Sebastian Mendoza ’25

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It has been 14 years since Mrs. Ione Meyer began working at Strake Jesuit. In 2009, she began teaching British literature to juniors. In 2012, she took on teaching Mandarin, starting with 40 students, then each year adding another level until in 2022 she had 130 students at levels, 1, 2, 3 and AP Chinese. Today, the Mandarin students are so numerous, that she has thankfully been joined by Dr. Max Maier, who teaches Mandarin 1.

From spending her childhood in London and Paris, Mrs. Meyer grew up speaking two languages. Later, she taught English at the French Lycée in Beijing, French at the British school of Houston, Mandarin at Kingsford Community School in East London, and theater at both high school and college level.

Of the many diverse schools she has taught in, she has decided to stay at Jesuit.

“We are a community of faith,” she said. “We support each other, and we believe that education is a journey that not only prepares us for later life, but helps us understand who we are, and how we can help others along the way.”

At Jesuit, Mrs. Meyer has helped her students achieve depth in their exploration of the Chinese language and of China’s rich day-to-day culture. In class, her students write calligraphy. For Lunar New Year, they dance lion dances with percussion and put on musical performances and plays in Mandarin.

Mrs. Meyer was first introduced to Chinese culture in college when her friend from Cambridge University invited her to travel one summer along the Silk Road. They started in Hong Kong and traveled through the Gobi Desert to Northwestern China, the culturally Turkish areas of China; then to Xi’an to see the Terracotta Warriors, and finally to the capital, Beijing. During this trip she dealt with the hazards of travel through mountainous passes like landslides and rainstorms, but she also experienced beautiful culture. She was exposed to bazaars and markets, open-air Tibetan operas, monks debating, and she even traveled to ancient Buddhist sites. Every moment was unique and sometimes challenging, but she was touched by the warmth and hospitality of the Chinese people.

At the end of her trip, Mrs. Meyer boarded a train to Beijing and flew back home. She realized how different China was from her home.

“From that moment I knew I understood very little of Chinese history and culture,” she said. “I saw that China wasn’t a country–it was a continent.”

The immense size as well as the ethnic diversity and rich culture of China inspired her to live there. Soon after, she flew back to Beijing to immerse herself in the language and culture, spending almost four years living in China from 1989-1993.

Apart from Mandarin, Mrs. Meyer has also studied other languages: French, Latin, Greek, German, Russian, and basic Kiswahili. She learned Kiswahili when she helped her grandfather’s charitable trust in Kenya by teaching at an orphanage called Don Bosco with the Salesian fathers. Usually, every year during the Mass of the Holy Spirit, when students and faculty pray in different languages, Mrs. Meyer offers a prayer in Kiswahili.

Mrs. Meyer believes the most rewarding part of her job is seeing and experiencing the little things. She is inspired by Saint Theresa of Lisieux, who believed that “Life is made up of little things,” Mrs. Meyer said, and she enjoys seeing “the sum of the little things that may become a big thing.” These little things can be students becoming more comfortable with writing characters or telling anecdotes about conversing with native speakers while a larger outcome happens when her students travel or study in China. She loves when, as she said, students find a “practical reason for something they have learned.”