Yee was born in in Beijing in mainland China, but moved as an adolescent with her family to Hong Kong, then still a British Colony. An ‘outsider’ who spoke Mandarin, she studied hard to master fluency in both Cantonese and English which were the languages spoken there. Her motive was to fit in with her peers, but her efforts were further rewarded when her teacher announced she was top in her class! Upon completing high school, she earned a BA in Language and Translation (Chinese and English) at The Open University of Hong Kong, and she also achieved a Grade 1 in the Putonghua Proficiency Test – The State Language and Writing Commission of China. Her first job was working in a French bank, Banque Indosuez, which meant she had to add French to her repertoire of languages. Soon, she found herself becoming more passionate about teaching, so she took a job at Pasona Education teaching adult students Chinese Mandarin to both Cantonese-speaking and non-natives.
Yee moved to the UK with her own family in late 2011. She became a school governor of a London state primary school which gave her many insights into UK schools. She began to apply her Chinese language skills as a teacher, first as a volunteer teacher of GCSE and A-Level Chinese, and also working with an award-winning second language learning programme developed at London’s Goldsmith’s University. She then began to teach GCSE Mandarin at Queen Elizabeth’s Boys’ School, one of England’s most prestigious grammar schools founded in the 16th Century. She is also a GCSE (Cantonese) examiner at a north London tutorial college.
The part-time nature of these posts has enabled Yee led to take on additional activities. In 2014 she earned a Certificate in the Teaching of Community Languages (Chinese) at Goldsmiths University, University of London, and she also joined the faculty of Dwight School London, an IB World School, where she began to teach both IB Middle Years and IB Diploma students in both Language A and Language Acquisition (Language B).
In 2015-16, Yee was part of a team of four ILLTC Mandarin consultants who for than one term replaced a Mandarin teacher at Aiglon College, Switzerland who was on maternity leave. This required teaching lessons by Skype from London to a group of 7 Mandarin A Literature (HL and SL) students based in the Swiss Alp, as well as spending a week at Aiglon, preparing them for their May IB exams.
Yee’s personal experience of cultural transition at an early age and her versatility as a teacher of Mandarin and Cantonese A and B make her a highly qualified, as well as empathetic to work with students of IB SSST Mandarin or Cantonese.
