AFA Teachers of the Year Visit and Present in China
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International collaboration was the key idea when Emily Hu of the Ivy Elite Education Association worked with multiple Chinese Education Agencies as well as the Association for Advancing Quality Educator Preparation to prepare the 2025 Yangtze River Delta & Beijing Science Education & STEM Teaching Research Summit. To complement the selection of Chinese teachers, principals and teaching researchers, Ty White (2023) and Nancy Parra Quinlan (2022) were recruited as Arizona Teachers of the Year. Two other state teachers of the year were also invited – Brittany Bonnaffons of Louisiana (2023) and Lindsay Wilson of Nebraska (2025). The American teachers and their counterparts presented similar and differing techniques for teaching STEM education, as well as the implementation of AI models in instruction. Presentations were given in each of five cities in China: Shanghai, Huzhou, Hefei, Nanjing and Beijing. The trip began with the teachers hosted as special guests at a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) conference focusing on improving teacher assessment strategies for administrators, where they got to connect with educational leaders from around the world, including US schools. This event culminated with a visit for the American teachers to the Shanghai Yan’an Middle School where they were taught Chinese calligraphy by a middle school student, witnessed teacher assessment strategies used at the school, and shown some of the special programs that the school offered.
After the UNESCO Conference, Ty and Nancy and their American colleagues had a chance to share their own content and experiences. Each teacher was directed to create multiple presentations ahead of time, which were then selected by local leaders to reflect similar challenges, practices or strategies. When asked about the experience, Nancy Parra Quinlan, also known as the Notorious NPQ, replied “I was honored to be able to share what I do in my classroom with Chinese teachers and maybe spark some creativity for their students.” About the experience, Ty had this to share: “It was an privilege to be able to talk to people about finding ways to build collaborative partnerships and to support STEM educators in rural communities. It seemed funny to share that message while speaking in some of the largest cities in the world, but after meeting with some educational leaders, I felt that message was as important in China as it is in the United States. We have to create the same educational opportunities in rural settings that we do in urban settings, or the disparities in outcomes will grow and develop. There are STEM assets everywhere you look, and our ability to connect them to schools both formally and informally has immense power to boost what those teachers are already doing!”
The majority of the experience focused on collaborative sharing of educational research between teacher and education leaders from both the American and Chinese sides. The American teachers presented in multiple breakouts, and got to learn about AI application strategies from their Chinese counterparts in the same sessions. At other times, such as in Hefei, the teachers got to interact with Chinese students demonstrating their school activities in robotics, or coding, or other parts of STEM. The Anhui Science and Technology Museum in Hefei especially demonstrated what it looks like to create space to teach STEM to youth through connecting it to traditional ways of knowing, such as tea culture, agriculture (but in space), collecting bugs and in the traditional practices around silk production. Each of the presentation rooms was being run by mentors, but with active participation and demonstration by the youth involved. Ty observed “this is very similar to what we want to do in Willcox at Studio 129 and the Heritage center, teaching kids to learn new technologies like VR and coding while also preserving the history and heritage of our community!”
This was the second year of the Yangtze River Delta & Beijing Science Education & STEM Teaching Research Summit, and Nancy and Ty both agreed that they would like to keep this collaborative partnership going as a way to help create positive relations between such distant cultures and countries, and to create special opportunities for other STEM teachers. Nancy said “Let’s see how we can use this to develop a global perspective in our classrooms to better meet the needs of our students”. After all, as Ty noted in his opening introduction for his presentations: “If the Sandhill cranes that nest near my town of Willcox can overcome the great distances and challenges to migrate between Southeastern Arizona and Jiangsu province in China, I think teams of dedicated educators can do better to find ways to work together and overcome the challenges facing our students!”