In the school year of 2019-2020, Nanmo teachers and students are more than cheerful to welcome several teachers to join their adventurous campus life, and Mr. Hillian is one of the cute “new faces.”
Mr. Hillian is a Canadian teacher from British Columbia, and this is his first year in China. Being passionate about travelling, he has already stepped onto the grounds of 34 different countries, leaving footprints here and there in Europe, South America, Oceania, and Southeast Asia. He loves to see new parts of his world and has already decided that his next stop would be Africa. Among all the countries he has visited, he loves New Zealand the most. To him, it’s a beautiful country full of mountains, lakes and nice beaches.
Apart from travelling, Mr. Hillian also loves teaching and working with young people, so he thinks coming to China would be a perfect way to combine his passion for traveling with teaching. This year he teaches the Grade 10’s Social Studies and Spoken Language. Back in his teenage times, Mr. Hillian loved English Studies the best. He really liked reading and writing stories, and these hobbies had pushed him to become an English and Humanities teacher. As a bookworm, he gets fascinated by American writers like Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald pretty easily: in university he got to study a lot of famous American writers, and their interesting writing styles wowed him.
Mr. Hillian is more than a teacher. When he is off school, he becomes a musician, a guitarist, a soccer player, a hiker and a city-explorer. (Speaking of soccer, Mr. Hillian is also a coach at Nanmo! He will be coaching basketball in the fall and soccer in the spring.) He is a Rock’N Roll guy. The 1960s-1970s is his favourite era of music: if you listen to the Beatles, the Who, Led Zeppelin and the Doors, you will find yourself a lot in common with Mr. Hillian (and Mr. Dyck!).
Despite the fact that the school-year has just been on for 3 weeks, Mr. Hillian has already found Nanmo a cozy little place. He believes it’s the people of Nanmo that make Nanmo stand out from other schools. Here, he met many diligent teachers and “really wonderful” students who put their best efforts, are always polite and are very respectful. Together, they make Nanmo the best place to teach in. This year, Mr. Hillian hopes that all of his students could make it to the universities they wish to get enrolled in, and his personal goal for this year is to provide them with as many tools as he can to help them realize their dreams. He advised Nanmo students to “get involved with as many things as you can. Go out and try for hockey with Mr. Dyck and Mr. Sutherland, to come to our basketball tryouts or join the soccer team… maybe get involved with some music clubs or school bands. The more fun extra activities you have during high school, the better experience you will have.”
At the end of our interview, Mr. Hillian was asked to describe himself with three words. He wore a warm smile, as he always does, and commented: “Energetic. Humorous. Outdoorsy.”
By Katherine Deng (12A)