised the Oral English Department, which worked closely with Yali’s Chinese-nationality English teachers to provide a holistic English language education for our students. I am thrilled to have had this opportunity for extended exposure to China and its culture, and I cherish the experience of living and working here with young students as they learn about other cultures and embrace the challenge of another language.

I have a B.A. in East Asian Studies from Yale University, where I wrote my senior thesis, Realizing the Chinese Dream: An Analysis of the Belt and Road Initiative’s Role Within the 新经济战略. I also completed three different course levels of the CET: Beijing study-abroad language program.