DaDa English Teacher Gives Speech on the Impact of Teaching at "Unique" Upgrade Event

One morning in the winter of 2017, a staff member from DaDa's Shanghai headquarters came into the office early and saw a foreign girl waiting at the front desk with a large suitcase. "Hello! My name is Natalia, I'm a teacher on the DaDa platform," Natalia introduced herself.

Natalia is from Manchester and was a registered teacher on the DaDa online platform. Before coming to China, she had been teaching on DaDa for two years. During her two years on DaDa, Natalia taught 15 Chinese kids and conducted more than 4,000 online lessons. "I came here today to meet my Chinese students, and I also want to see what China looks like in reality," Natalia told us.

While teaching these kids English, Natalia came to know every one of them: their hobbies, their pet's name, their best friends, the food they find delicious, and how China looks in their eyes. As time went by, a strong emotional bond was built between Natalia and her students, and finally, she decided to come to China in person to meet these kids and see China through her own eyes.

Her arrival made the DaDa team very excited and proud. DaDa not only plays a role in creating an online tutoring platform for English learning, it also builds a bridge between two countries and two different cultures.

DaDa's CEO, Mrs. Zhi told us that every day, DaDa receives emails from teachers in North America and Europe expressing their wish to come and meet their students when they visit China and their hope that DaDa can help them make it happen. The online encounters with Chinese students have given them a different outlook of China and inspired them to gain a deeper understanding of China and its culture. "To some extent, DaDa's role as an online English education platform has gone far beyond the scope of teaching English. It is now a platform for establishing emotional connections between Chinese students and foreign teachers and building a bridge between two countries, and two different cultures," said Zhi. "It makes us feel very excited and fulfilled."

"One of my first students was a 5-year-old girl called Icy. When we first met, she was very shy and nervous. She didn't want to speak with me. But over the course of a couple of months, she gained her confidence and started to speak up. Now she greets me every class with a big smile and tells me stories about her day," said Natalia, describing a story from when she had just started to teach on DaDa. She continued, "Another student of mine lives in rural China. Because of this, he had never had an English teacher before. DaDa allowed his parents to connect with a qualified English teacher, which wouldn't be possible in his town. In six months, he's progressed from understanding no English, to being able to answer questions and read independently. For me, seeing this progress in my students is the most valuable thing about this job."

"In the UK, I worked in a management position but always wanted to be a teacher after gaining experience in teaching English abroad. I love working with DaDa because of my students. I have taught most of my students for over a year. I feel that many families are choosing online classes for convenience and the chance to connect with qualified, native English-speaking teachers. I believe that the teachers with DaDa are highly qualified. In fact, many are teachers working within brick and mortar schools in the US and around the world. These teachers choose to work with DaDa because of the convenience of working from home and working around family commitments," Natalia said.

Through support from DaDa, and her love for her Chinese students, Natalia decided to stay. She is now working at DaDa's headquarters in Shanghai and continues to contribute her efforts to empower more Chinese children through companionship and her passion for teaching.

About DaDa   

DaDa is a professional organization specializing in K12 online English education. After years of development, DaDa has formed key advantages, including research, a network of foreign teachers in Europe and the United States, a fixed one-on-one teaching model, a graded curriculum, diversified course categories, and fully functional coverage of mobile terminals. Its "100% Transparent Classroom" system allows parents to monitor their children's learning using mobile devices anytime, anywhere, and achieve efficient, convenient and personalized home-school collaboration.

DaDa is committed to building an "international school without walls", and always adheres to the teaching-oriented principle, through the establishment of Brain Spark. By collaborating with the Highlights Press, McGraw-Hill Education, and FLTRP, they can import qualified teaching content such as PLE, Reach, Highlights, and a number of authoritative tutorials (including electronic versions), and training and evaluating systems. DaDa maintains parity with schools from 1st tier cities in mainland China as well as private schools from Hong Kong in terms of teaching resources.

In 2015, DaDa obtained round A financing from Dragon Capital, Pegasus Fund, and Qingsong Fund. In 2016, DaDa gained hundreds of millions of yuan in round B funding from Yonghua Capital. In December of the same year, it also raised a few hundred million yuan in round B+ financing led primarily by Oriental Fortune Capital. Among them, Yonghua Capital ranked third place in terms of the most IPO exits of domestic VC/PE institutions in the first half of 2017, and the total amount of funds managed by the Oriental Fortune Capital exceeded RMB 20 billion. In January 2018, DaDa gained 100 million U.S. dollars in round C financing, jointly invested by the world-famous hedge fund, "The Tiger Fund", and the domestic education giant, the TAL Education Group, becoming one of the industry's invisible unicorns.

SOURCE DaDa