Hi! My name is Shannon-Kelly Tong, and I’m one of the fourth grade teachers at Gardner Bullis. A little bit about me—I graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara, with my bachelor’s degree in June 2020 and from San Jose State with my master’s degree in December 2021. Yay for graduating twice during the pandemic! Since joining LASD, I have been a student teacher, a reading intervention specialist, a substitute teacher, a summer school teacher, a fifth-grade teacher, and now, finally, a fourth-grade teacher.

Beyond education, I am very proud to say that I am extremely active when it comes to cultural engagement in my Asian American community. I previously held various leadership positions in a Vietnamese-American organization at the collegiate level, and I am now involved at the national level of the same organization and have spent my past few summers attending, volunteering, and staffing in several leadership conferences. In my free time, I enjoy going to the beach with my partner and dog, playing Pokémon Go, attending concerts, trying my hand at photography, traveling the world, reading, and creative writing! My life goal is to eventually become a children’s author.