Child Development on Nick Wang

Can We Teach Children to Become Empathetic Leaders?

Fri, 18 Jul 2014 01:47:00 +0000

Ever since reading about Pauline Hawkin’s Animal Farm Lessons, I’ve had one of the outcomes stuck in my head:

“Every once and a while, I will have a student who stands up and leads, not as a dictator, but as a leader of the people. He will accept every suggestion and value everyone’s input, even if some of the suggestions are ridiculous. I’ve had only a few students who have actually led that way over the years, but I always hope that those few students find their way into politics.”

I had written about why I started 100 Village, later on, I realized that I wanted children to grow up with these qualities because I hoped they can become future change makers - do the right things and make the world a better place. Last week however, something very personal about my son’s behaviors really shook my world and gave me a sharpened focus!

Basically, Allison and Mabo at Mulberry Tree Unschool had identified that my son had passed the toddler, experimental stage of hitting and started to hit and to do things to hurt other people or make other people feel sad / angry / unhappy on purpose. After a sleepless night of reflection, I told them that I think the reason for such behavior was because I didn’t properly give him unconditional love. Last weekend, Luc locked me and his little sister out on the roof and proceeded to laugh about it. When I got back inside, I was angry and I brought him to the roof, locked him out and asked him if he was feeling happy or not? Then I held him in my arms and I said: “I’m always doing things that help other people and make people happy… but I see you doing things that make other people sad… I’m worried about you. I love you so much and I wish you can also do things that help other people and make people happy.” I was crying as I said those words. I can’t help but get very emotional when I think about how my lovely little boy is “turning to the dark side”, in Mabo’s words.

This brings me back to the Animal Farm Lessons. If I want children to grow up to become change makers, then more than just the qualities listed on why I started 100 Village, they need to have a “good heart” - to be considerate and empathic. This became my newfound focus for 100 Village -

Can We Teach Children to Become Empathetic Leaders?

Expert Interview - Meeco Wong

Tue, 29 Apr 2014 20:44:00 +0000

“I’m a lucky mommy, my daughter was accepted into St. X, one of the most sought after kindergartens! In K.1, I just let her play, I didn’t sign her up to any after school activities or tutor schools. It was OK, but now in K.2, her classmates can WRITE, in English, a story! They can do additions, 2 digits with 1 digit! And multiplications!! I have no choice but to push my daughter too, otherwise, come interview time, she may lose everything…”

Last Wednesday, we met up with Meeco Wong, a local teacher with 9 years of experience teaching at both local and international kindergartens. She is Sarah’s teaching partner and when we heard from Sarah about how even though she knows early childhood development, the importance of free play and attachment, she “had no choice” but to push her daughter at a competitive local kindergarten, we knew we must interview her to understand what may be a very common conundrum that parents face in Hong Kong.

Meeco is a young mother of two, she claimed that she had a horrible childhood, (she didn’t elaborate and I didn’t want to press on) but she really loves children and she wanted to become a mother one day. Because of that, she studied Early Childhood Education and became a kindergarten teacher.

We were very impressed by her answers to our questions, she showed a high level of professionalism at her profession - observing both parents and children and the interactions between them, acknowledging the parents’ concerns while demonstrating how to respect children, forming a close bond with them and trusting them to discover their own knowledge.

During our weekly team meeting yesterday, Soren, Mrinalini and I discussed our “Top 3 take-aways” for this interview. Two of the most profound take-away were:

“As a kindergarten teacher, I can’t change much in the education system. I can’t even change my school. But what I can change is how I treat my own children.”

“The education system is not helping my daughter to become the full person that she can be. My husband and I are the ones who’re helping her.”

What’s the role of the education system? What’s the point of sending our children to it if it doesn’t help our children learn? How can we change this system so that it can truly nurture children into capable human beings? We think we’re beginning to see the leverage points within this system that can bring about the changes the society needs!

Experts Interview: Sarah Vincent

Tue, 14 Jan 2014 08:44:00 +0000

Last Friday, we met up with my good friend and mentor in Early Childhood Education, Sarah Vincent, to interview her about her experience with Hong Kong parents.

Sarah has been teaching for 12 years, 8 of those being in international kindergartens in Shanghai and Hong Kong. Inspired by the Reggio Emilia Approach during her second year in shanghai, she began to adopt the philosophy of social constructivism, gradually learned to let children take the lead. More recently, the RIE (Resources for Infant Educarers) Approach has profoundly influenced her relationships in the classroom. She is set to receive more training from the RIE Foundations in Auckland New Zealand in March.

In our expert interviews, we’ve identified 3 objectives to learn about:

Parents’ knowledge of Early Childhood Education
Parents’ decision making process
Parents’ source of information

There were multiple questions within each of these objectives. Sarah’s answers to these questions brought us new perspectives through a foreigner teacher’s glasses. She was very good at jumping ahead and giving us the answer to a better question that we should be asking. (This is one of the reasons why we chose to interview experts first, their in depth knowledge can help us horn in on the real issues and the real questions!)

So what have we learned? One thing that I thought was very important was transparencies. Parents have no rights over their children in the schools. We have no access behind closed doors. Schools hold all the power in this relationship, they can do whatever they want and the parents just have to take it. This is not a healthy relationship. Parents and schools should be a 2-way dialog. (We stepped above and beyond understanding parents and talked about schools and systemic issues. It’s certainly a big issue to tackle.)

Expert Interview: Angel Lai Hor Yan

Thu, 09 Jan 2014 12:11:00 +0000

We went to Polytechnic University today to interview Angel Hor Yan Lai, a Ph.D. candidate in Social Work specializing in Childhood Poverty and Youth Development. She also has a master in Child Development specializing in Clinical Developmental Psychology. Since 2007, Angel has worked across the globe, from India to the United States, for the betterment of child and youth development. Most recently, she helped launched a mentoring program for disadvantaged primary school aged children in the low-income, new immigrant district of Hong Kong. She’s continuing to examine the longitudinal effects of mentoring quality on the development of adolescents with Polytechnic University’s Network for Health and Welfare Studies.

Angel isn’t an expert on parents so we didn’t get to ask our prepared questions about parents, nevertheless her personal experiences with disadvantaged children is very relevant to our research. One of the biggest issues with the current education system is that it has become more advantageous for the privileged. The wealthier you are, the more you can afford your children to go to extracurricular activities, the better your children’s chances of getting into good schools. The poor just doesn’t get a break, it used to be that you can use education to raise your children out of the poverty cycle, but now even that path no longer leads people up.

I was reminded of this child development theory from Harvard and I showed it at the meeting.

A Theory of Change - Building Adult Capabilities to Improve Child Outcomes

It has been a fruitful meeting with a passionate expert. I’m sure we will work together again in the near future. (If not our early childhood team, then Sarah’s secondary school children team.)

Expert Interview: Angel Hor Yan Lai

Wed, 08 Jan 2014 13:00:00 +0000

I was reminded of this child development theory from Harvard - A Theory of Change - Building Adult Capabilities to Improve Child Outcomes (above video) and I showed it at the meeting.

It has been a fruitful meeting with a passionate expert. I’m sure we will work together again in the near future. (If not our early childhood team, then Sarah’s secondary school children team.)