Directors of JING Kids
We started the JING Kids Chinese After-School Program with our own children in mind, so we strive to provide the very highest quality instruction possible! Here are the people behind the Program.
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Jing Jing Evans 吕国晶
Jing Jing Evans is fluent in Mandarin and Cantonese. She has been speaking Chinese since she was born, teaching language since 1998, and teaching Chinese Martial Arts in her family-run school, the JING Institute of Chinese Martial Arts & Culture, since it opened in 2001. Her daughter graduated from JING Kids during the covid lockdown, and her little son started the program in Summer 2022. -
Laura Stegner
Laura Stegner runs our JING Kids Chinese After-School Program! She maintains a California Bilingual, Cross Cultural Language and Academic Development (BCLAD) teaching credential and has had years of experience teaching early grades in public schools. -
Christopher Mendoza
Christopher Mendoza, our head Wushu instructor, has been in the martial arts since his own grade-school days, and has been teaching Wushu since 2004. Jing Jing and Chris have a daughter in middle school and a baby boy who just entered the JING Kids Program.
Chinese Instructors of JING Kids
At JING, we find compassionate, caring, and qualified Mandarin Chinese teachers, and give them the best Chinese Language Curriculum available.
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Ms. Carol Chao 赵诗芳
Ms. Carol is a translator, a medical interpreter, a Special Ed teacher's assistant, an ESL instructor, and a Chinese teacher! She also knows all the fun songs and games to engage children in class, so she is our Beginning-Level Chinese Teacher here at JING. We look forward to when your children try to teach you little rhymes and finger games in Chinese.
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Jin, Ling (Ms. Jin) 金凌
Ms. Jin actually used to teach Civil Law to police officers in Guangzhou, China, so we figured she would could handle our 2nd-year students and our Advanced Chinese class. She is very enthusiastic about teaching and very adaptable to our unique JING curriculum and wide variety of JING students. We feel honored to have her teaching here at JING.
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Katie Edwards (Ms. Katie) 火凱迪
Ms. Katie is very excited to be teaching Chinese with our kids! Ms. Katie spent all her high school years attending a Chinese Saturday School program; this prepared her well for Chinese college classes, and eventually for living in Taiwan for a year and a half. She loves animals and nature with all her heart, and after returning from Taiwan she worked at the San Diego Zoo, enjoying her time around the animals and also the rambunctious kiddos. You can often find Ms. Katie in the Wood Room talking with our kids about frogs, dogs, cats, bunnies, lizards, and many other adorable friends.
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Lin, HanYu 林瀚宇
Mr. Han-Yu comes to us from Taiwan, and has therefore mastered both simplified and traditional Chinese characters, Zhu Yin and PinYin. He has taught every level of Chinese at JING, and uses his calm manner and kind patience to make children comfortable in class. Mr. Han-Yu also loves to play games with Chinese, and is the most likely teacher to remind Ms. Jing Jing to provide more sticker-rewards for his many high-achieving students. Mr. Han-Yu is also an accomplished artist, and uses his skills to bring Chinese characters to life. He currently acts as one of our beloved Substitute Teachers.
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OuYang, JingQin (Ms. Sammy) 欧阳静勤
Ms. Sammy comes to us from GuangZhou, China, and is fluent in both Mandarin and Cantonese. She taught kindergarten in China for 12 years, then helped manage the Guangzhou branch of Proctor & Gamble for another 6 years, before moving to the United States. She is our amazing Substitute Chinese Teacher who comes in for a day, a week, or a month to keep our students learning when their usual teachers are not available.
Wushu Instructors and Assistant Instructors of JING Kids
Here at JING, we do our utmost to ensure that your children are 1) safe, 2) happy, and 3) learning and improving every day. Here are the people who make it possible.
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Aline Jimenez. Driver and Instructor
Ms. Aline has been with us since 2018. She makes sure that all of our children are where they are supposed to be when they are supposed to be there. She's always happy when we ask her to help teach whatever needs teaching (Paper cutting! Braiding! Calligraphy! Wushu!), and she's always available to give out coloring and origami or help with homework.
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Chynna Saldana. Driver and Instructor
Ms. Chynna comes to us from Kansas! We appreciate the mid-American representation in our very Southern-Californian school. She brings her experience working with special needs children to JING, where we like to treat every child with empathy, and also as a hero in the making who will benefit from appropriate challenges. We also like that she is a very cautious driver.
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Christopher Watson. Driver and Instructor
Mr. Cris is a veteran of the Navy and dedicated member of JING's sister school, Bujinkan Taka-Seigi Dojo. He is our local Tech Guru and one of our valued STEM teachers, our resident Dungeon Master (for our very own JING Kids D&D Campaigns!) and he helps teach Wushu. He is also the first to participate in Mrs. Laura's Spirit Days, which brightens all of our days. We don't know what we would do without him.
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Emma Carey. Wrangler and Instructor
Ms. Emma has been a competitive dancer since elementary-school-age. She has also been working with kids in various summer camps and after-school dance programs since high school. We are very excited to have an official dancer on our Team!
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John Murphy. Assistant Instructor
Mr. John has been a JING instructor for almost as long as JING has been in Scripps Ranch. His favorite Wushu Weapons in 3-Sectional Staff, and his favorite thing to do is bring one of his spiders / snakes / geckos in to teach the JING Kids about herpetology and arachnology.
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Liam Wiedemann. Assistant Instructor
Mr. Liam is one of our STEM instructors, among his other jobs at JING. He used to teach at Mathnasium, and is currently studying Probably and Statistics at UCSD.
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Shaun McCormick. Wushu Instructor
Mr. Shaun is our Wushu Teacher! Shaun has studied 8 styles of martial arts, and has been teaching martial arts to both children and adults for over 18 years. You can really tell that Mr. Shaun enjoys sharing his knowledge and insights by how captivated the kids are during his Wushu classes. Mr. Shaun is also in college, studying Cognitive Psychology, and he worked for nearly a decade as a Pharmacy Tech. He speaks (English and) Visayan, a dialect from the Phillipines, and enjoys reading, playing video games, and studying.
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Tori Stegner. Assistant Instructor
We usually find Ms. Tori in the lobby, where she makes sure the front of JING works smoothly, that all of our signs and posters are both beautiful and intelligible, and that any children who need a band-aid clean their boo-boo thoroughly before receiving a band-aid. She also helps us wrangle schools on minimum days, keeping kids safe and making sure that they eat their snacks when they are supposed to eat.
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Tumi Tran. STEM Instructor
Miss Tumi is the first student of the JING Kids After-School Program to rise to the rank of Staff! Tumi has been well-trained by her sister Thanh-Nha, our previous STEM teacher, in all the ways of being a teacher at JING, and always follows impromptu plans perfectly, as befits a former member of the JING Kids Wushu Performance Team. Tumi is also an accomplished Girl Scout and has already completed her Silver Award for helping children at Rady Children's Hospital; she is now working on her Gold Award by promoting mental health. She speaks fluent English and Vietnamese, good Spanish, and simple Chinese. She looks forward to finishing high school and going to college, and says that her favorite part of working at JING is spending time with our kids and teaching them new things.