Principals and principles

In the past two weeks, me, my colleague, and my boss had meetings with three different principals of kindergartens. Those meetings were really good learning opportunities for me because I could see how the principals hold strong principles and put effort in putting them into practice. For example, one of the principals had concern about the dying mother tounge in Singapore. She doesn't like the primary school system in which children only speak Mandarin in Mandarin class. As a result, someone could score A in the Mandarin lesson but could not converse fluently in Mandarin. Thus, in her kindergarten, what they do is both English teacher and Mandarin teacher are present in the class at the same time. If story-telling is given by the English teacher, children converse in English, but they still speak Mandarin to the Mandarin teacher. So switching between English and Mandarin becomes a natural situation for the children.

The similarity among these three principals is their eagerness to learn new things (that's why they are willing to collaborate with us to conduct psychological research in their kindergartens). Suddenly this thing reminds me of the virtue I saw in my boss in India: humility. Even though you are at the top, you humble yourself and acknowledge that you don't know everything and you want to learn from other people. It's very heartwarming to see figures of leaders, entrepreneurs, and educator (not only 'teacher') in these three principals. They also remind me of someone whom I look up to as a leader: Sr. Francesco, the nun in my school!!! :D

So yeah.. in these busy weeks, I start to fall in love with my job :) Being a research assistant is not only about running statistical analyses and conducting experiment, it's also about understanding other people's work in our field. It's about learning from real persons about what it needs to be a leader. Thank you Lord for these experiences.