LEI LEI BATES

6/8/2020

Get to Know Lei Lei, "The Real Deal"

By Michael Borrowman, History & 9th Grade Class Dean

York is fortunate to have such a talented Chinese Language teacher as Lei Lei Bates, who is not just an outstanding teacher, but the real deal for a Chinese experience.

Born in Harbin in Northern China, Lei Lei comes from a family of teachers, so has education in her blood. Her father taught at Harbin University, and all in all, nine family members were involved in the profession. This background, the joy of seeing students grasp knowledge, and the way her father was respected by students, all encouraged Lei Lei to become a teacher.

During the Cultural Revolution, Lei Lei attended a small school with only teachers the government did not want to influence many students; this in fact meant they were the best teachers in the area. After high school, she attended Nanjing Normal University, one of the premier teacher-training colleges in China. From there, Lei Lei worked as an assistant to her father to help set up schools in the region. He was recalled, after working over a decade in a steel factory, to be re-educated by laborers. During this time Lei Lei taught Chinese language and grammar, math, history, geography, and physics.

Over the course of 1989, she noticed students in her class were disappearing to join the democracy movement at Tiananmen Square. Being the caring person she was and is, she went there herself to see how they were doing and persuade them to leave the day before the P.L.A. opened fire (something for which their parents were very grateful). Disillusioned with the crack down that followed, she left her homeland that month and went to Sydney, Australia to attend The International Language School of Sydney. She spent 3.5 years at ILSS improving her English, and it was during this time she met her American husband. He brought her to the Monterey Peninsula, and after tutoring DLI students for a while, Lei Lei joined the York School community to create a Chinese program.

Lei Lei loves York and being able to teach about both Chinese culture as well as the language. On the day I interviewed her, she served me a slice of a special red bean cake to honor the current Moon Festival. Freedom to teach what she wants and a supportive administration and faculty makes Lei Lei very happy. Her favorite moment in teaching though is when she sees a students eyes light up.

She finished our meeting with a proverb by Confucius to explain her philosophy with regard to the classroom. It goes like this: "Wanting to establish yourself, seek to establish others. Wanting to enlarge yourself, seek to enlarge others."

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