Counting down to more than 2 days till my work in a preschool setting is over. 10 years in a childcare setting, my work with 300 children across four months to six years, I am still so in love with my work. Ms. Yi Jie is a persona, a larger-than-life character that I hope impacted the lives of young children and families in Singapore.
I’ve gone through several character changes, from my worse
to my best. I started my career working with toddlers. In my first year, I
wrote about toddlers being terrible twos, I wrote about my inexperience with
toddlers, and how my training (preliminary focused on older children)
handicapped me, I wrote about my journey as a surviving fresh graduate. I cried
many nights and managed threats from parents, managed a huge workload, large
class size, and high expectations.
Subsequently, I fell in love with each of these toddlers.
Their characters, their growth, their milestones, and their personality made me
excited to be at work every day. I’ve told stories about them to my then-boyfriend,
and I was told that my eyes sparkle. I introduced him to my world of toddlers,
their scribbles, baby talks, toddle waddle, and their hugs and kisses.
I was very lucky to have the opportunity to grow alongside my
toddlers, I followed through with them till K2 (except when they were N2). When I returned as their K1 teacher, they have
grown up so much, they were no longer the toddlers I remembered, they matured
into individuals, they had bright minds, they had loud personalities, they have
parents who give them the world, they were my first loves.
That bond you have had with the children and parents for
five years, we cried at the children’s graduation ceremony and on their last
days. These children’s birthdays were a gentle reminder of our time together,
and I wished them every year.
Throughout my teaching career, my proudest achievement would
be my time with them, beyond the research papers and portfolios, it was the snippets
of their first steps to their first stage, their first words to the first speech,
I cannot bear to delete any of this footage, I hold so dearly.
Three lessons learnt:
Always believe in our children, our words of
affirmation at the right moment lights up their life
Raise them to be kind, to be wonderful beings
Guide the next generation and forgive the last
generation, don’t bring generational trauma along.
In my fifth year of teaching, I felt stagnant and challenged myself to pursue Masters's in Early Childhood to remain relevant. I had a wonderful baby. I was blessed to be given an opportunity to be Principal. My work as a Principal, gave me high levels of anxiety, and it also challenges my mental thresholds. I honed my crisis management skills, problem-solving skills, and communications skills, playing an active role in the strategic and operational development of the centre. It was beyond pedagogy, it was being reflective and innovative to improve the teachers’ growth and uphold the quality of childcare in Singapore. As centre leaders, we ensure that the day to day operations run smoothly and mould each centre's unique culture. We are partnership builders as well, who leverage on community resources to provide our children and families with opportunities and unique experiences. Most importantly, we are educators at heart who impact critical skills, knowledge, and values to children to prepare them for today's challenges and tomorrow's problems. I learnt to be undaunted, to be resolute, to be bold and stand by my own conviction to continue to make a positive difference to the lives of your children. While I am writing this quick passage in midst of year-end appraisals, I can hear some children crying in my background, parents’ slamming the doors behind me, loud chatters, and some wiggletunes in my background, oh how I will miss this beautiful chaos.
Three lessons learnt:
Be humble and be strong
Under-promise and over-deliver
Sometimes no one has noticed how we really feel, whether we are okay or not, but with one mistake, everyone notices, so just be careful with our actions and words.
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