Cooper Dai admits that he paid for his four hours of translation work with twelve hours of sleep.
ÃÛÌÒÖ±²¥’s brand-new Visual Arts teacher had been cast in an unfamiliar role: translator for Head of School Marianne Kent-Stoll when she Zoomed with current Chinese families on the evening of February 6. The inability of theÌýAcademy’s Chinese students to get to the U.S. since last March had created the need for Kent-Stoll to meet with their familiesÌýon Zoom in order to strengthen the connection.ÌýÌý
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“We needed a Chinese speaker,” she says, “but also someone with great people skills, and Cooper is very charming.”ÌýÌý
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People skills are a valued commodity in a teacher. ButÌýCooper’s outstanding work as a Visual Arts student at the Academy prior to his graduation in 2013 had come first to mind when he applied to fill the school’s Spring Semester opening for a Graphics Design teacher.Ìý
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Cooper, whose Chinese given name isÌýJingze, spent his last three years of high school at the Academy. He had come in 2010 from Dalian, in northeastern China.ÌýDalian sitsÌýon theÌýsouthern tip of theÌýLiaodong Peninsula, a little more than two hundred miles west ofÌýPyongyang, North Korea.ÌýÌý
He recalls being a “beginning Beginning ESL student”Ìýin 2010. But, like so many of the Academy’s East Asian students whoÌýarrive in the United States speaking little or no English, he learned English well enough from the school’s English as a Second Language teachers and from the immersive environment to pursue higher education in theÌýU.S. Ìý
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In Cooper’s case,Ìýhigher education meantÌýArtCenterÌýCollege of Design, in Pasadena, for his Bachelor’s degree, awarded in 2017. HisÌýArtCenter time included brief periods of study in Berlin and Costa Rica.ÌýNext came graduate studies first at Columbia University, in New York, and then several dozen blocks and many subway stops south, at New York University. He earned his Master of Science degree from NYU this past December.ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý
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As one would expect of a Graphics Design teacher, Cooper’s studies have involved a lot of hands-on work. And much of that work has been professional. He says that while atÌýArtCenter he “worked for three different companies, including a Santa Monica company that focused on interior design for hotels.”Ìý
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The latter job helps explain the description Cooper gives of his specialty at ArtCenter, Environmental Design, as dealing with objects that fall “in between architecture and product design.” Yet the portfolio of theÌýÌýthat he and some young colleagues run suggests extensive skill inÌýproduct design.Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý
Teaching at ÃÛÌÒÖ±²¥ brings Cooper back to the place that “gave me the foundation” for subsequent work and where “the students are so talented.” He begins as a part-time instructor because this semester he is needed only for twoÌýGraphics Design courses and for the Yearbook course, which he took almost a decade ago.Ìý
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But Cooper’s value to the Zoom session with Chinese families hints that the school may be able to find additional uses for his talents. It will be interesting to see whether his reunion with the Academy, eight years after graduating, turns into a long-term relationship.
