Eleanor Liu Robinson

About Eleanor Liu

Eleanor Liu Robinson was born and raised in northern Michigan, but she has always been exposed to and interested in a variety of languages and cultures. She grew up hearing her father’s family speak Finnish and her mother’s family speak Vietnamese, Cantonese, and Mandarin. Robinson’s first-hand awareness of the way language can either open or close doors motivated her to first study English and linguistics as an undergraduate at the University of Michigan, and later to earn a Master of Arts in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages from Michigan State University.

Robinson’s interest in communication and self-expression ties to the arts, as well. Teacher by day and writer by night, she has a soft spot for creative nonfiction, although she has also co-authored articles in peer-reviewed journals. Apart from writing, Robinson especially enjoys music. She started playing trombone in elementary school and can’t seem to quit; she has played in a wide range of amateur groups, including marching and athletic bands, church groups, teacher rock bands, big bands, wind bands, orchestras—the list goes on, although her musical skills do not.

Curious and open-minded, Robinson loves new experiences. She firmly believes that if she is to teach students who are working in a new language in an unfamiliar setting, she should do the same. In the 2014-2015 academic year, Robinson was granted a leave of absence for a U.S. State Department fellowship at Capital Normal University in Beijing, China. When she is not traveling, she’s studying. Robinson is currently taking a course to brush up on her Mandarin, and she has enrolled in an intensive year-long writing program.

Robinson’s job at the Interlochen Arts Academy is the perfect intersection of her professional and personal interests, and she couldn’t be happier to be working with emerging multilingual learners.