MOONSHOT ACADEMY

MOONSHOT ACADEMY

Nayi Liu

HS Professional Development Coordinator, Psychology and English Teacher

Nayi holds an M.Ed. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a Bachelor of Arts from Carleton College. She previously taught psychology and social science/humanities project-based courses at both Moonshot Academy and Avenues the World School-Shenzhen.

Nayi teaches jointly in the Social Science Department and the English department. She teaches a course on the History of Psychology and another course on Pre-Advanced English: Literature. She also serves as the Professional Development Coordinator at MSA. She leads two Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) on Translanguaging Pedagogy and Meeting the Needs of Diverse Learners, respectively.

Nayi's research interests include educational action research, social science research methodologies, and auto-ethnography. Her senior thesis during her undergraduate career, Re-examining the Immigrant Paradox on Adolescents’ Internalizing Mental Health: The Mediating Role of Family and School Support, is a meta-analysis that explores the validity of a long-standing notion of the immigrant paradox and challenges existing findings around this topic.

Curriculums2

ENGL4901: Pre-Advanced English

How might literary works help us empathize with the lives of marginalized groups - both on a cognitive and emotional level? How might we critically examine and reflect upon the social conditions that gave rise to oppressive realities, and how might such reflection help propel social change? What might the everyday experience of the Vietnamese refugee have in common with an African American boy, and why might such commonalities matter to us? What does it mean to live a life in the era of late capitalism, where everything from material goods to lifestyles becomes commodified and consumable? What does it mean to be a feminist in the 1850s versus in 2023, and how might a feminist lens help us re-interpret and re-imagine classic literary works? This course will pursue the above questions and more by leveraging literature as a form of critical social inquiry. One of the core aims of the course is to develop critical consciousness - a set of skills, knowledge, and attitudes that helps you examine, interrogate, and re-imagine the social fabric that shapes the lived experiences of marginalized groups. You will be exposed to a range of genres, ranging from short stories, novels, memoirs, poetry, and drama, to works of fine/performance arts. A major part of class assignments will involve applying theoretical lenses to analyze works of literature and honing skills in argumentation and textual and literary analysis. You will also keep a journal that documents your disciplinary/interdisciplinary reflections, analysis, and effects as you progress through the course.

PSYC6001: History of Psychological Science

Are emotions discovered or invented? How have psychologists construed emotions throughout their development? How are emotions linked to our consciousness, and might we be able to perceive, feel, and love without a cerebral cortex? What does the study of intelligence, eugenics, and the bell curve have in common, and why might they share a racist history whose legacy continues to resonate in psychometrics today? What might a survey on the development of intelligence tell us about what brains and AIs have in common? And how might a series of letters from Aldous Huxley and Humphry Osmond tell us about the inception of psychedelics - a class of hallucinogens that sparked controversy over both clinical and recreational settings?

This course will take a historical perspective on the development of special topics in psychology - ranging from emotions and intelligence to psychedelics. The course will be delivered as a series of lectures, readings, learner-led discussions, and debates. You will have the opportunity to develop a range of skills, including close reading textual evidence and conducting quantitative and qualitative analysis.

Projects1

Decolonizing Psychometrics: Artifacts on Intelligence and Eugenics

Disciplines/Subjects: History of Psychology Key Themes：Psychometrics; Intelligence; Eugenics; History of Science; Primary Source Analysis The British Museum is planning an exhibition that showcases archival research on the topic of WWII eugenic movements and the role that psychologists and neurologists played in perpetuating systemic violence and discrimination. You are a novice historian of psychology who conducts archival research on relevant topics. You are tasked to identify, arrange, and interpret primary sources to put up a display that chronicles the above topic. Your work needs to engage a large, public, and global audience informing them about the history of how science is used to perpetrate racism. You will also connect the role of psychologists in intelligence research by showing how early psychologists have been complicit in creating and advancing eugenic claims and practices. Your goal is to construct a research-based, engaging narrative that brings your audience close to the archival evidence on your chosen topic/focus area.