Elizabeth Hardage (Head Teacher) is co-owner of HCLS. She has ten years teaching experience, and from 2006-2008 she served as the Director of the Chinese Language Program at Aidan Montessori school in Washington, DC. In August 2008 Elizabeth changed positions to Washington Yu Ying Public Charter School, a Chinese immersion school in the District of Columbia, where she is after-school coordinator and Cultural Director. She is also active in the Chinese community in Washington, DC, serving on the Program Committee at the Chinatown Community Cultural Center and also as the Program Coordinator for the Center’s China Exchange Program, a program providing Chinese language and cultural education for DC public high school students. Elizabeth has also spent extensive time teaching English to Chinese immigrant children and adults. Elizabeth holds a degree in both Elementary Education and a degree International Affairs from Florida State University. .
Maggie Lu (Head Teacher) is co-owner of HCLS. She was born and raised in Liao Ning province in China. She spent her high school years attending College Du Leman in Geneva, Switzerland. During the summer of 2003, she returned to China where she worked on the television show “Teaching English to Children,” an English television show broadcast from Liao Ning television station in her home province. Maggie graduated from George Washington University, where she majored in sociology and will begin work on a graduate degree in education in Spring 2009. She speaks four languages: Chinese, English, French, and Spanish.
Jamie Lepore Wright (Head Teacher) is a graduate of Georgetown University where she earned a Masters in Applied Linguistics. She initially became interested in studying Chinese because of her family history -- her grandfather was a Chinese immigrant to the US. Jamie started studying Chinese at St. Olaf college and continued her training in Shanghai at East China Normal University. When she was in China she worked as an English tutor for a 4-year-old. She continued getting teaching experience after returning to the U.S., working as a teaching assistant and doing tutoring. She is presently the Mandarin Chinese Language Teacher at Aidan Montessori School in Washington, DC., and is the author of HC's periodic blog. Jamie lived briefly in Seattle before moving to Washington.
Cecilia Ma (Head Teacher) was born and raised in China. She has been living in the US since 2001. She graduated from Beijing Second Foreign Language Institute in China with a Bachelor's degree and earned her master degree in Guidance Counseling from Capital Bible Seminary in Maryland. She worked in the HR department of Kimberly-Clark (China) Investment Company for three years. She has been working with children of all ages in various settings for the last seven years. In addition to her work for Hardage Chinese, She currently works as a substitute teacher at Yu Ying Public Charter School in Washington, DC.
Selena Foo (Head Teacher) recently returned to the United States after spending two years teaching English at a high school and then a university in China. She graduate from the College of William and Mary with a Bachelors in Chinese. She fell in love with the Chinese language during a summer abroad at Tsinghua University in Beijing. Throughout her teen and college years she was active in many Chinese cultural activities and performances. For three years she was an assistant dance teacher to children and after that she worked at an ESL summer school program for children. Selena is a proud native of the DC metropolitan area. She enjoys singing, dancing, and reading.