Nancy Niu

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Nancy Niu is a science and arts tutor who believes learning should be joyful and creative. A Cornell University biology graduate, she has taught English in China and crochet to U.S. students, often blending art, science, and cultural storytelling into her lessons. Nancy’s classes foster cooperation—she encourages older students to mentor younger ones, creating a warm, collaborative atmosphere. She connects especially well with neurodiverse learners, drawing from her own experience with ADHD traits to design patient, interest-based lessons that reduce overstimulation. Passionate about conservation, she hopes to inspire students to love nature, science, and creativity as pathways to understanding and protecting the world.

Monday-Sunday: 11pm-8am Eastern Standard time

I believe interest is the best teacher. I wish to cultivate an environment in which kids can have fun while learning.

I obtained a bachelor's degree in sciences from Cornell University in 2022. My major is Biology.

I have been teaching kids crochet since I was in Cornel University and I am still doing it now at my current institution. I also have taught Chinese kids English when I was in China. I have some experience casually teaching kids in the U. S. Chinese too.

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Nancy Niu
$159.00 USD

Subject Expertise

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Arts and Crafts
Arts and Crafts
Chinese
Chinese
Life Sciences
Life Sciences
Math
Math
Nature Study
Nature Study
Science
Science

My mission

I love kids. I am happiest when I am around kids. Because kids are naturally happy little angels! Teaching kids is one of the very important things that make my life meaningful. I feel they are the future of our world, and it is my responsibility to reveal to them how wonderful life is. This life includes cultures, nature and every beautiful, praiseworthy thing this world holds. I want to show them how wonderful this world and life is through creativity and knowledge, inspiring them to protect this world and even create a better one with their own ability and love. I had a very good childhood and met lots of good mentors that make study fun for me and gave me the vision to love this world and life. That's why I wish to spread this love to the future generation:)

My Story

I was born in a small town in China and went to the U.S. for university. When I was at Cornell University, I had the opportunity to really plug into the local community. I volunteered at the local children's garden when I help out with planting and harvesting vegetables and really fell in love with nature. I also had the opportunity to help out with youth craft program in the garden where I saw how happy the kids were being in nature, exploring, learning and playing. This is my first inspiration to become an educator to spread this joy of knowledge and creativity to the kids.

Homeschooling is very popular in small town like Ithaca so I also got the opportunity to get to know about this education system when I was teaching homeschooling kids crochet. We even took them to Cornell sheep farm to see the sheep from which the wool came from, and the kids got to see how the yarns were made from the raw wool! They were so amazed and happy! Some of the kids were interested in learning Chinese too so I started teaching them a little bit. They then got so enthusiastic that they even started to learn it on their own and told me what they've learned when we had our crochet class! This even strengthened my determination to share whatever I know with the kids because they wanted to learn and they were happy when they get to know how amazing the world is!

Like being a mentor is a start, but I really learned what is a good mentor through a life-changing mentor I met in my university. He is my research professor and also one of the best persons I have ever known. He is very encouraging, always cheering me up and believing in me even when I didn't believe in myself. When I encountered some difficulties, be it in life or research, the first thing he always said was, " I heard ya!". When my research didn't work out, he always said, "but it's good because we learned something we didn't know!", with his beaming smile and signature, all-time positive thumbs-up! This really shaped my attitude towards learning, also really inspired me to be a teacher like him!

Cognitive Diversity

How I adapt to students with diverse intellectual needs.

When I just started teaching crochet, I found some kids (usually the older ones) learned more quickly than the other ones. I always tried to spend equal amount of time for each kid but sometimes it's hard when you have so many of them asking questions at the same time. And then I discovered that the older kids became very willing and eager to teach the younger kids too! I was thinking about asking them for help when there was too many younger kids haha but I was very happy to find out that they volunteered to do that even without thinking. And it's really rewarding to see how every kid benefits. Sometimes the younger kids even learned better from the older kids because they were friends. For now, I ask each kid what project they want to do. The older kids by now can be mostly independent and quite enjoy doing a project on their own but I am always there for questions and help. The younger kids still need me to guide them step by step but even now the older kids will volunteer to help out from time to time:) And I think this is the best situation I want to see in my class!

Also not diagnosed, but I have some ADHD symptom too. Although it's usually reduced if I am doing something that I am very interested in. If I were to teach kids with ADHD, I think I would also try to engage the kids as best as I can and see if they can follow. If they lose attention, I think I would give them a break and then retry and work on something they themselves find really interested in, but also relevant to the class content.

I am not diagnosed with Autism, but I do have some autistic qualities, and I understood and experienced some of the difficulties autistic kids face too. For me I think the best learning strategy is to do the thing I love because I can pour my whole self into it. I also found myself easily overstimulated if there's too many things going on around. That's why I feel if I were to be a teacher for autistic kids, I would try my best to engage the kids, make them fall in love with what we are going to study, but also give them some space during the learning process. Because I know they are usually very smart and concentrated and when they are in the zone, they are in the zone!

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