Speech from representative of international teachers by Mr. Carm Bono On the Opening School Staff Ceremony, August 30, 2023

Greetings folks! Welcome back to Huamei, for those of you who don’t know me, I am Carmelo Bono, you can call me Carm or Bono. I am a teacher in HBIC, I was asked to give a speech, and thought to myself, about what? We haven’t started, I don’t know what people need or what you want. With that idea in mind, I wanted to share how excited I am to be back because that’s just it, this year brings new experiences to be had, people to meet. Each year I think many of us start with the simple reflection question of “What will I do better or improve on, this semester?” I think as a teacher, that’s just it, we need to be ready for what we don’t expect to happen, we need to be ready to play the situation out when we find ourselves in uncomfortably unexpected situations. The biggest improvement or betterment all of us here as teachers and role models in the community can agree on, is identify that in an uncomfortably unexpected situation, the first thing any one us should be able to do is ask for “HELP!” and as long as all of us are here working with this company, wearing this uniform, we need to remember that it is not a competition, we need to be able to know that we CAN EXPECT our colleagues to be able to help us out. We can expect that when we need something that someone can help us achieve that or come out of an unexpected situation more confident or renewed.

When we go to our office space, waving, smiling, saying hello, are small and key ways we can communicate the on-going growth between each of us within the community, these affections reassure people who partake in this behavior that, “hey, if you got an issue, I got your back.”

This all seems very familiar to hear, but at the beginning of each semester it’s not uncommon that we see new faces in the office, around the school and most importantly, in our classrooms. As we start the semester, take each unexpected situation with a grain of salt and never stop yourself from asking for help, but more importantly, never stop yourself from offering help where someone might need it.

Thanks folks!