Interdisciplinary Learning Across Borders

Over the past decade, I have lived, studied, and taught across Chinese Mainland & Macau, Australia, and now Canada. Moving across these different educational systems has shaped one core belief: interdisciplinary learning is no longer an option—it is the basic condition for understanding the world.

My teaching career began in mathematics, but every year I spent in the classroom pushed me beyond numbers. I realized that students’ mathematical challenges often had little to do with math itself—they had to do with language, identity, confidence, and access. When I taught math bilingually in international schools, I watched students transform when English academic language became less of a barrier. The moment they could speak about mathematics fluently, their reasoning, creativity, and problem-solving expanded naturally.

This experience deeply shaped my later work in TESL and EAP/CLIL. I no longer see “language class” and “content class” as separate spaces. Instead, every classroom—whether math, ethics, AI, or language—requires:

• a linguistic gateway (students need the language to think),
• a disciplinary purpose (students need a context to apply learning),
• and a cultural bridge (students need to feel seen and represented).

Interdisciplinarity is not the combination of subjects; it is the integration of human experience. This belief guides all my current AI-enhanced course design at UBC, where I merge ethics, technology, critical thinking, language strategies, and social issues into a unified learning experience.

Interdisciplinary teaching, to me, is ultimately about helping students live in a world where knowledge is hybrid, problems are complex, and learning is never siloed.