Teaching and facilitating spaces of care + empowerment for youth and adults is a passion of mine. I’ve managed summer literature programs at Great Books Summer Program at Stanford University and their inaugural Asia program at Beijing University, creating cross-cultural activities for student immersion. I mentor students one-on-one, oversee and lead teams of volunteers and teachers, as well as create curriculums and spaces for creative writing, media-making, and civic engagement.
At Ping Chong + Company, a National Medal of Arts winning theater company, I worked closely with the Education Director to teach workshops and train teaching artists, and empowered kids to own their own life stories and tell them on stage.
Classes and workshops include:
Sandbox (2022- ongoing): a six session intensive writing class and community for Asian diasporic writers, teaching craft tools from film and theater for prose writing. (Sign up for mailing list to be updated of upcoming classes!)
Breathe + Bloom (2020-2021): a nourishing creative non-fiction workshop for Asian Americans to recharge during the pandemic.
The Personal Is Political (2020): a week-long documentary intensive for Dalton School high school orientation, to help students process the current political and social climate
Poetry and Prose for Socio-Emotional Learning (2020): I volunteered to create and lead a summer writing program for ESL third graders, for immigrant youth non-profit APEX For Youth
Literary Journalism Workshop (2018): a week-long intensive on the craft of literary journalism for Great Books Summer Program at Stanford University
Multicultural Voices in American Literature (2017): a literature and writing workshop for Great Books Summer Program at Beijing University
“I had the pleasure of working closely with Amy as we launched our first academic program in Beijing. Incredibly bright, driven, articulate, warm and professional, Amy quickly made herself a key member of the team. She identified resources and helped to solve challenges creatively and with good cheer. Her easy-going leadership style helped her to build an immediate rapport with both the students in her charge and her colleagues.
Amy is the person that you would always choose to be on your team. ”
“Amy Zhang is an exceptional editor and I highly recommend her services to any writer. Amy was thoughtful and patient throughout the editing process, and asked all the right questions that pushed me to make the essay better with each draft. Working with Amy made me excited to keep writing and submitting. Hopefully, I’ll be lucky enough to work with her again in the future. ”
“Amy’s “breathe + bloom” session created an instant community and safe space for our voices. Her session helped me personally to rediscover how to speak my own love language again.”
“Amy made me a better writer. She thoughtfully pushed me to dramatize every element of my story which resulted in a deeper and more fun piece. She delivered her advice in an easy, professional style that brought me back to one of the things I love most about writing - insightful conversations about writing.”
“In Spring 2020, as APEX for Youth transitioned to virtual programming, Amy was the very first to volunteer to design and run a series of poetry and creative writing workshops for our students through Zoom. She was quick to engage students in fun and thought-provoking writing exercises. Each week, we saw Amy lead and encourage our students, even the quietest ones, to participate in the writing workshops and share their creative ideas. The final compilation of both students’ and volunteers’ poems was a huge success, receiving many compliments from our students’ families and principals. As a youth organization, we are inspired and uplifted by Amy’s dedication and commitment to serving our youth.
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