How far does this have to go?

[old man emu]

Eddie Woo (above) is a Malayan Chinese whose parents migrated to Australia when he was a child. He, and his brother and sister, grew up in Australia and suffered the racism of being, in his words "ching, chong Chinaman". Although during high school he was better at the Arts type subjects, when he went to university he was encouraged to become a maths teacher. He has been teaching at Cherrybrook Technology High School. 

 

Because he struggled learning maths in high school, Eddie can see the subject from the student's point of view. His style of teaching is very down to earth and watching him you can see his enthusiasm for opening up mathematics to his students. Because Cherrybrook HS places a strong emphasis on technology, for many years Eddie has been videoing his classroom lectures and uploading them to Youtube.  As a result he has been recognised by many awards. In April 2017, Woo won the 2017 University of Sydney Young Alumni Award for Outstanding Achievement. In March 2017, he was one of 12 Australian teachers to win a Commonwealth Bank Teaching Award, a prestigious national awards event co-presented each year by the Commonwealth Bank and education charity Schools Plus. In November 2017, he was named 2018 NSW Local Hero. Woo gave the Australia Day Address in NSW in 2018, the first time a teacher has done so. On 25 January 2018, Woo won the Australia's Local Hero Award at the Australian of the Year Awards.

 

His videos take you through each topic in the High School maths curriculum from Year 7 to the advanced Year 12 topics. Each is about 15 minutes long, so a large topic is presented through a number of videos. At the moment I am learning Calculus from those videos. Never understood it in high school, but he has made it as clear as crystal. Do I have any use for Calculus? No, but learning it is interesting and they say that exercising the mind is important in old age. "A lesson a day keeps Old Timer's away."

 

Is Eddie Woo Asian or Australian? I'd say he's a New Breed Australian. Not ethnically British, but a cultural mix of Aussie and Asian.