Year end letter to all mothers!

6 years ago, I was a 33-year-old working mother, trying to get my 3-year-old daughter to speak Chinese. 

That was a tough journey as she was both uninterested and super distracted. Sounds familiar?

The good thing about me is that I was a trained engineer. Engineers are problem solvers of the world, and we never quit till a working solution is found.

What followed is the birth of StoryChopsticks, which takes pride in her results-driven pedagogy, waved with engineering ingenuity. We drive the young learners’ curiosity and creativity, ignite their self-learning engine, all in the form of storytelling, story creation and self expression.

1. The power of Storytelling

Since young, we have experienced the power of stories. Fairy tales, classical folk stories, Disney movies have been a large part of our young life. In language learning, a huge portion of reading skills come from stories too. Because of that, our team has dedicated a huge amount of time in developing our original stories with characters such as Yuan Yuan and Wan Wan.

2. The engineering solution for language learning

Engineers are naturally intrigued by problems. We build trains and planes to transport people all around. We build rockets to fly to the moon. We build self-driving cars to save your time and energy.

When it comes to learning, this is a large but often neglected playground for engineers. Applying “words are the building blocks of languages”, we invented a lego-like system to help build sentences and stories with keywords “blocks”.

3. Creativity

“Creativity” is an innate ability for all children. But not all schools and parents value this. As an engineer, I know how important it is for a child to nurture his/her creativity to compete in the future job market. As more and more repetitive jobs are taken by robots, what differentiate us humans from AI is our creativity and imagination.

4. Learn to dent the universe from young

We didn’t stop at guiding young children to create stories. We sign a copyright contract with them, publish the book and share revenue of book sales with them. 

By doing this, we trained them to dent the universe from as young as 4 years old.

5. Entrepreneurship and work life balance

Choosing to start a business, I signed up for a high commitment lifestyle with constant attention required from my job. However, it also provides me the flexibility to take care of my children by not being fixed to a 9-6 work schedule. 

I have the flexibility to come home by 3pm to do homework with my kids, and go swimming with them at 4pm. After dinner around 7pm, I work again till late at night. 

It is not a soft workload but I am enjoying the flexibility while my children still need me.

6. Mothers, it is about you, not about your children

As a fellow mother, I experience the same chaotic early caring years, constantly worrying about their growth, making sure we provide the best we can for our little ones. 

Nonetheless, mothers, please realize that your life is not about your children. It is entirely about you. The sooner you can start living the life YOU want, the better it is for both you and your children.

I didn’t know I could create children’s stories, nor that I could build an all female team to commercialize our learning methods across the world. This tiring yet fulfilling journey makes me a better self, and hopefully, it teaches my children to pursue their dreams too.

Just like I did.

Finally, I know that when you choose StoryChopsticks as your education partner, you trusted a fellow mother’s determination, sincerity and passion in driving our children’s better future.

I am thrilled to get to know all my hundreds of mothers, from Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, North America, Europe and Ukraine (and the list continues to grow). 

Now that the year is drawing to a close, a happy holiday to all my fellow mothers!

PS: Please note our school is closed from 25 Dec – 1 Jan 2023 (Christmas holiday) and 21 Jan – 26 Jan 2023 (Chinese New Year).

I cannot wait to start 2023 with fresh new ideas to inspire your children’s learning desire.

Stay tuned: https://storychopsticks.com/classes/

Sincerely

Yuanxin