It’s Australia Week in China this week, and I’ve noticed the crucial Chinese concept of guanxi 关系 (‘connections’) described in a few places recently. Most notably in the fabulous new resource from Asialink Business “China: Cultural Awareness Guide” and also in this ABC article “Australians doing business in China: Five questions” today.
A great range of resources, across a range of curricula, from the British Council. 恭喜发财, monkeys 🙂
It’s been nearly two years since I posted here. A lot has happened, and as is usually the way when you stay true to yourself, life events have come together to set me off on a renewed path.
I graduated at the end of 2013 and my first teaching position was as a 0.5 upper primary teacher in 2014. That opportunity gave me a chance to implement several teaching ideas and to learn a lot about teaching in a team. As a digital being, my ongoing challenge there was to adapt my teaching within a limited ICT environment.
In 2015 I wasn’t able to secure a contract to start the teaching year, and then in February my mother fell ill. This dictated my path for the rest of the year: I spent chunks of weeks at a time caring for her in NSW, 2000km from my home in North Queensland. I taught casually in the weeks that I was home. And I did this Cure Brain Cancer China trek , this PechaKucha talk, this calendar, and this Facebook page.
My China trek in October was life affirming in many different ways. It also rekindled my passion for Mandarin, a subject I’d not really considered teaching before. I spent 5 weeks over Christmas with Mum, wondering how to re-access teaching. And then on Thursday, an hour from home on the 2446km drive from Sydney, as my mother was undergoing her tenth surgery to remove brain tumours, I got a phone call. I was offered a position teaching Mandarin at a local high school. I start tomorrow and I’m ready for the challenge.
I wouldn’t have applied for this position if I hadn’t been to China in October, and I wouldn’t have gone to China if Mum wasn’t so ill. No-one knows why Mum has brain tumours, but I wouldn’t be the person and teacher I am without her.
Live well, do good and 新年快乐 (Happy New Year)!
Reading level and book scanner app
thoughts about things...
Teaching and writing in China.
Queensland hits the 2018 International Shanghai Sister Cities Youth Camp!
Exploring a loop of China’s south-east: up and down mountains and towers.
Two weeks with ten outstanding Queensland students, exploring STEM through Chinese language!
A fortnight of photography and teaching in Wuhan, China (& Sydney)
A fortnight of family adventures in China.
Going to China for the first time!
Three weeks of language, culture, adventure and friendship as a guest teacher in China's sixth largest city, Wuhan.
Edlet 