In the overcrowded, demanding city of Beijing lives an Australian family. Not just any ordinary family, but one with passion and drive to immerse itself in the Chinese culture. At the head of the family is Kathleen Taylor - a teacher, a principal, a wife and a mother. At 43 years old, she is a woman on a mission.
When asked questions, Kathleen is in no way hesitant to reply with sharp remarks. Her confidence of knowing who she is immediate, from the tightly pinned back blonde hair to the small freckles perfectly organised on her face.
If her life is not already accomplished enough with a list of seven degrees, Kathleen along with her husband Dan and two children, Eve and Alice are on a continuous rollercoaster, never knowing when to stop.
Now as the principal of an international school in Beijing, Kathleen has not yet reached her dream. “I’m not yet there. There is so much more I want to do and while I have no idea what that is, I don’t think I will be stopping anytime soon.”
Terry O’Brien, a friend and work colleague of Kathleen’s of 20 years, says Kath has always been a strong minded career driven woman.
“It can be said that without question 'Kath doesn’t suffer fools'. She has high expectations and is a woman of integrity and can’t understand those who don’t have these skills or aspire to have these skills.”
Kathleen’s pushiness to travel for business started very young in her career. “My first teaching job was at the Sunshine Coast, it was my first opportunity to get away and I immediately took it.”
After working in North Queensland and settling at Peregian Beach with Dan, Kathleen’s drive to travel and further her career, before anything else, took flight.
In October 2005, she packed up her belongings, house and family and moved to Park Slope, Brooklyn, America. She was 38 at the time, and her children were 22 months and five. She reminisces about how she worked too many hours and while the work was not too hard, she spent a couple of hours each day on the subway travelling to and from work. ‘It was okay, but I got sick of it. We had no regrets. It was time to come home.’
Leslie Tulloch, an education consultant, worked with Kathleen on a joint project for the Board of Education and the US Federal Government in NYC that was part of the ‘No Child Left Behind’ initiative.
“Kath was great to work with, and despite our times of hilarity we both found that we had a passion for good education which, inspired us to try and get that message across to teachers,” she says.
Kathleen’s easy-going yet vigorous nature was drilled into her as a child, growing up in a strict catholic family. As a middle child of eight siblings, she insists that it was uncomplicated. “Living at home became a little tedious once everyone was born but the older ones quickly soon moved out.”
Kathleen attended an all girls school for her high school education. She didn’t fit into the form of an over achiever or obsess over make-up, but describes herself as just an ‘ordinary girl’.
In 1991, Kathleen and her family received terrifying news. Her brother, John, who was staying at the family home in Stafford Heights had died, in a horrific house fire. “I was 23. He was 21.We were in Scotland and it was the morning after my sister’s wedding. I shared a room with my sister and parents. The phone rang and it was my brother, Greg. I said to my mother, ‘Did John do something?’. She replied, ‘He is dead’. I asked mum and Dad if they are alright. My parents both said their mouths were dry. We decided it must have been shock. My younger sister started shouting about the cat because she was worried it had been killed in the fire. I went away for a while, but later came back.”
While she is sad, she isn’t devastated. ‘He really was very different in the family. I did not connect with him much in teenage or later years.’
Kath’s husband Dan has always taken second fiddle to her career but she insists he has always been supportive. “When I told him about New York he was really excited. We had just transferred back to Cooktown in North Queensland when I got the job. He said, ‘We have been to Cooktown, let’s go to New York.’ I wanted him to work but he wanted to stay home and look after the girls. China was a bit harder to talk him around, but he knew that financially we needed to do something to help ourselves. Three houses equal three mortgages.”
There has been some down sides for Kathleen and her travelling career: her two children. Eve, (10) and Alice (7) both attend the international school where Kathleen is a principal. As Alice is still very young, Kathleen describes her as very independent and makes friends easily. However, Eve is “not as keen and likes to have definitive time that we are here for. ‘Okay, I will stay until I am in Grade 7,’ she says. The school work is very competitive and hard. It is demanding. I often talk to the teacher, but the Chinese way is to have tutors for everything and push the kids as much as they can”.
While the long-term regrets are unknown for Kathleen and her family, when asked if she has made any mistakes, she quickly replies, “Sure, when I ride my bike through the village and people are spitting everywhere, when I ride my bike to work and it is negative 14 and when I cannot get someone to understand me, that’s when I start to re-think my motives.”
Whether it is a change in career or more children, dreaming and longing for something more will never stop for Kathleen, regardless of her success.
- Written for Feature Writing 2011.
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