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There is something big happening in our local community this weekend and it has been created by a dedicated bunch of teachers, students and parents from McKinnon Primary School. The school is having their inaugural Chinese Festival to celebrate a Chinese language program that has been introduced into the curriculum this year. However this is no ordinary school fete or fun day. When you listen to what has been planned you will be amazed at the amount of effort and coordination that has gone into making this happen.

Volare Photography is lucky enough to be involved on the day and as Silver Sponsors we will be giving away some prizes.

In addition, some of you might be aware that we have started to put together a series of interviews or podcasts for our clients and other readers of this blog. So I can’t think of a better way to launch our very first episode than with an interview with one of the key organisers of the festival, Suzanne Khatib from McKinnon Primary School (click the PLAY button below).

The event is on this Saturday the 26th, starting with a street festival around 1 pm and concluding with a fireworks display at 9 pm. That’s right a FIREWORKS display! But you can hear more about that when you listen to Suzanne in the interview.

I hope you enjoy it and I am looking forward to producing more shows in the not too distant future.

Enjoy

Warren

PS. If you would prefer to read the interview, I have included the audio transcript below.

 

McKinnon Primary School Chinese Festival

Transcript

Warren: Hello everybody and thanks for joining me for our very first podcast. My name is Warren Knower and I’m a portrait photographer with Volare Photography here in Melbourne.

I’m really excited to be sharing these interviews with you but at the same time, I have to admit I’m a bit nervous about the show because it is the very first time that my voice will be broadcasted all over the web. Even though I’ve been told that I have a good face for radio, I’m not sure my voice will win any DJ of the Year awards. But nevertheless, I’m going to put myself out there and give it a go.

So before I introduce my first guest, I just wanted to spend a minute or two talking about what I have planned for this segment and how you guys can get the most out of it.

Basically, my goal is to create a great resource of information for all of our clients and visitors to the site. I want to do this through a series of interviews on topics that hopefully you will find relevant, interesting and packed full of information.

More often than not, these topics will have nothing to do with photography. For instance, there might be interesting things happening in our community or we might have interviews with businesses who can provide tips and other helpful information on topics that you would love to hear about and will make a difference to you and in your lives.

To make this segment work even better, I would love to get interactive with you guys as well. So here are a few things you might consider doing to help us out.

Firstly, when you see a topic coming up or listen to an older episode that interests you, then I would really like to encourage you to spread the words to friends or anyone else you think might also find it interesting and beneficial.

Secondly, I would love it if you can email me with any ideas you might have on future topics or if you know of anyone that is suitable and might want to be interviewed.

Finally, to stay up-to-date with upcoming interviews and when they will be airing, you can go ahead and like our Facebook page which is Volare Photography or you can follow us on Twitter. The handle there is @VolarePhoto. All updates and information of upcoming interviews would be posted to these sites and an added benefit of following us is that if you find a topic that interests you, then you can ask our guest any questions that you might have before the interview and I will make sure that these questions get answered.

So there it is folks, a brief outline of what is in store for the future. I hope you enjoy it and please leave any feedback you might have in the comments section below. So without any further ado, let’s get stuck into today’s interview.

I’ve taken the show on the road today and I’m here at McKinnon Primary School with my special guest Suzanne Khatib who is the IB Coordinator and as you can hear from the background noise, the kids are out there playing. So if we are interrupted by a class bell or some announcement, you will have to excuse that.

The reason why I’m here is that McKinnon Primary School is organizing a massive community event this Saturday to celebrate the successful incorporation of the Chinese Language Program into their current curriculum. Welcome Suzanne and thanks for taking the time to talk with me today.

Suzanne: Thank you so much for coming here and showing interest. Thank you.

Warren: Absolutely, my pleasure. Now when I was contacted by Angie Hosmer who’s one of the organizers about a month ago, I was asked that Volare Photography could help out the festival in some way and I was blown away when I saw the event program, what you guys had planned to do. So I’m glad to say that we are still the sponsor of the festival and on the day as part of it, we’re going to be giving out some prizes. So that’s a great honour for us.

Suzanne: Thank you so much.

Warren: You guys have done a great job. So Suzanne, can you give us a brief background about yourself and the school?

Suzanne: Yeah, all right. So my name is Suzanne Khatib and I’ve been at the McKinnon Primary School for about seven years. I’ve shown a great interest in our International Baccalaureate Program and so after a few years of teaching, I became the IB Coordinator here at McKinnon Primary School and just for anybody that doesn’t know about that program, it’s a wonderful program that encourages intercultural understanding through learning about each other’s – ourselves and each other’s backgrounds and is really trying to promote peace in the world through that as its major purpose. So you can see how the Chinese Festival really fits in with that.

Warren: Absolutely. And the school itself, how big is it?

Suzanne: McKinnon Primary School has grown. It’s now – actually someone told me recently it was now 804 students. So even at the start of this year, it was 780. So we’ve grown even just this year.

Warren: Now, you’ve mentioned about the program. But what is the actual festival about? It’s about the Chinese Language Program that you guys are introducing?

Suzanne: Yes. So part of it is to celebrate the Chinese Language Program that we’ve introduced at McKinnon last year and it has absolutely taken off beyond belief. We thought it would be many years before we could get the language program really embedded in our school and have children excited about it. But it has actually just created a life of its own and it has really surprised us at every step of the way, so we’ve been getting more excited about the language program and in turn people have been hearing about it and then getting involved with us.

So it was actually the president of the school council’s idea to host something that could celebrate Chinese culture and celebrate our wonderful new language program at McKinnon and it started off – well, what about if we had a Chinese food festival? Then once a few members started getting involved, we all started planning activities and rides and all sorts of cultural things on the day and it became not a food festival anymore but a huge community event.

Warren: It just grew.

Suzanne: Grew, grew, absolutely.

Warren: It’s amazing how that happens when everyone gets behind something.

Suzanne: Absolutely, and we had so many meetings at the start. They were all just us throwing out millions of ideas of things that we would want to go to and visit at a festival, kung fu classes and tai chi classes and lantern making classes and oh, I really want to go and see this and see that. So we just had meeting after meeting of just excitement and then we had to at some point tie it together. So it has come together, as you will see on Saturday.

Warren: Yeah, great. The actual program itself, are all the grades doing it?

Suzanne: The Chinese Language Program?

Warren: Yeah.

Suzanne: Absolutely, yeah. So the children at McKinnon are now involved in Chinese language. I can tell you a little bit more about the actual program if you like.

Warren: Yeah, that would be great.

Suzanne: So the program starts in prep as that’s our first year at McKinnon and children are exposed to the language. They’re involved in a lot of games. It’s very interactive, very hands-on, not textbook or anything that you might – it has to be – absolutely, and it’s all about getting the pronunciation and in Chinese if you’re not sure, there’s actually four different tones. So the way you say something, a slight difference can mean a totally different word. So you can accidentally say a lot of the wrong things. So getting that tone, those tones and pronunciations right from prep is really important.

Warren: Well, I’m so bad with languages. Maybe I should join that.

Suzanne: I think you can definitely come along. We’ve even got after school classes for the adults so if you – and the teachers have been taking that up so that’s really good. Then it moves in year three to I guess what we’re calling the McKinnon Engagement Program or a sort of like – a bit like an immersion program where we have an extra Chinese teacher who’s actually Australian-trained and is very aware of  Australian curriculum and she actually is wonderful and she works in with all the year three teachers.

So what she does is she spends about eight to ten weeks in each classroom and during that time, she’s there to sort of just support and create a context for the Chinese language learning. So it doesn’t mean that every single thing they do all day is in Chinese or it’s completely bilingual. But even coming in the morning and grading is wonderful, and even putting their bags away and a lot of the instruction is now given in Chinese. As I’m sure you will see later when you speak to the grade threes, they’re very excited about the words they’ve picked up and they’ve got a reason to talk to someone in the morning in Chinese which is great as well.

Warren: So with the festival itself this weekend, what sort of numbers are you expecting? Is it massive?

Suzanne: It’s always hard to tell but we’re hoping to have about at least 3000 people and that’s just based on numbers of parents that we have at McKinnon Primary School, but also the amount of people who have been involved. We’ve never run something like this before where so many community clubs or organizations have been involved. So even based on them just turning up to perform, we’re going to have a huge amount of people.

Warren: With such a major event, what was the organization like? I mean parents and teachers getting together meeting after meeting, was it like that?

Suzanne: It was meeting after meeting. Lots of parents but lots of excitement as well and sometimes we even have to tone that down as I mentioned before because we would just get more and more ideas and at some point we have to actually plan and organize them, but definitely meeting after meeting in the mornings, at night.

It has managed to – we’ve sent out a lot of flyers for these meetings in Chinese, in Mandarin which has been really good because we have been able to welcome on board a lot of Chinese parents and Chinese community groups that might not otherwise feel necessarily confident to come along and share their expertise. Those meetings where they’ve been able to come along, some of their Chinese parents at the school have been so heart-warming because they’ve been saying things such as, “I’m just so honoured that you would want to learn about my culture and now I’ve got somebody I can tell about it and now I can show my children and being proud of my culture.”

Some of them have a lot of hidden talents. Some of them were actually singers in China or presenters or many other things but were just saying, “Look, I have been just too shy to tell you about it.” So that was a really nice …

Warren: So you brought them out …

Suzanne: Absolutely.

Warren: Yeah, it sounds great.

Suzanne: Yeah.

Warren: All right. Thanks for that. Even though it’s such a big day on Saturday, the real reason why we’re here is because of the kids and I’ve got a chance to catch up with a few students earlier on to talk about the language program and the festival itself. So let’s take a moment and hear some words from there.

All right everyone. I’m here with three students from McKinnon Primary School. How are you guys going?

Kids: Good.

Warren: Can you please introduce yourself to our listeners?

Ido: My name is Ido.

Aniqua: I’m Aniqua.

Olivia: I’m Olivia.

Warren: Great. What grade are you guys in?

Kids: Year three.

Warren: Three, excellent. So can I ask you a couple of questions about your Chinese program?

Kids: Yeah.

Warren: When did you guys find out about it?

Aniqua: About last year. Well, we were doing Chinese last year.

Ido: Yeah, we started a bit last year and …

Warren: When your teachers told you about it, were you really excited?

Kids: Yes!

Warren: Yeah. Now Olivia, I know you’re Chinese so maybe this question is for the other two. Do you guys know anything about China beforehand?

Kids: No.

Warren: Nothing at all.

Ido: Absolutely nothing.

Warren: So you would have been really excited, yeah?

Ido: Yeah.

Aniqua: Yeah.

Warren:  OK. And tell me, now that you’ve done the program, what do you think about China, Chinese? Is it hard to learn?

Kids: No.

Ido: It’s quite fun actually.

Aniqua: Yeah.

Warren: What’s the best thing about it, Ido?

Ido: I think the writing is the best part.

Warren: I thought Chinese writing is really hard to do. You can do it?

Ido: It’s hard but it’s fun.

Warren: Oh, fantastic. And what about you Aniqua?

Aniqua: Well, it’s – yeah, the writing is not really hard. It’s easy.

Warren: Yeah, excellent. Olivia, are you helping the other students out with a bit of Chinese?

Olivia: Yeah.

Warren: You know how to speak it really well? Yeah? And how are you helping the other kids out?

Olivia: When they get stuck on the words, I help them with it.

Warren: Yeah. Excellent. OK. Now, you know that this Saturday is the big festival. What are you guys doing to help – first of all, are you excited about it?

Kids: Yes!

Warren: Yeah. All your classmates are excited?

Kids: Yes!

Warren: Yeah. What’s the thing you’re excited about the most?

Ido: We’re going to dance in this concert.

Aniqua: Yeah, we’re doing our …

Ido: We’re doing it separately from the other grade threes.

Warren: Right. Have you got a theme for your dance?

Kids: China.

Warren: China. Obviously China is the theme.

Aniqua: We’re doing the Chinese chopsticks dance.

Warren: The chopsticks dance. OK, interesting. So you’ve been practicing for that?

Kids: Yeah.

Warren: Yeah? Olivia, you’re going to be not doing the dance but you will be coming up a bit later on the day?

Olivia: Yeah.

Warren: Obviously I know why you’re coming later in the day to see something really big, right? What’s that going to be?

Olivia: Fireworks?

Warren: The fireworks, yeah, absolutely. OK. Are you guys helping out in organizing it at all in other things, your mums or dads?

Aniqua: Well, we had to help with the – we had to help make the tickets and things for the cake stall.

Ido: Yeah, and we had to give it to every student in the school.

Warren: Cool, excellent.

Ido: And that’s 780 kids

Warren: Seven hundred and eighty kids. That’s a big job.

Ido: Including us.

Warren: So no wonder you guys are so excited about Saturday. All right. Well, look, thanks for joining me today but before I say goodbye, I’ve got a bit of a test for you. OK?

Aniqua: OK.

Warren: Now I’ve been told that I’m really bad with learning languages and I will give you an example. I’ve been trying to learn Vietnamese, how to count to 10 for the last three months, and I still haven’t got it. I’m really bad with languages.

Olivia: I don’t know any Vietnamese

Warren: Vietnamese? I’m going to ask you about Chinese. Do you think you guys can teach me to say something in Chinese?

Kids: Yes!

Warren: Yeah? What are you going to teach me?

Ido: I want to teach you how to say “a million” in Chinese.

Warren: A what?

Ido: A million.

Warren: One million. As in the number one million.

Ido: Yeah.

Aniqua: Yeah.

Warren: Oh, OK. I can’t count to 10. You want me to say one million?

Ido: It’s easy. It’s three words.

Warren: OK. OK, go ahead.

Ido: Yi bai wan.

Warren: Yi bai wan. Oh, that’s easy.

Ido: Exactly.

Warren: OK. Anything else? Something tricky?

Ido: Olivia, try to do something that we don’t know, like elephant …

Olivia: Dà xiàng.

Warren: Oh, OK.

Olivia: It’s elephant.

Warren: Dà xiàng. Don’t laugh Olivia. Is it right? Was I close?

Olivia: Yeah.

Warren: OK, dà xiàng.

Olivia: Dà xiàng.

Warren: Dà xiàng, excellent. All right. Well, thank you guys. Now can you guys say goodbye to our listeners in Chinese if you can? Can you say goodbye? All right, go for it.

Kids: Zàijiàn!

Warren: Excellent and we will see you guys on Saturday, yeah?

Kids: Yeah.

Warren: Thank you for joining me.

Kids: Goodbye.

Warren: Bye.

Warren: Fantastic. Well, Suzanne you were talking before we went to the kids about the excitement that all the children in the school and the parents are having and you can really tell by the sound of their voices and how enthusiastic they were.

Suzanne: Definitely.

Warren: That’s the case, yeah. It’s amazing.

Suzanne: We’re expecting a lot of excitement on the day and everybody is truly just buzzing as you just said. Even my mom and dad are coming along to the festival and they really don’t have to and I don’t have to pull their arm and leg. They’re just excited to come along and do some tai chi and some other activities which is really great.

Warren: Fantastic. And talking about activities, the grand opening, what’s happening and who will be there?

Suzanne: So in the grand opening, we will have a few people speaking just to talk about and contextualize the importance of this festival to McKinnon and to Melbourne particularly in terms of intercultural understanding and how it really supports our studies of Asia and our Chinese program at the school.

Also how it fits in with the International Baccalaureate Program that I mentioned, learning about other people and their similarities and differences. So some of the people that will be speaking aside from our principal Sandra Myrwoda will be our local member Elizabeth Miller, local member of Bentleigh and also some other members from the local council, Mayor, and also some representatives from the Chinese Embassy and hopefully someone from the Victorian Multicultural Commission as well.

Warren: Wow, great. That’s a great range of people there and you’ve got a main stage.

Suzanne: We do have a main stage and we have an extraordinary amount of events. I know because I put them all together and been trying to find time for them. So we’re going to have a lot of traditional Chinese dances, Chinese magician, plate spinning. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen that but it’s amazing, wonderful sort of acrobatic kind of display.

We’re going to have a fashion parade as well, which is going to show 30 different styles of traditional dress. Not a lot of people know this but China is actually made up of 56 different minorities that all come from different parts around China and have different cultural influences.

So that we have 30 people to represent some of those different minorities and they will be showing us a little bit of what they traditionally wear and we will have – actually having a Chinese opera performed as well as some tai chi demonstrations, musical instruments and some folk dancing and the last few that I mentioned are all from the Glen Eira Senior Citizens Chinese Club which is just wonderful.

Warren: It sounds like you’ve got everyone involved in the program.

Suzanne: Absolutely.

Warren: It’s amazing.

Suzanne: Absolutely. We also have a lot of music, some kung fu demonstrations and our students as well performing Chinese dance.

Warren: OK.

Suzanne: Yeah.

Warren: It sounds great. Now you’ve left out the two biggest things.

Suzanne: Yeah. I have, I have.

Warren: When I saw the event list and I saw that and I thought, “How did you guys organize this?” Those two things are the fireworks.

Suzanne: Yes.

Warren: And a grand opening street parade.

Suzanne: Yeah.

Warren: Can you talk about that please?

Suzanne: OK. We’re just starting off with the fireworks quickly. We’re very lucky that one of our parents on school council also happens to be a fire fighter so he knew a little bit about some of the regulations.

Warren: I was going to ask you about the regulations.

Suzanne: And he definitely had safety in mind and so we just got – we contacted some fireworks people or he did, got them out and because I think he did it quite early. We were able to do it quite easily I guess in terms of the fireworks and really what was important I guess – and this is notifying people around so we had to do a letter drop notifying in the time of the fireworks and what was going to be happening and cats and dogs will get a bit nervous. But at least this way people would keep them inside.

Warren: Well, that’s what I’m excited about.

Suzanne: Yeah, and so are the kids. They’re just stoked. Look, I think any festival isn’t complete without fireworks but this one particularly as fireworks were invented in China many hundreds of years ago. So it’s really appropriate.

In the street parade, we had to go about actually blocking off the street which one of our assistant principals had a lot to do within and in order to do that, we’ve tried in the past apparently and some people said, “Look, it will never happen.” But we were able to do it after a bit of a struggle. We had to apply for permission from the council and they make you basically put in like a traffic management plan. So everything from many months ago is planned in terms of which traffic will go left and right and detours and all of that. So yeah, there will be lots of signs and things like that.

Warren: You’ve done an amazing job. Can you give us some time and starting times and finishing times…

Suzanne: Absolutely. So there will be a lot of exciting things to come along for on the day. If you’re wanting to come along, the festival does start from 12:00 and finishes at 9 o’clock at night, so midday until 9:00. But if you’re wanting to come along for the parade, the parade will be starting at 1 o’clock, so people will be lining up to be in the parade just a little bit before 1:00 PM.

Warren: Absolutely.

Suzanne: There will be an amazing Chinese dragon and two lions in the dance as well so that will be nice traditional style. Then there will be some speakers and then we will finish with a lot of dancing and some of our students are doing Chinese dance as well. In terms of times of the fireworks, that will be close to 9:00 PM at night.

Warren: OK, 9:00 PM.

Suzanne: 9:00 PM so it could be just before 9:00 PM.

Warren: All right everybody. Sorry about that. We had a PA announcement and we just have to edit that bit out. So Suzanne, basically what are the plans for this program in the future? Are you guys going to do another festival next year or …

Suzanne: Yeah. Look, we’re planning to have – this is another big festival in McKinnon for next year and as well as that, we’re also – we have a lot of plans in terms of our Chinese program as well. So it’s only just the start. So we’re going to continue that engagement program hopefully into another year level as well.

Warren: Fantastic.

Suzanne: And we’re also planning – we have a sister school relationship that we’ve set up in the last year with a school in China in Yangzhou which is in Jiangsu Province, not too far away from Shanghai and we’ve just come back from there as well, second visit over there, and there’s talk of teacher exchanges and we’re also planning to take hopefully some students over next year as well.

Warren: Amazing stuff.

Suzanne: Our students are currently Skype-ing which is just wonderful like I said for that intercultural understanding and the kids are asking a lot of questions to find out the differences and similarities. So we’re hoping though the actual meeting face to face will be wonderful.

Warren: It sounds like the kids are just taking this and running with it.

Suzanne: Absolutely.

Warren: And they’re just so enthused about the whole thing.

Suzanne: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Before, they were running home and telling their parents new words that they found out. They’re just absolutely so excited.

Warren: Excellent. All right. Well, let’s wrap it up. But before I go, are there any sponsors that you would like to thank to making this possible.

Suzanne: Yeah, we’ve looked at first to a sponsorship from so many places in the community. So we just like to think a few places in particular. We’ve had a huge amount of sponsors by the Commonwealth Bank. It has been a wonderful help. Print Design Australia has helped us with all of our printing needs which we will see in the day there’s a lot of signs and printing that has been required. Nuline Charter buses as well and Bertolli Oils. If you come along, you will be able to taste a few different oils on the day, Harvey Norman and the Melbourne Orthodontic Group. I think I mentioned Hocking Stuart as well, did I?

Warren: I think you just did there.

Suzanne: I think I just did there and Hocking Stuart had been a wonderful help to our school not just for the festival but for many, many years.

Warren: Excellent. All right. And just finally, where can listeners find out more information about the festival and times? I mean you mentioned a few times. But any further details?

Suzanne: Yeah, absolutely. We’ve got a wonderful program going out. If they’re wanting to look up more times, where else would they look but Facebook. We’ve got a Facebook site up and going and what we’re trying to do is just to put up a little bit more information everyday about new events that are coming out. But at the moment, there will be an events schedule that’s up there and also looking at the McKinnon Primary School website, there’s actually a logo and a link on that site that they can click on that and look at all the events as well.

Warren: Fantastic.

Suzanne: Just come pass. You will see some big signs and you can come and grab a program and even if you can’t stay, maybe you will plan to come back later and do a paper cutting class or something later in the day.

Warren: Excellent, sounds great. All right. Well, I’m excited about it. I can’t wait to turn up with my camera and take some photos of the parade and the activities during the day. So thank you so much Suzanne.

Suzanne: No, you’re welcome. Thank you so much for showing an interest.

Warren: Congratulations on you and the McKinnon Primary School and what you’ve done. I think it’s amazing and well done.

Suzanne: Thank you so much. Thank you.

Warren: OK, bye.

Suzanne: Thanks, bye.

Warren: Wow, what a terrific program they have there at McKinnon Primary School. If you have the chance to visit this Saturday, then I would definitely encourage you to do so. The weather will be clearing up for the weekend and it should be a fun-filled day for the whole family.

Thank you so much for listening. I had a fun time producing the show, our first one ever. But before you go, I just want to remind you to follow us on Facebook or Twitter. That way you can provide some feedback on any of our shows.

Also use it as a means to ask any questions to our guests who will be appearing in the future. So until next time, take care and I hope to talk to you soon.