education
a message that comes up frequently
during our meeting. When he first visited
Woodlands and started talking to the
parents he was happy to find that these
cornerstones of love, care and respect
were clearly evident.
Adam is very respectful of the work
that Woodlands has done but feels it’s
important to be honest and reflective “If
you’ve been doing something the same
for a long time - things change, children
change - so we need to be reflective
of that. Also, from a professional
standpoint, as an early years educator
you’re at the forefront so you’ve got a
great opportunity to be an incredible
professional who keeps learning,
keeps trying things out. An early years
classroom is a laboratory, you get to
try all different things based on what
children are interested in and what they
want to do. There’s a real power of
being an early years teacher”.
Adam believes that the next seven
to ten years are going to be really
interesting for schools, especially in the
national system. “We need different
skills, so schools need to be at the
forefront of that right from primary
education.”
Parents are integral to the child’s
learning. As Loris Malaguzzi, the
founder of the Reggio Emilia approach
says, “The first teacher is the parent,
second is the teacher and third is the
environment.” In the past a teacher
would be given the child to teach, it
was the teacher’s responsibility and
the thought was ‘I’m the teacher don’t
tell me what to do.’ Children would
make a certain amount of progress. “If
we include both the teacher and the
parents, the children make incredible
progress and the whole experience is
better” explains Adam. “How your child
is at home and how they are at school
is completely different, if we [the parents
and teachers" don’t talk to each other
we’re not getting the whole picture of
the child.”
Equally important is asking what
we can do better. “[Parents] know the
organisation really
well, they know
their children really
well so we would
be silly not to take
that information,”
he explains.
Among the
eight Woodland
Pre-Schools are
two Montessori
schools, Caine
Road Montessori
and Repulse Bay
Montessori, and
six traditional
schools which use a UK based
curriculum. The programme is open-
ended, child-initiated and creative-play
based. They also offer pure English,
pure Mandarin or a bilingual stream.
Adam is still familiarising himself with
the different programmes. “It’s quite
unique having different teaching
methods – so Montessori, bilingual and
traditional kindergarten – within one
group. But not dissimilar to Australian
International School Singapore where
they implemented this. How you teach
is not so important, it’s your philosophy
and that belief in ‘this is my image of the
child’,” says Adam.
So how does Woodlands fit within an
organisation of 73 schools? “I think that
the benefit of having so many schools
in one group is having one vision but
schools with slightly different characters.
There’s an option there to be really
helpful to the families because we can
talk about the individual child their hopes
and aspirations, there will be a school to
meet that, because not one size fits all.”
Adam is refreshingly straightforward.
He isn’t afraid of change but seems
unlikely to make changes just for the
sake of it. Clearly experienced and
passionate about early years education,
it will be interesting to see him take the
reins of Woodlands and to help Hong
Kong children fulfil their potential. “I think
its reflecting on what we are doing and
seeing how we can continually push
these barriers and boundaries of early
years education.”
Summer 2019
39