The Taipei Economic and Cultural Office (TECO) in Australia promotes exchanges and interactions between Taiwan and Australia. TECO, on behalf of Taiwan’s Ministry of Education, has a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Education Directorate of the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) to promote Chinese language in Canberra public schools.
In October of 2015, then Deputy Director-General Stephen Gniel of the Education Directorate on behalf of ACT Government renewed the MOU with the Ministry of Education in Taiwan. It is an ongoing collaboration in its sixth term.
Under this collaboration, the program remains effective for a period of three years during which the MoU provides for the selection of up to 3 language assistants from Taiwan’s ‘Teaching Chinese as a Second Language’ graduate schools to be appointed in Canberra public schools. The language teaching assistants enhance the Mandarin language ability of students and support teachers in the classroom.
Ms Jenny Yi-Chen Hsieh, graduate student of the National Chengchi University was selected and appointed to the Kingsford Smith School as Mandarin teaching assistant since April this year. Here’s her testimonial after 5 months teaching in Canberra:
My mentor Ms Yuan Ma and the staff team at KSS were dedicated and encouraging. I genuinely enjoy living and teaching in Canberra. I am extremely grateful from day one the school have been friendly, approachable and accommodating towards me that I can help out designing teaching program, setting up a Mandarin section for school open night and facilitating cultural activities to share my cultural heritage – all of which provided me with incredibly positive learning experiences and skills that have helped me grow as a teacher.
- Jenny Yi-Chen Hsieh
Here’s what students at KSS are saying about their learning experience with the Mandarin teaching assistant Jenny:
Jenny is an amazing, fantastic, optimistic teacher that she makes Mandarin easy to learn and personally. I think Jenny is one of the best teachers ever.
- Year 6 Anna
Jenny does exercises and activities with us to help with our speaking and our writing and she’s always there for us if we needed help.
- Year 8 Anni
The most interesting or impressive part of Jenny’s teaching is making Mandarin learning like playing a game. Jenny would read out sentences like words of questions. We had to translate them or answer the questions in Chinese. It is really fun.
- Year 6 Brayden
Every time when we have Mandarin, she always comes up with these amazing ideas like cut-out and origami paper works. Thank you for helping me to improve my pronunciation and I find myself knowing it better now because of you. Thank you, Jenny.
-Year 7 Rameen
Taiwan has been at the forefront of Chinese language education. Its rigorous Chinese language teacher training programs are recognised world-wide to produce teachers of unsurpassed skill. We welcome K-12 schools to participate in an exciting international exchange - the MOE Visiting Teaching Assistants Program in Canberra. Should you wish to inquire details of the program, please visit the webpage of ACT Education Directorate: Mandarin Blueprint on
http://www.education.act.gov.au/teaching_and_learning/mandarin-blueprint
(from the left to right) Ms Yuan Ma, Mandarin teacher of Kingsford Smith School (KSS); Ms Jenny Yi-Chen Hsieh, teaching assistant of KSS; Ms Melissa Beattie, Executive Teacher at KSS; Mr Paul Branson, the Principal of KSS; Executive Director Andy Bi of Education Division at Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Australia; Ms Jane Chia-Ying Wen, teaching assistant at the Melrose High School