How it all began…

Tasting China started out as a project that my Principal came to me with, in Term 2, 2011. It was one of those casual conversations where a question is asked and you just automatically say, “Yes, I can do that”, even though you really don’t know precisely what it is that you are volunteering for!

Turns out that earlier in the year she had been asked if our school would like to participate in a project run under the Expanding Horizons – Becoming Asia Literate group, out of Sydney Region. We had been involved in a number of previous projects and the offer was attractive so she dived right in.

The idea was to formulate a language taster in Mandarin and offer it to whomever we chose. My Principal saw it as an opportunity to build on her other efforts to get Mandarin offered as an elective within our school – the challenge was staffing it.

With no Mandarin teachers on staff, the proposal came to me as “Would you be prepared to create a term project as an elective, around learning some Mandarin / exploring Chinese culture and offer it to a group of G&T students in Year 7?”

It seemed possible… so I said, “Yes!” …and worried about what it would look like after that!

…and so Tasting China began!

Next came programming