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.
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Chinese New Year resources
A great range of resources, across a range of curricula, from the British Council. 恭喜发财, monkeys 🙂
Teaching: Take 2.
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)!
Words in lote only
Level It Books
Reading level and book scanner app