September 2025 | Vol. 11 Iss. 9
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Teacher’s goal expands students’ world By Jet Burnham | j.burnham@mycityjournals.com Experiences in all 50 states enhance a third-grade teacher’s lessons.
W
hen Huaichen Chu set a goal as a teenager to visit all 50 states in America, he didn’t know he was going to be a teacher someday, but when he became a teacher six years ago, he discovered his visits to Ellis Island, the Liberty Bell, Gateway Arch and Washington, D.C. made him a better teacher. “Because I’ve traveled a lot and seen all these things and read a lot about these places, I’m able to share with my students, firsthand, my knowledge and make the lessons more vibrant and more exciting for them,” he said. Angela Drope, who teaches with Chu at Columbia Elementary, said his diverse experiences tie-in to many of the topics covered in third grade. “He is able to tell the students about the places he’s been and help them make real-life connections to the places we learn about in our Language Arts curriculum,” she said.
Chu shares stories of his family’s experiences as Chinese Americans when the students study immigration and his personal account of living in New York City on 9/11 when discussing historic events. Chu hopes sharing these experiences with his students helps them begin to understand how big the world really is. “The United States, from corner to corner, it’s just so vast and so different, and the world’s so big, and that’s kind of how I view the world and then eventually that translates to me as a teacher,” Chu said. “Because the students I teach, they’re 8 and 9 years old, their world really is where their parents take them and so mostly it’s just revolving around the Salt Lake Valley. Some of them have visited Vegas, or if they’ve been to California, it’s usually they’ve been to Disneyland. But I want to instill in them that the world is much bigger than that.” Chu traveled a lot as a child but it was a cross-country road trip from New Jersey to Third-grader teacher Huaichen Chu visits Whittier, Alaska during the summer of 2024 as part of his goal
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to visit all 50 states in the U.S. (Photo courtesy
Continued page 8 Huaichen Chu)
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