Teacher, 2000-now
Janet Tan has been a teacher in the High School at HKIS since 2000. She teaches journalism, English, and Humanities, and looks after the Writing Center.
Alumna Jenny Suen ’02, who is now a filmmaker, an artist, and a writer, expressed her gratitude for Janet’s support. “Janet encouraged and inspired me to keep asking the ‘stupid’ questions, because it is the naive pursuit of such unanswerable questions that gets to the heart of what it means to live. She taught me that if you don’t like the system then change it. I wanted to write more, so she let me do an independent study in my senior year, where I wrote a novel (in retrospect a very bad one). She volunteered an hour a week with me one-on-one and read all my terrible drafts. Her precious time and energy gave me the space to become who I wanted to be. I’ve just directed my first film, so it seems that the lesson she gave is one I will continue learning for the rest of my life.”
Rosann Kao, who was College Counselor at HKIS from 2001 to 2011 and knew Janet well, commented: “Janet is a gifted teacher. In my many conversations with her, we talked about why learning to write is so important for students – perhaps their interests are not academic, and they’re more interested in sport or music. Janet helped me to see that while a subject might be important, what matters more is how the human being feels about the subject. Also, I took the summer course Janet offers on writing, and it helped me to really listen to what kids are saying.”
See this “Faculty Home Video Series: Janet Tan” video, in which Janet answers some questions about her career at HKIS