“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.
“I do that by making myself very visible. During recess time, I’m always checking in with my students, or even standing there in case someone would like to come and tell me something about their day.”
She also greets students and parents at the front porch every morning, shares anecdotes from books she has read during morning assembly, speaks one-on-one with students who have special education needs and regularly takes “learning walks” around the school.
During these walks, she visits some classes as “a fly on the wall” for about 10 minutes, occasionally speaking to students about what they have learnt, then speaks with the teacher after the lesson to understand how learning can be made better.
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.
Asked how she thinks students see her, Mdm Lee laughed and said they may see her as “someone who is like a friend”, and “because I do pen my responses to their Dear Mdm Lee letters, they do see me at times someone who they can confide in”.
“I’d say I’m a nurturing principal, open to their ideas. And sometimes they may even be crazy ideas, but well, that is a sense of wonder in every kid,” she added.
The feeling is mutual, it seems. Among the comments from students about Mdm Lee, CNA was told she was “very nice” and they felt “very comfortable talking to her”. When asked how they felt about approaching authority figures in school, like their principal, a student said, “Actually, there is no gap between anyone in this school.”
They didn’t feel the same about their primary school principal, some added candidly.