About Groovi Pauli & Friends

"Groovi Pauli" is my pen name and stage name for the music and videos we have created over the past 8 years. I am a teacher of Mandarin Chinese and our family has raised two functionally bilingual children. Being a good parent is life's greatest challenge and blessing, but working as a teacher must come in a close second!  "Groovi Pauli & Friends"refers to my whole immediate  family and assorted other characters, real or puppets.

Over my years in education, I have taught at a great variety of levels. I began teaching English in Kindergartens in Taipei, Taiwan, but then got a job teaching English and drama at Tunghai University in Taichung, Taiwan. It was there where I begin learning Hokkien (also known as Taiwanese or 闽南语 mín nán yǔ) and Mandarin Chinese more formally - that is 25 years ago now...yikes! This is what is sounds like to hear me speak Chinese and Hokkien, from an interview with the Singapore Straits Times newspaper in the fall, 2014. I am no language expert, but I have also learned phrases in Danish, Bahasa Indonesia, Cantonese and Spanish over my life as well.

In our important ground-breaking work as "Groovi Pauli & Friends,"  I have enlisted the help of our children to help with video clips of authentic speakers. At home, we use both Mandarin Chinese and English. Along with my two children, we gradually began to record original music to teach certain phrases (i.e. What is your name?) or pockets of vocabulary (Which animals might you see in the zoo or farm?). For classes, I experimented with creating music videos to go along with these songs, especially to get learners up and moving. My students responded so readily we have continued to make over 80 +videos. Our fourth musical album was released in 2013, The Green Album., and our fifth album "Five" was released in 2015. We had a book/DVD published by Peking University Press in 2011, "Move and Groove in Mandarin Chinese with Groovi Pauli & Friends." （link in Chinese, link in English）. Now we have put all music videos and video skits on our YouTube channel, Groovi Pauli & Friends. 

In 2015, I also was part of a television show series, a Singaporean Chinese language variety show, "It's a small world," which was a unique performing experience. Here is a link to one of the TV shows on local Channel 8. There is also a local talk show "Face off" that I have been on. It is my honor to be asked to be a part of these experiences.

                      

One of my earliest experiences teaching Chinese is one of my most memorable. During the 1995-6 school year, I received a phone call from a 1st grade teacher at Elletsville Elementary School. She had a new student Jenny who moved straight from China and spoke not a lick of English. The teacher wanted someone who spoke Chinese to work with her student on English, but also to teach the whole class Chinese. Brilliant! Especially because Elletsville is virtually a small, semi-rural town, but not too far away from the enormous Indiana University. 

I took on this role and truly enjoyed it! It was at this point I began to utilize puppets to teach Chinese, creating characters such as "Charlie  (frog)." The Elletsville 1st grade students also explained that since "Nǐ hǎo" meant "hello" in Chinese, it must meant that American Indians must have also spoken Chinese -- a popular stereotype is that American Indians greet each other by saying "Hao!"