Meixi Ng is a PhD student in the College of Education at UW and just moved to Seattle from Singapore to begin her doctoral studies in Learning Sciences and Human Development. She is particularly interested in students that have had difficult experiences with school and don’t enjoy learning in the classroom, and how to design social networks of learning that changes those attitudes. She believes that learning designed in this way can dignify and heal individuals, restoring their self-worth and joy in learning. Furthermore, she became even more interested in the roles of students – precisely those wounded by school (Olson, 2009) – to change teacher beliefs and expectations and the learning culture at school and beyond.
Meixi experienced this first hand working with the Mexican Secretary of Education where a public policy called Tutorial Relationships, interchanged roles of tutor and learner and successfully closed the achievement gap in the worst performing 9000 schools in the country. Inspired and transformed by the work in Tutorial Relationships in Mexico, she moved back to Singapore in 2012 and founded FiftyFold to pilot the work in Tutorial Relationships in Singapore & Thailand in 3 schools. With 3DL, She has the opportunity to work on the NSF iTest project at Neighborhood House. It is such a wonderful way to be connected to Seattle and the undergraduates at UW and foster new partnerships that dignify and connect people to their culture and home community and have an impact on student attitudes and agency.