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.)

Kindergarten on Nick Wang

Expert Interview - Meeco Wong

Experts Interview: Sarah Vincent