Jessica Valdez is a writing instructor at NYU Shanghai. Professor Valdez is from Baltimore, Maryland and received her Ph.D. in Victorian Literature.

Wearing a crisp dress and a warm smile on her face, Jessica gazed at me with great expectation. The focused expression on her face is the same as when she listens to a student speak in her class. I have a feeling each question I ask will receive a detailed and thoughtful answer.

Knowing it’s my first time to do an interview, Jessica recalled that she was shy and nervous when she first started out as a school newspaper reporter, and especially conducting interviews over the phone.“But you will eventually get used to it,” she encouraged me at the beginning of the interview.

“Coming to Shanghai out of love and curiosity:”

Jessica paid a visit to Shanghai about one and a half years ago after being invited by a Chinese colleague who worked in the same writing program with her in the US. She fell in love with Shanghai after that and she hoped to know about this city. Thus she applied for the writing instructor position here with her husband at the first sight of the job posted online, which she regards as a great chance to explore Chinese culture and teach a mixed student body. They were both hired and flew to Shanghai, followed by their three cats who travelled to Amsterdam, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and finally Shanghai because of a complicated immigration procedure for pets.

Comparing Shanghai with New York, she sees similarities as well as many differences. Other than skyscrapers and a fast living pace, she is fascinated by the allies near East Nanjing Road where people cook in the streets and dance in the park. In her eyes, Shanghai presents more public life than New York does, which makes her feel inspired to explore more details about the city. For her, living in a new city and starting a new lifestyle will definitely provide inspirations for both teaching and writing.

“Teaching in NYU Shanghai:”

“I learn more from students than they learn from me.”

When teaching Chinese students, Jessica says she notices big cultural gaps. Although having gained experience teaching Korean students in the U.S, she continues to change her teaching strategy and constantly changes it because Chinese students have never been immersed in American culture and educational system. Jessica admits that she encourages more group discussions here by praising students with positive words like “great,” “awesome” and respecting everyone’s original opinion. These methods make shy students whose oral English are not fluent feel more comfortable to speak out their ideas. For her, teaching here is also a process of learning to adjust her teaching methods.

“Impression of Chinese students:”

“It’s hard to generalize because everyone is an individual.”

“You comment good here but you write great here, what’s the difference?” This is what a Chinese student asked Jessica once regarding his paper. That might be her basic impression of Chinese students: work hard and pay more attention to every single word. This pushes Jessica to choose words carefully to make us understand. Actually she avoids using big words during our conversation. For example, she made sure I know the word “radical” before continuing to talk. Except for the general impression for Chinese students, Jessica stresses that it’s hard to generalize because everyone is individual.

“Positive attitudes:”

“Pretend to be energetic, and you suddenly become energetic.”

It’s not difficult to tell Jessica is a positive person through her frequent laughs and smiles both in class and during this interview. In fact, she confessed that she could sometimes be sleepy at noon and struggle to teach. But she tried to be energetic in this case because “It’s not responsible to express negative feelings” according to her. Jessica applies this attitude to her way of teaching: always encourage and compliment students. This is related to her study experience in Paris: When Jessica was a college student, she studied French in Paris for a period of time. Her French teacher disregarded her and her classmates because they couldn’t express their ideas in French. As a teacher, Jessica bears this experience in mind and treasures the qualities of patience and tolerance.

After talking about Jessica’s personal teaching experience and life, I suggested focusing on a more academic topic, Victorian Literature, which is of great interest to Jessica. “I guess few students now like to read novels from that period compared with contemporary novels.” Jessica laughed.

“Chatting about Victorian Literature:”

Imagine a twelve-year old girl reading the story Jane Eyre alone and suddenly discovering the Victorian novel is so interesting. That strong affection eventually led Jessica to the path of studying the literature in that period. From Jessica’s point of view, the Victorian novels focus on more sharp social issues, the struggles between classes in comparison with individualism in contemporary works. She is quite interested in studying the social conditions and the relationships between the rapidly increasing newspaper industry and novels from 1830 to 1900, through which she reflects on similar problems in 21th society.

How did emerging newspaper industries impact traditional novels and class conflicts?

In our interview, Jessica told me more about her interest and research in Victorian literature, which was quite thought-provoking. At the beginning of Victorian Period, novels were the mainstream reading materials for citizens and they were mostly written for the educated middle-class. They were published in sections, like Charles Dickens’s Our Mutual Friends. It came out each month over a two-year period before it was compiled into a book. The invention of newspapers provided a way of fast reading; however, it was also a platform to voice opposite opinions against middle-class from working classes. Besides newspapers for the middle-class, including the London Times, many more newspapers reported crimes and radical protests in the lower society. As a result, the emerging newspaper industry both provided easy access to novels and pushed the conflicts between middle classes and lower classes to be sharper and more exposed the public.

“Dickens’ concerns vs. Jessica’s concerns:”

Charles Dickens is the most famous middle-class novelist in 19th century. Most of his novels portray a well-structured society where everyone sticks to their own position and class. Even if The Adventures of Oliver Twist, which is considered to describe the misery life of working class, has a tendency to maintain the priority of middle-class. At the end of this novel, Oliver Twist found himself to have a middle-class background. Actually, from Jessica’s point of view, Dickens’ sympathy for workers is very limited and one-sided. He was worried about that newspapers would make working class become literate and grow up to demand their right, which could undermine the stability of the society. By contrast, other novelists criticized the unequal society. Jessica appreciates their works because they touched the intrinsic problem of inequality and class tension lying under the peaceful surface. Their sharp criticism provokes spotlight on current issues. “The wealth and the poor still live separately.” Jessica commented with a worried expression.The conflicts revealed in Victorian novels led her to focus on similar problems existing in modern society, and to sympathize with the poor people who struggle in society. Even in today’s world, can we say with full confidence that we have already achieved absolute equality and justice? That’s a question which Jessica’s words leave me, a young adult, to think about critically.

“Reading, understanding and then being critical:”

For Jessica, the goal of teaching is to help students become a critical thinker. Reading as many as challenging materials is the basic step. However, almost everyone, including Jessica, finds it easy to get distracted by modern technology like the Internet. She solves this problem by using an Internet Blocker which prevents her from surfing online. This would also be helpful to those who lack sense of self-controlling. For Jessica, “reading still involves thinking.” According to her, some students don’t lack the habits of thinking. But she also said, “Students tend to generalize main ideas out of the text and create their own ideas without basis. It is widely regarded as smart to have strong and absolute opinions. But sometimes holding back and return to the text helps objective understanding and thinking.”

This article was written by Nancy Gong. Send an email to [email protected] to get in touch. Photo Credit: Cynthia Sun