Personal Statement

主持人_ 王众 邓茗文

Personal Statement

主持人_ 王众 邓茗文

“老师，我考试成绩出来了，GPA也出来了，怎样能最后提升一下？”“用文书做补充提升。”“老师，我的硬成绩不理想，但是已经定型了，怎么办？”“用文书做补救性的展现。”到了申请季，文书仿佛成了万金油、大还丹。那么如何写出一封真正的好文书呢？

Motivation

My friends were shocked, when they learned I was determined to give up the high-paid, decent job as a Chief Instructor in New Oriental (a New York Stock listed company) and as the Shanghai Branch Manager of the ETS TOEFL Junior China Management Center to pursue graduate study in public policy in the US. But to me, this decision has been a hard-earned, long-cherished answer in my heart. Should I continue my teaching career, I could enlighten hundreds of students per year, helping them master the English language skills and secure a promising future. However, when I guided the high school students in China on their SAT and TOEFL preparation, I was thinking maybe one day they could receive the best education here in China; when I visited and raised books for children in the most impoverished counties in rural China, the earnest for knowledge I read from the local children’s eyes drove me to seek more educational resources and effective and equitable educational policies. With five-year working experience as an educator, I gradually find my inner voice: a meaningful purpose of my life is to make a difference of the educational system in China, structurally and revolutionarily, to increase the educational quality and equity here.

Background

At the initial stage of the implementation of China’s reform and opening-up policy, I was born into a family where many generations have been senior Chinese intellectuals and actively involved in the educational arena. The most noteworthy and most influential on my growth is my grandfather, who is an old-generation Chinese mathematician and have been teaching mathematics for decades. Therefore, on the one hand, I have been witnessing China’s rapid economic growth and social progress coupled with its asymmetric political and educational system reform; on the other hand, I had the opportunity to be greatly inspired and motivated by my parents and grandparents, all of whom have been involved in teaching for decades and have trained hundreds of students to become the elite of many professionals.

Experience

Under familial influence and out of my passion for English, upon graduation from college in 2007, I started my career as an English teacher in Only Education and later in New Oriental Group. My previous working experience and outstanding performance in the most influential educational organizations in China, focusing on English training to high school and college students, earned me the opportunity to stand out and speak loud. Rather than following the spoon-feed pedagogy, I introduced innovative approaches to inspire students to think, learn, and apply. I brought forward the suggestions that experienced foreign teachers should be invited to teach students social study, literature and history to make up for students’ common weakness in humanistic disciplines and to make them more rounded. I also came up with many new ideas to improve students’ learning ability, such as the measure of combining study sessions and psychological counseling sessions together. My teaching capacity, English language proficiency and strong communication skills allowed me to help 50,000 students by far make significant progress in English learning. The intensive teaching practice, in the meantime, exposes me to the deplorable fact: Chinese students had been trained mechanically who might get a top score but possess little practical ability, caused by the historical and long-entrenched test-oriented system. It drove me to dedicate my life-long career to improve this situation and contribute to the formulating process of China’s education policy and reform.

This aspiration is reinforced as I witnessed the prevalent educational inequity between rural and urban areas in China. In early 2011, noticing that there were many talented kids were cheated out of education opportunities by poverty in rural areas in Hunan Province, I initiated the “Passing Thoughts”, a book-raising campaign aimed to provide teaching support for the local primary schools. The needs for books, stationeries, teaching facilities, are huge and could not be met by individual efforts. I need to seek more positive influence from the society and help more poor children. Realizing the importance of reaching out, I shared my idea and teamed up with my friends, some of whom are famous educators in China and even the world. We leveraged our social network and sought external supports from educational training organizations, publishing companies, NPOs, and enterprises both home and abroad. In addition to the direct approach, I started threads through influential social networking service web sites such as facebook, tweeter, renren.com, etc. I also liaised with the local mediato expand this event and successfully bring in significant social attention. Out of our multifold endeavors, we managed to secure 1,800+ books, 30+ chairs, 2 Ping-Pong tables, and a great number of stationeries for two local schools within two months. Now we’re trying to extend the influence of this campaign to more rural areas in West China, striving for more education opportunities for the underprivileged kids.

Goals

Reflecting on President Kennedy’s exhortation that 'Ask not what your country can do for you –ask what you can do for your country', I find it imperative for me to plunge into a career of advancing the education policy for my country. My professional goal is to work in governmental sectors as an education policy maker in China. I aspire to make positive social changes in the realm of education, ameliorating the educational system reform and facilitating the educational equity of the nation.

To achieve my goal, the analytic framework and practical skills in public service are indispensable. I therefore aspire to pursue the Master of Public Policy (MPP) program at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS), through which I will gain systematic knowledge and real-world insights on public policy analysis and policy making process. I plan to concentrate on the Social and Urban Policy and probe into the study of educational policy. I will also take advantage of the experiential learning in the Policy Analysis Exercise and research opportunity at HKS. I believe the rewarding study in the MPP program at HKS will provide me the most ideal platform to become a public leader and reshape the education system in China in the future.