Megan Young has been on staff at Hope Chinese Charter School since 2018. Currently, Megan serves as our English Program Director, as well as an Intervention, Assessment, & Civil Rights Coordinator & SpEd Liasion.
Megan received her bachelor’s degree in elementary education as well as her M.Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction from Concordia University. She is a certified reading interventionist and ESOL teacher who has been teaching for 9+ years. Currently, she is working towards her second Masters degree in Educational Leadership.
She loves volleyball and has coached several seasons of high school volleyball. She also enjoys walking her dogs, hiking, reading, and drinking all the coffee.
A Message From Megan
As the English Program Director, I am responsible for assisting classroom teachers in any way I possibly can by collaborating with staff to ensure that teachers’ and students’ needs are being met in all areas. This includes but is not limited to making sure we are meeting state and national academic standards throughout our various curricula and teaching practices. I ensure teachers and staff are meeting student needs in their learning journey so they can be successful. Additionally, I work to coordinate and arrange programs that are beneficial to our students, staff, and community and that bring a love of learning to our students, such as book fairs.
Part of my focus for the English Program is connecting our English development and instruction with our Chinese language program in collaboration with our Chinese Program Director, Yitong Wu. Our goal is to align both the English and Chinese language instruction so that students are learning the same transferable skills and content in English as well as in Chinese; this follows best practices of linguistic development.
To accomplish this goal, we align all subjects so students are simultaneously learning the same skills or content in both languages. We develop scope and sequences for each grade level with aligned units both thematically and based on skills. This helps to boost language development and increases retention of content area skills and knowledge.
When I began working at HCCS, we had no reading curriculum and a very low-quality writing curriculum that required teachers to create most lessons from scratch. This was quite strenuous on teachers, but they worked hard so our students could be successful. Over the years, we have improved our instruction for English reading and writing.
We now have a better standards-aligned English Language Arts curriculum that has integrated science and social science content. The current curriculum also includes more authentic, diverse reading materials that acknowledge and honor various cultures and backgrounds. This curriculum has not only improved our students’ state academic scores within a year but has also increased classroom engagement. Students are excited to learn each day, as well as share what they have learned.
In this coming year, I will continue to bring updated and better-aligned curriculum and materials to our school as well as support our teachers and students as our school continues to develop and grow. I look forward to continuing to work closely with our Chinese Program Director, Yitong Wu, to align our Chinese and English Language arts skills and content to boost our students’ language development even further.
