Hall of Fame
What is the Hall of Fame?
During the 2017-18 school year, Scott’s 10th year teaching English online, he was filled with deep gratitude. Looking back over the past decade, he was profoundly moved by what wonderful students and families the DreyerCoaching.com team and he have been blessed to work with and continue to work with. He was also grateful for the great learning and progress the students have made, and continue to make, over the past ten years.
ALL the DreyerCoaching.com students are CHAMPIONS, because they invest the extra time, energy, and focus to improve their minds, lives, and English skills. We salute ALL our students! At the same time, Scott realized a certain number of students had been associated with DreyerCoaching.com for a particularly long period of time and had achieved especially remarkable accomplishments. In hopes of recognizing those students and also encouraging all the other students to “go the extra mile,” this Hall of Fame was established.
how to be inducted
Students are inducted into the Hall of Fame based on their long-term, positive association with Dreyer Coaching, their exhibiting our core values, and their other ways of “going the extra mile.”
Examples may include but are not limited to:
- Consistent community service and/or volunteer work
- Participation in a highly competitive program or overseas travel
- Remarkable performance on a high-stakes test (TOEFL, SAT, etc.)
- Other remarkable accomplishments, as may be the case.
Do you have a person you would like to nominate for the DreyerCoaching.com Hall of Fame?
Contact Scott with the candidate’s name and reason(s) why you think he or she (or you) should be included. Thank you!
Aaron Chen
Hsinchu, Taiwan
Reason for Induction:
Becoming a DreyerCoaching.com student when he was in seventh grade, Aaron has taken both year-long writing classes as well as a Chinese New Year intensive class reading the novel 1984.
In early 2017 he applied for a highly competitive program run by the governments of Taiwan and Israel, called International Convention for Environmental Leadership in Israel. Taiwan has over 20 million people, and only ten are chosen for this program each year. About two hundred students applied and they had to submit two essays–one in English and one in Chinese–explaining why they wanted to join the group. Aaron told me his writing class helped him, especially with word choice, organization, and grammar. Twenty finalists were selected for interviews in Taipei–and Aaron was one! He obviously impressed the interviewers, because he was one of the ten chosen to join, and next thing you know, he was flying to Israel! What a great way to “go above and beyond” and help foster international understanding and cooperation!
Cindy Cai
Hong Kong
Reason for Induction:
Cindy joined DreyerCoaching.com in its early days–around Chinese New Year 2011, during Scott’s first year teaching online full-time. Cindy was just our second student in Mainland China, and our first student in South China, Shenzhen.
When she started her DreyerCoaching.com basic English class, she could not understand what Scott said and she could hardly speak English either. However, she persevered with a great attitude daily, and with her mother’s constant help and encouragement at her side, she gradually was able to both speak and understand spoken English. She attended classes faithfully year by year, without stopping. At least twice she came to the USA and visited with us here in Roanoke, Virginia, which also boosted her English skills, confidence, and willingness to “press on.”
By the time she was in high school, she scored in the TOP 1% in English skills in all of Shenzhen, a city with almost 12 million people! Later, thanks to her work ethic and English skills, she was admitted to an American school in Hong Kong. In 2017 she earned an impressive 110 on her TOEFL. Fantastic success story!
In the spring of 2019, she gained acceptance to New York University. Congratulations to Cindy!
Deron Geng
Virginia, USA
Reason for Induction:
Deron came to us in the fall of 2014, when his mother saw a poster on a bulletin board at her church explaining our services. He joined both a vocabulary and a writing class that year. A US citizen by birth, he had attended school in Utah up through grade 2 and thus had a strong English foundation. However, he had lived and attended grades 3-8 in Hsinchu, Taiwan so his English had gotten a bit rusty. His online classes helped him boost his fluency.
Later in 2014, his mother asked me about letting him attend school in the US. We arranged for his family to visit us here in Virginia over Chinese New Year 2015, where he toured two schools. He made his choice, and that fall moved in with us and began ninth grade. He has been a consistently pleasant host student to live with, and he has done consistently well with his schoolwork, earning a high GPA. During his junior year of high school, he took on the additional challenge of taking online college classes that will give him dual-enrollment credit. In addition to his excellent English and Chinese, he took on the challenge of learning college German this year.
On most Sundays–one of his days off–he wakes up early on his own volition to catch a ride to the church where he manages the PPT and projection system, for both the 8:00 a.m. worship practice and 10:00 a.m. service. At this point, Deron is one of those rare and blessed people who is essentially a native speaker of both English AND Chinese. Deron is making his community a better place!
Update May 2021: After high school graduation, Deron attended two years of a Virginia community college. This is a great option for many families. Students can earn full college credits for two years, and parents can easily save thousands or tens of thousands of dollars. After his two strong years at a community college, Deron gained admission to the prestigious University of Virginia.
Lucy Chen
Beijing, China
Reason for Induction:
Most people are scared of public speaking, even in their own language, let alone in a foreign language. However, Lucy Chen seems to thrive on it, competing in many nationwide English speech contests. Examples include: United States Academic Pentathlon China, New Oriental English Speech Competition, China Daily/ Coca-Cola English Cup, Beijing Foreign Studies University “Future Diplomat” English Talent Show, “Star of China” Competition, and debate. Participating in any nationwide competition is impressive, but when you realize Lucy is in China, a country of 1.4 billion people, that shows how remarkable her accomplishments are.
Update Spring 2021: In early 2021, Lucy entered an English competition against 380,000 other contestants. To put that number in perspective, it is about four times the population of Roanoke City, Virginia (99,000). It is also about two-thirds the size of the population of the US State of Wyoming (581,000).
个人简介
陈惜缘 北京初三学生
我是一个帅气洒脱、话多痘痘也多的阳光女生。喜欢阅读写作，擅长演讲辩论，多次获得北京及全国特等奖项；自学德语一年多，乐在其中；爱好新闻采编，是校电视台记者，上周还受邀主持了中国参赛规模最大的英语比赛活动“希望之星英语风采大赛”2020年全国总决赛启动发布会；曾是小学管乐团长笛首席，现是校合唱团员，荣获学校初中十大歌手称号。
以下是我的部分获奖情况——
1.中国日报社“21世纪杯”全国中学生英语演讲大赛总决赛初中组一等奖；
2.央视“希望之星”英语风采大赛全国初中组十强，受邀录制特别节目在电视台及各大网站播出；
3.北京外国语大学主办“未来外交官”风采展示活动北京市冠军；
4.美国“NHSDLC”中学生英语辩论赛北京市四强；
6.代表学校参加美国“未来之城”国际青少年STEAM中国区团队总决赛，获得全国初中组冠军；
7.7年级时美国数学竞赛AMC8考试全球排名1%，获得杰出荣誉证书；
8.美国数学大联盟杯赛7年级一等奖；
9.代表学校参加美国“USAP”学术五项全能“数学、科学、文学、社会学、艺术”中国总决赛，获得团体第五名；1千多名选手中个人总成绩排名前3% ；
10.2019年8月首考雅思7.5分。
跟随卓文老师线上学习英语已经一年多了，掌握了很多高深的单词和地道的美语表达方式，语法发音也都提升很多，并且能更加娴熟自信的用英语探讨简单学术问题。卓文老师博学多识，特别专业敬业，热情地与家长保持沟通，随时反馈学习情况，还积极帮助解决线上网络等技术故障，尤其是他的中文也特别棒，沟通起来顺畅好多。谢谢友善可爱的卓文老师，帮助我打开了全新的英语学习之路！
学以致用，学无止境，脚踏实地，勤勉有责。
2019-11-05
Tim Lin
Hsinchi, Taiwan
Reason for Induction:
Update May 2020: Tim attends the University of California and Berkeley.
Ricky Li
Hsinchi, Taiwan
Reason for Induction:
From the Summer of 2007 until 2013, my family and I presented a Summer Institute of Champions on the campus of the International Bilingual High School in Hsinchu (IBSH), Taiwan, helping students with their English, and Ricky was one of our summer campers back then, starting in 2010.
He participated successfully in those camps, and he also registered for our online classes when we began to offer those. In fact, as I write this in March 2019, Ricky has attended DreyerCoaching.com English classes, non-stop, longer than any other student! For that reason alone, Ricky belongs in the Hall of Fame, but there is much more.
Ricky attended grades 1 and 2 in Singapore, where the instruction was in British English. In third grade, his family moved back to Taiwan where he attended grades 3-5 at the Hsinchu Bilingual School, where he had to study Chinese, and the main language spoken was AMERICAN, not British, English. However, as he prepared to enter middle school, his parents decided to transfer him to a Chinese-language school, the prestigious National Experimental High School in the Hsinchu Science Park. In that rigorous school, which he attended from grades 6-12, all the instruction for all classes was in Chinese, except for an ESL class, which was very basic for Ricky’s level. Such adjustments from British English to American and then to Chinese instruction would be a difficult adjustment for anyone, but Ricky has handled it masterfully.
Also, when he was in fifth grade preparing to enter the Chinese middle school, Ricky, his mother, and I discussed a strategy to keep his English skills sharp, despite his moving to the new school. Over the decades I have observed many students move from an English to a Chinese school, and their English skills go downhill. In this case, Ricky and his mother decided to keep him with DreyerCoaching.com classes, two or three times a week, both advanced vocabulary and writing. Even though he has been in the Chinese-language school for seven years and is now a high school senior, I am DELIGHTED to report that his English is still at a native or near-native level, and he tells me his continued studies with DreyerCoaching.com, where he gets “real English” delivered to his home several evenings a week, have helped him do this.
In late 2017, he took the TOEIC exam and achieved a 950 (perfect score is 990), far exceeding the average Taiwan score on that exam (534) by over 400 points. His TOEFL was a whopping 113 ( perfect score is 120) and his SAT an impressive 1390! Congratulations to Ricky, for always having diligence, focus, and a great attitude. Plus, he has demonstrated that a person can study in an all-Chinese environment but with DreyerCoaching.com, maintain a native-speaker English level!
As I write this in March 2019, Ricky has received college offers from Purdue, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and Virginia Tech! Ricky eventually chose to attend Purdue University. Congratulations to Ricky!
Ryan Chen
In English we have a saying, “So-and-so should be a poster child for that group.”
That means, a particular person is the ideal embodiment of an organization. group, or cause. (The fancy word for this is quintessential.)
So, writing this post welcoming him to the Hall of Fame, I think “Ryan Chen is the poster child for DreyerCoaching.” (Of course Ryan is now a young man and not a child, but the metaphor still works.) Here is Ryan’s story:
Ryan first joined DreyerCoaching for our Summer Camp of Champions, held at the International Bilingual School in the Hsinchu Science Park, in July 2013. My daughter Harmony and I were the teachers that summer, and Ryan immediately stood out head and shoulders in his class by virtue of his already strong English and–more importantly–willingness to use it freely. We asked him why he already understood so much. It turned out, Ryan had lived in California for a few years as a very young child, so he had a strong foundation in English. However, he had been back in Taiwan and attending an all-Chinese school for several years.
That summer of 2013, Ryan was a rising 5th grader.
Since my first arrival in Taiwan in 1989, I cannot count how many children I have met who move back to Taiwan with excellent English. However, as the years go by, they lose their English and it gradually morphs into “Chinglish.” Seeing that happen over and over to so many people hurts my heart and almost drives me crazy! And what I find really frustrating is, it is totally avoidable!
After class one day that summer, Ryan’s mother invited Harmony and me to join her for lunch so we could all get better acquainted. His mother herself has impeccable English skills; therefore, she is able to judge for herself what kind of English she wants her children to learn. She is also a sophisticated, professional woman, so she had an open mind to online learning being provided from overseas. In other words, she did not feel she was trapped to only use the traditional, brick-and-mortar bushiban.
So, before the summer in-person classes were over, she enrolled Ryan in his first online classes with DreyerCoaching for the 2013-14 school year.
Then, she and her husband kept doing something wonderful. They kept re-enrolling Ryan every year, eight years in a row, and including may summer and Chinese New Year break intensive classes too! Ryan began with intermediate-level reading and vocabulary classes, then later added writing classes and SAT reading and vocabulary classes. As a result, from grades 5 – 12, Ryan kept getting personalized English instruction from an experienced, native speaker of American English.
Over the years, we have seen many students join DreyerCoaching for a short time, then they stop. The parents often tell me, “This year my child has to prepare for Exam A, then next year for Exam B, etc.” Plus, some families often hop around from English program to program, looking for the “perfect school” that will give them some magic “short-cut.”
In contrast, Ryan’s parents know there is no “magic short-cut.” They know that learning a new language well is a long-term commitment. They have made the commitment, and it is paying off. In addition to Ryan’s classes, they later enrolled their daughter Eleanor with DreyerCoaching. (See “Most Improved Award 2020-2021 1st 9 Weeks.) They have also introduced many family friends to DreyerCoaching, so those friends can benefit too.
(Each spring, when we offer re-enrollment, Ryan’s parents enroll promptly so they can enjoy special loyalty rewards and free bonus classes so their children can keep their English skills growing over the summer.)
In these past few years, I have had the pleasure of working with Ryan in the SAT-level classes. I often joke with him that he should win the “most punctual award.” He is almost always the first student to log on to every class. Ryan knows every minute counts! But all joking aside, what Ryan has accomplished is truly amazing.
Despite having grown up in the Chinese-language environment of Taiwan, Ryan now has his own impeccable English skills. He speaks with a fluid, American accent. His writing skills are strong, his vocabulary broad, his listening sharp, his grammar excellent. Ryan is always focused, engaged, and respectful. He can engage in a full conversation with native speakers of English and participate 100%. The other DreyerCoaching team teachers are always amazed after a class with Ryan.
Ryan will be a freshman at Taipei University in the fall, but his English skills are strong enough that he could easily attend and thrive at a competitive US university if he so chose.
We will miss Ryan but wish him well. He has truly earned his spot in the Hall of Fame.
Leo Li
Beijing, China
Reason for Induction:
Leo joined DreyerCoaching.com in November 2014, when he was in fourth grade, and he kept going for an incredible nine years, until he was close to high school graduation. Leo first joined small group classes focused on reading and vocabulary, but he has taken 1 on 1 classes focusing on grammar too.
Leo is a well-rounded student and person. One thing that stands out about Leo is his great attitude. He is always wearing a smile and looks and sounds upbeat in class, even though we know his load at school is heavy. Not only does he excel in his academics, but he has a high “EQ” and strong people skills. Moreover, he is an athlete, having attended a baseball camp in the US State of Kansas and baseball competitions overseas. He is also a musician and plays the clarinet with his school orchestra. They once performed at an international competition in Japan.
For Leo, learning is a family affair. His mother, Grace, serves in the teacher-training division of prestigious Beijing Institute of Technology (北京理工大学). Since she works with educators and linguists, she claims to have a good understanding of clear, standard accents, and she says she likes the ways the DreyerCoaching teachers speak and instruct.
In both December 2015 and Summer 2018 the Dreyers visited China, and Leo and his mother showed them wonderful hospitality in Beijing, including a day trip to the Great Wall.
Two brief stories give you insight into Leo’s character. During the summer his baseball team attended a skills camp in Kansas, Leo was a middle schooler and about the only boy who knew enough English to communicate with the American coach, and the coach knew no Chinese. Therefore, Leo would communicate the coach’s instructions to his teammates and translate their questions to the coach. Impressed with his young linguist, the coach nicknamed Leo “our hope for the future.”
Another time Leo and his mom and dad were on a family vacation in Southeast Asia when his mom fell seriously ill in the Manila, Philippines airport. Grace had heard that international airports usually had a clinic, but had no idea where to find it. Plus, her husband spoke no English. However, Leo was bold and, with his English skills, began asking some staff he saw and was able to find the clinic and direct his parents to it.
Ever polite, Grace credited DreyerCoaching instruction with giving her son those skills. However, these stories reveal the diligence, initiative and heart of this remarkable young man.
