Quyen Di Chuc Bui not only teaches Vietnamese language, literature and culture, but he teaches other teachers how to do the same. Photo by Peggy McInerny/UCLA.
Quyen Di Chuc Bui, the head of UCLA’s Vietnamese language program, doesn’t just teach Vietnamese — his life is teaching Vietnamese. And that makes him a very busy man.

During the academic year, Chuc Bui, a lecturer in UCLA’s Department of Asian Languages and Cultures, co-teaches a nine-week course on Vietnamese language on campus. Off campus, he is much sought after as a trainer of other Vietnamese Americans in the art of teaching Vietnamese.

His prowess is so well recognized that he is regularly invited to lead training workshops all over the U.S., from California and Texas to Florida and Oklahoma, among many other states.

Chuc Bui has also written a set of textbooks for Vietnamese American students that have been published by Tuoihoa Publishing of Garden Grove, Calif.

Every August, he co-teaches a weekend workshop with other scholars for the Association of the Vietnamese Language and Culture Schools, which prepares immigrant volunteers to teach Vietnamese in local community language schools. Last summer, 250 people from across the United States, Canada and Japan participated. In addition to learning pedagogical skills, the participants also get help developing their own curricula and teaching materials.

“I love my mother language. What I most enjoy about teaching is seeing Vietnamese American students gain the ability to read and write Vietnamese fluently,” said Chuc Bui, who also teaches a summer abroad extension course for California State University, Long Beach (CSULB).
 
Born in Hanoi and raised in Saigon, Chuc Bui originally wanted to enter the Catholic priesthood. “Just as I was going to enter the seminary, however, my father died,” he said. As a result, his priest advised him to stay home and help his mother raise his younger siblings.
 
To support his family, he started teaching at a Catholic high school in Saigon in 1967 immediately after completing high school, picking up skills on the job because he had no formal training. At the same time, he attended the University of Saigon where he majored in the Vietnamese language and literature.

When the school board recognized his strengths in language and literature, he began teaching those subjects exclusively. Eventually, he was invited by the Catholic Board of Education to teach intensive pedagogy courses in high schools in many other dioceses. In 1974, he became vice president of textbooks and curricula committee at the University of Da Lat, where he also worked in the department of Vietnamese language and linguistics.

Escape from Vietnam
 
Following the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam in 1973 and the invasion of the South by the North Vietnamese Army in 1975, the tumultuous reunification of Vietnam ensued. Many residents of the South were sent to re-education camps by the communist regime. By 1977, Chuc Bui’s family resolved to leave the country.

In desperation, they became part of the 1 to 2 million “boat people” who fled the regime by water. Together with his wife and two siblings, Chuc Bui departed from Vietnam in a small boat with 64 passengers. “After the boat’s engine died for the third time, the boat floated at sea for an entire week,” he said. “Luck brought us into the territorial waters of a coastal province of Malaysia.” For the next four months, the family lived in a refugee camp before leaving for America and New Orleans.

Like many other immigrants in the same situation, Chuc Bui worked a series of different jobs for a decade: newspaper delivery person, drafter, printer, journalist, writer, publisher and even print shop owner. Eventually he made his way to California. By 1995, he had returned to teaching at the university level, joining CSULB as an instructor in Vietnamese culture and literature.
 
In 2000, he began teaching a course at California State University, Fullerton on the pedagogy of teaching bilingual students. Three years later, he joined the teaching staff of UCLA, where he now heads the Vietnamese program.

At UCLA, Chuc Bui said he particularly enjoys teaching Vietnamese culture alongside the language and literature of his home country.
 
“Vietnamese culture has many good points,” he said, “among them, family values, honoring one’s ancestors, and respect for parents, elders and teachers.”
 
This story appears on the UCLA International Institute website.