Being a principal is not a deskbound job for Madam Maureen Lee. In the first part of a series where CNA shadows various school professionals for a day, the head of Yusof Ishak Secondary School revealed the work it takes to be a leader.
SINGAPORE: Not many students get to call their principal a penpal, unless they happen to study at Yusof Ishak Secondary School .These are letters from students, as part of her “Dear Mdm Lee” initiative. Many extend the full page, while some are a couple of sentences long. Students share anything, from struggles they may be facing to suggestions for improvements to the school. Some pen their reflections on another initiative she has, involving red beans and pencils.
“Of course I will reply, I asked them to write . When you promise a kid, you must keep your promise,” she said when CNA spent a day with her in January to understand the role of a school principal today.Letters that YISS students have written to their school principal under the "Dear Mdm Lee" initiative.
Such interactions, commonplace in Mdm Lee’s daily routine, are centred around her desire to ensure every student feels heard – a lesson from her first teaching stint that ended up shaping the next three decades.In 1988, Mdm Lee was posted to Henderson Secondary School where she taught physics to “highly challenging” classes. The now-defunct secondary school in Bukit Merah had many students who required greater support.
“Besides rapport building, it’s about how you see your learners, which will shape how much they can achieve. You shouldn’t cap the expectations for them. When you believe in them, they really could amaze you by achieving more than what you expect.” When Mdm Lee began her role at the start of 2018, students were told the same year that they would be the last cohort at the school’s Bukit Batok campus before it relocated to Punggol in 2021. The school now comprises just Secondary 1 and 2 students in a fresh cohort intake.
“If they don’t feel that they even have a friend or belong in the school, or they don’t feel curious about what they’re learning, it’s a really hard journey towards the exams.” “My role is not me staying in the office answering emails, but about rallying people towards a shared vision. And that can only be done if I make myself very approachable, make myself open to anyone who would like to come up to me, be it a teacher, a student or a non-teaching staff, to tell me what troubles them or how they can contribute towards the school,” she said.
On one such learning walk with CNA, she observed a geography lesson where the teacher laid out building blocks to design a 3D map of the Punggol estate, in order to teach the challenges of creating maps. Even though she didn’t intrude into students’ discussions, they willingly explained the lesson’s tasks to their principal, as though she was a fellow groupmate.
Whether she was casually dropping by discussions on Total Defence Day activities with Character and Citizenship Education teachers or getting case updates from school counsellors, her interactions highlighted the “flat structure” under her leadership. In these situations, she validates and listens to both parents and teachers, adding that such tension could be an opportunity to build trust.
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