【外教风采】我与外教有个约会系列之八——Mr. Harmel

【外教风采】我与外教有个约会系列之八——Mr. Harmel

当头戴贝雷帽，一脸沉思的哈默尔先生（Mr. Harmel）坐在对面时，我预感到接下来的采访中他会带给我们许多惊喜。而采访结束后，我们就彻底地被哈默尔先生的温和博学所折服，对他的课堂充满期待。

为什么称哈默尔先生而不是老师呢？因为通过这次采访，我们感受到了哈默尔先生深厚的文化底蕴和思想内涵。作为一名经济学和英语老师，在讨论问题时，他从不拘泥于自己的专业；在面对新的知识和技能时，他总是保持高度的好奇心和求知欲。他说常与其他学科的老师分享交流，往往会有出人意料的学科碰撞。这样可以增强不同学科、中加方课程之间的联系，拓宽课堂维度，充分锻炼学生的发散思维，用典型案例来深入浅出讲解抽象的经济学理论，每堂课他都试图让学生联系社会现实案例用经济学理论进行阐述分析，直至融会贯通。

当我们让他给想要学经济学的同学一些建议的时候，他是这样说的：“首先，对于一门学科，你必须得有兴趣，这是你学好这门课的第一要素。”他认为经济学是一个很大的范围，包含着许许多多的分支，是一个研究人类行为的专业，也是社会科学的重要组成部分。并举中国改革开放、世界能源问题等为例，说明在分析历史事件和某些社会现象时，往往要综合政治、经济和文化等诸多要素。经济学也是一个非常有趣的专业，我们将人类的行为转换成数据，观察总结得出行为背后隐藏着的信息，力争跳出学术理论的框架，理解经济的实际意义并探索事物的本质。最后，他说经济学和人们的日常生活息息相关，密不可分，大到公司企业的经营管理，小到买东西时货比三家，都能用到相关知识。

【外教风采】我与外教有个约会系列之八——Mr. Harmel

哈默尔先生毕业于社会学专业，先后在加拿大、中国、中东和南非生活，感受过不同国家和地区的风土人情，对此我们非常羡慕。在高中毕业后，绝大多数的枫叶学子都会选择出国留学，如何更好地适应新环境是个难题。哈默尔先生分享了一些方法：首先是要融入当地的文化，要试着走出房门，融入社会。第二点则是要多交友，交流沟通是人类生存必不可少的环节，要跳出自己的舒适圈，多参加一些俱乐部和活动。哈默尔先生还提到，在交友上，不应该只交来自中国的朋友，而应该多交一些外国的朋友，这样更有利于融入本土文化。与此同时，他毫不吝啬对上海的赞美：“她是个充满活力的国际化都市，在中国近代史上具有举足轻重的地位，上海人思想开明，自然生态环境良好，是个非常迷人的地方。”

这次采访让我们看到了不一样的哈默尔先生，他有着扎实的专业基础、广博的知识储备、多彩的生活经历和始终如一的对学生的关怀，深受同学们的喜爱。希望之后有更多的机会和他一起探索知识的奥妙，打开新的视野。

采访和编辑：

1105班陈屹洋、罗煜浩

【外教风采】我与外教有个约会系列之八——Mr. Harmel
后附采访实录：

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.

链接：
【外教风采】我与外教有个约会系列之一——Miss Phinney
【外教风采】我与外教有个约会系列之二——Ms Johnston

【外教风采】我与外教有个约会系列之三——Ms.Cheung

【外教风采】我与外教有个约会系列之四——Mr.Jenkins

【外教风采】我与外教有个约会系列之五——Mr.Liu

【外教风采】我与外教有个约会系列之六——Mr.Webster

【外教风采】我与外教有个约会系列之七——Mr.Zhang