Jack James Carney

Most teaching starts with the subject. I start with the person. After three decades of working with learners from six to eighty — in Australian community education, Chinese universities, corporate boardrooms in Beijing, English language schools in New Zealand, and now online worldwide — the one thing I know for certain is that people learn best when they are learning something they actually care about. My approach draws on Stephen Krashen's insight that genuine acquisition happens through interest and engagement, not drilling and obligation. So my first question is never "What level are you?" It is "What do you love?" Everything else — language, critical thinking, history, philosophy, psychology, business, literature — flows from there. What I bring to that starting point is a range of experience that is, I'll admit, a little hard to categorise neatly. I hold a Bachelor of Social Science, certifications in workplace training, Myers-Briggs assessment, Parent Effectiveness Training, and couples counselling — and before any of that, I was an entrepreneur, inventor, architect, and business owner across three countries. I have coached senior executives in Chinese state enterprises, developed psycho-education programs for government agencies, lectured at universities including Tsinghua, and spent years in adult community education teaching everything from conflict resolution to evolutionary psychology. What ties all of it together is a single, enduring interest: helping people understand themselves and others more fully — and from that understanding, live with real integrity. If that sounds like what you or your organisation is looking for, I would enjoy hearing from you.