International Students

Team Building with Students

More than training students hard for Advanced Placement (AP) exams or high school subjects, we encourage team building. This includes working together on community service projects and playing basketball. Sometimes, we have team lunches to get to know our students. We find great importance in building trust with students and learning about their aspirations, hobbies and even favorite books. We genuinely care about our students as human beings.

Community Service Projects with Students

Our faculty and staff encourage students to join us on community service projects. Our Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) page highlights our community service projects with students. For volunteer perspectives from one of our Advanced Placement (AP) students, please read Bobby Li’s “Beach Cleanup in Hong Kong” article from an April 2021 team beach cleanup day with Wayne Man, Math & Social Science Teacher, and AP student Daniel Shi.

HUMANITIES AND ENGLISH

When I started high school, humanities and English were considered my weakest subjects and I never liked them. This has resulted in a lack of motivation to do any English-related hobbies such as reading or writing. However, Ryan’s intensive training in humanities and English-related subjects has given me a great leap of opportunity to improve my writing, and humanities and English-related subjects. Consequently, I have become stronger and even more skilled than other peers at school. In Semester 1 of Humanities in Action in freshman year, I struggled with many assignments relating to writing essays and creating structural analysis. This resulted in me earning mostly C and B grades for my assignments. With Ryan’s critical feedback on my analysis and assignment organization, such as for the Freshman Research Paper (FRP), I attained high grades in Semester 2. I ended up earning an A- for my 9th grade humanities class.

For my sophomore and junior years, Ryan consistently gave me strong feedback for not only writing assignments such as the Sophomore Research Paper (SRP), Gatsby Emulation, and Junior Literature Paper, but he also gave me feedback for my speaking projects, such as historical analytical presentations and shared inquiries. Despite speaking being my strength, Ryan taught me how to present my ideas in class more analytically and elaborately so that my arguments are well established and convincing. While I ended up earning an A for my 10th grade humanities class, I also ended up earning an A for my 11th grade English class. 

Moreover, whenever I had questions out of class, Ryan was willing to email back suggestions and feedback so that I could finish my work before assignment deadlines. Overall, my three years’ worth of training with Ryan have proven effective as I have attained higher grades for English and humanities subjects every year, and find more interest in the books I read and study.

ADVANCED PLACEMENT (AP) MACROECONOMICS

Advanced Placement (AP) Macroeconomics (commonly referred to as “AP Macro”) was a subject I was particularly worried about in Semester 2 of my 11th grade high school class despite my strong performance in AP Microeconomics in Semester 1. Some of the concepts I really worried about for AP Macro were government intervention in the market and the multiple components of the money market. However, with Wayne’s training, I progressed much faster and attained much higher grades in AP Macro than AP Micro. 

Some aspects of Wayne’s training that really helped included reviewing my written notes, providing over 500 Section 1 multiple-choice questions (MCQs) that were harder than the AP Macro standard questions, and going through Section 2 free-response questions (FRQs) for units I particularly struggled in. Not only was Wayne resourceful throughout the training, he was also effective in identifying my weaknesses and attempting to improve them. For example, when I struggled with the T-chart in Unit 3: Financial Sector, Wayne would always pull up his drawing of a T-chart and offer relatable and fun examples to make the experience of learning more interactive. 

Such training helped me to retain most of my skills throughout the year, allowing me to attain straight A grades in my AP Macro high school class. I also earned a perfect AP 5 score on the May 2021 AP Macro exam.