【外教風采】我與外教有個約會系列之八——Mr. Harmel

【外教風采】我與外教有個約會系列之八——Mr. Harmel

當頭戴貝雷帽，一臉沉思的哈默爾先生（Mr. Harmel）坐在對面時，我預感到接下來的采訪中他會帶給我們許多驚喜。而采訪結束后，我們就徹底地被哈默爾先生的溫和博學所折服，對他的課堂充滿期待。

為什么稱哈默爾先生而不是老師呢？因為通過這次采訪，我們感受到了哈默爾先生深厚的文化底蘊和思想內涵。作為一名經濟學和英語老師，在討論問題時，他從不拘泥于自己的專業；在面對新的知識和技能時，他總是保持高度的好奇心和求知欲。他說常與其他學科的老師分享交流，往往會有出人意料的學科碰撞。這樣可以增強不同學科、中加方課程之間的聯系，拓寬課堂維度，充分鍛煉學生的發散思維，用典型案例來深入淺出講解抽象的經濟學理論，每堂課他都試圖讓學生聯系社會現實案例用經濟學理論進行闡述分析，直至融會貫通。

當我們讓他給想要學經濟學的同學一些建議的時候，他是這樣說的：“首先，對于一門學科，你必須得有興趣，這是你學好這門課的第一要素。”他認為經濟學是一個很大的范圍，包含著許許多多的分支，是一個研究人類行為的專業，也是社會科學的重要組成部分。并舉中國改革開放、世界能源問題等為例，說明在分析歷史事件和某些社會現象時，往往要綜合政治、經濟和文化等諸多要素。經濟學也是一個非常有趣的專業，我們將人類的行為轉換成數據，觀察總結得出行為背后隱藏著的信息，力爭跳出學術理論的框架，理解經濟的實際意義并探索事物的本質。最后，他說經濟學和人們的日常生活息息相關，密不可分，大到公司企業的經營管理，小到買東西時貨比三家，都能用到相關知識。

【外教風采】我與外教有個約會系列之八——Mr. Harmel

哈默爾先生畢業于社會學專業，先后在加拿大、中國、中東和南非生活，感受過不同國家和地區的風土人情，對此我們非常羨慕。在高中畢業后，絕大多數的楓葉學子都會選擇出國留學，如何更好地適應新環境是個難題。哈默爾先生分享了一些方法：首先是要融入當地的文化，要試著走出房門，融入社會。第二點則是要多交友，交流溝通是人類生存必不可少的環節，要跳出自己的舒適圈，多參加一些俱樂部和活動。哈默爾先生還提到，在交友上，不應該只交來自中國的朋友，而應該多交一些外國的朋友，這樣更有利于融入本土文化。與此同時，他毫不吝嗇對上海的贊美：“她是個充滿活力的國際化都市，在中國近代史上具有舉足輕重的地位，上海人思想開明，自然生態環境良好，是個非常迷人的地方。”

這次采訪讓我們看到了不一樣的哈默爾先生，他有著扎實的專業基礎、廣博的知識儲備、多彩的生活經歷和始終如一的對學生的關懷，深受同學們的喜愛。希望之后有更多的機會和他一起探索知識的奧妙，打開新的視野。

采訪和編輯：

1105班陳屹洋、羅煜浩

【外教風采】我與外教有個約會系列之八——Mr. Harmel
后附采訪實錄：

1.Which country were you born in? What nationality do you have?

I am Canadian by birth. I am Canadian but I have a unique back story. My birth father was an American, so I partly American partly Canadian, but I have never knew my birth father. So I would call it adopted.

2.How long have you been in China? Why do you want to teach at Maple Leaf in Shanghai?

This is my third year, I came to China in 2016. I almost came to Shanghai in 2008. I had accepted job to come and live in Shanghai because China was one of the places I always wanna to live in and work as a teacher and in 2008, I had accepted job to work in Shanghai. But at the same time, I met the lady who is now my wife and we are expecting our first child so we decided it was the time. So eight years later, I got the opportunity to come back to China again, so that’s why I came back. So I was very fortunate, very happy to be able to come to live and work in China, but also to live and work in Shanghai because I always found a city fascinating.

For the city itself, Shanghai has a long history and been very open, very cosmopolitan and kind of having a very dynamic nature. Also, the beautiful skyline. Shanghai’s people are very open, very accepting of new ideas because the long history of connection with former as well.

3.Do you sometimes miss your wife and children? How often do your see them in a year?

My wife and two children live in South Africa. So I left Canada in 2002, so I haven’t live in Canada since then. So I have lived in Middle East and I lived in South Africa for 8 years and that’s why I met my wife and we have two children, so they live in South Africa and that’s their home and it’s our home. So although I am Canadian, I really see myself as kind of a South African now. I missed them a lot, I only see my family twice a year. Twice a week, we do facetime and if we can’t do facetime, we sometimes do the chat.

4.As international students, we will go abroad, and there will be a period of homesickness. Could you give us some advice?

Depending on where will you go, because different area of the world is different to adjust to. I know a lot of students here go to university of Alberta. Then, you will have to adjust the cold, the winter. If you are going to Australia or United States, where the weather is much more warmer. But I think wherever you go, it’s important to get involved in life at your campus, join a club, try to go outside of your comfort zone. Also, enjoy the city that you are in and explore the city you are in. You should try to get involved in your community. At the university, it’s a good way to meet people, really try to make friends that are not just Chinese friends.

5.Which courses do you teach at school? Did you study this major in university?

So here I teach Economics which is probably my favourite course to teach but I also teach grade 12 English and this semester I’m picking up communications 12. Then, just last semester I did IT 10 course for the first time, so that was nice because it’s a subject that I was, I wouldn’t say I was interested in, but I had a chance to take it, so I said yeah. I will also learn something new. It is always nice to learn a little bit about programming, programming games and also doing working with the 3D printer and doing design work, so it was a nice challenge to do something new as well. When I went to university, I was a history social studies major and that’s why I always communicate with Mr.Cao. He is a good friend and we share interest in social studies, so we did talk about. But I developed in interest in Business just because I was curious, wondering as I got older why things work the way they did and so we start to realize there is very strong connection between economics and how it effects our daily life and also the connection between social political systems. I really enjoy working with that because it’s a subject that has so many different aspects and you can cooperate really everything that you guys are about, so it allows you to talk about everything that you are into and relate to economic concept, so it really immerses the student as well.

6.Can you give some suggestions for the students who want to learn courses about economics in the future?

Okay, the one thing about economics we teach is it's oddly not required for many universities to take, so does that tell us that economics we teach like microeconomics is not important? What is important, as I say, when you are learning economics, you really learn about human behavior. It's a social science. And you learn that human behaviour can be translated into numbers and described by money. Then we can start to see, and understand how people behave, and why you do the things we do, and how well it can be a great influence. Why did we make the choices we made? China is a really good example of that, and I use it in my course to say: I look at China before 1970, at the end of the cultural revolution, and DengXiaoping said “we're going to change it” from that time on, China was revolutionized. Check it on, it should translate into culture and ideas, but it was also an economic decision. That told the transform nature. Because in 1989 when I graduated, almost 30 years ago. No one would think this was possible because China was socialism which was quite different from capitalism countries, but what history showed is the socialism is always changing and growing, like water can be shaped into any kind. And it's worked extremely well, so now, China is now the second largest economy in the world, and has the potential to be the world's largest. I think by being a young Chinese student today is probably one of the most exciting times to be alive because everything is changing. The other reason why I think these subjects are very important is that most of the transformation or decision-making is now economic. As we move away from fossil fuels, people will make different choices, and the planet's dwindling resources will force us to make more radical changes. And that's when you think about how things look, how you do things, and what resources are available, and that's where we're going to use what we've learned, because a lot of things can be decided by economics. That's why I think it's an interesting course. I even want to teach five courses a day. I think every student should take some courses about economics. Economics has a lot of psychology in it, and it really covers all aspects of life, so it's not just learning charts and graphs. The real goal is to understand what people think. What drives us to make economic decisions so that students can move beyond academic theory and begin to understand what economics actually means and explore the essentials of things.

鏈接：
【外教風采】我與外教有個約會系列之一——Miss Phinney
【外教風采】我與外教有個約會系列之二——Ms Johnston

【外教風采】我與外教有個約會系列之三——Ms.Cheung

【外教風采】我與外教有個約會系列之四——Mr.Jenkins

【外教風采】我與外教有個約會系列之五——Mr.Liu

【外教風采】我與外教有個約會系列之六——Mr.Webster

【外教風采】我與外教有個約會系列之七——Mr.Zhang