Introducing new staff - Part 4

Michael Thorburn

Michael has spent the last four years at Auburn High School, both as an English, EAL and Humanities teacher, as well as an Assistant Year-Level Coordinator. Before that, he spent two years teaching at Buckley Park College after finishing his Masters of Teaching degree. Australia is the third country he has called home in the last decade, having grown up in Toronto, Canada and then moving to Taipei, Taiwan to teach ESL after finishing English Literature.

Michael has had a variety of unique jobs before teaching, ranging from firing cannons as a historical interpreter to being in the background band of a Hilary Duff TV movie. In the last few years, he has also been lucky enough to travel extensively, visiting family in Canada, watching the sun rise over Cinque Terre, and winning an outdoor ice hockey tournament 3,500 metres up in the Himalayas.

NHS is about four times the size of Michael's previous school, and he is really looking forward to meeting the much larger school community, teaching a unique and diverse group of students and seeing how he can contribute to the wide range of co-curricular programs here.

Alora Young

Alora Young is composed primarily of black tea. When she was studying Writing and Literature at California College of the Arts, she arrived at seminars with a to-go mug of tea clenched in one fist and a can of Coca-Cola in the other. By the time she got to the Masters of Teaching at the University of Melbourne, she had abandoned the corn-syrup-death-concoction, but was rarely seen without a cup of tea. Once, when she was 15, she read that her favourite author becomes so absorbed in writing that she accidentally makes cups of tea for her characters. Alora knows how each of her own characters takes their tea. She has ruined many of her zines and handbound notebooks by spilling tea all over them. On her short-lived YouTube film review channel, there was a cup of tea in the background of every review. If she doesn’t have a cup of tea in class, her students (who call her “Young” instead of “Miss”) ask if something is wrong, because she always has tea. She is extremely excited to select teas that match the texts she is teaching at Northcote, which will soothe her nerves about teaching Media for the first time since the MTeach. She wonders how her new colleagues take their tea, how far the nearest kettle will be from her desk, and, especially, how many cups of tea it will take before she learns all of the processes and procedures of a school that is brand new to her.

Yongzhong Zhu

Yongzhong was born in China a long time ago and migrated to Australia in 2007.

He taught English as a second language to university students in China for four years. After his arrival in Melbourne, he worked for a telco for several years before his passion for teaching drove him back to study. He obtained his Australian teaching qualification in 2015 with LOTE (Chinese) and EAL as his two teaching areas.

Yongzhong joined Charles La Trobe College at the start of 2016, teaching EAL and Chinese. In 2017, he was teaching Chinese to a wide range of students, from Prep to Year 10. As the sole teacher at the school, he was responsible for developing the Chinese Curriculum and organising any cultural events related to the Chinese program.

Yongzhong most looks forward to closely collaborating with colleagues in the Language Department at NHS to deliver an enjoyable and challenging language learning experience for students at NHS. He also looks forward to working together with students enrolled in Chinese to achieve excellence in learning. He looks forward to learning about the history of the school and its role in the local community over many years.

Personal interests: Tennis, Photography & globe-trotting.