Head of School Betty Fang on how Mulberry House is working to achieve its vision
Fang shares more about her role at the school and her values as an educatorBetty Fang has been in education for 20 years and now, she’s at the helm of Mulberry House International Kindergarten’s Southside campus as Head of School. The kindergarten, founded in 2015, has a vision to “raise bilingual learners and nurture global citizens”. We speak to Fang to gain some insight on her role at the school, her values as an educator and how Mulberry House is working to achieve their vision.
Fang’s first priority is “to provide a vibrant Reggio Emilio-inspired environment which is adaptive and is driven by the student, with an emphasis on exploration, creative expression and active learning.” If you look into what Mulberry House is all about, you’ll notice the Reggio Emilio approach comes up often. It’s an educational philosophy focusing on early childhood education. The philosophy believes in putting an emphasis on languages to provide children with different avenues for thinking, revising, constructing, negotiating, developing and symbolically expressing their thoughts and feelings to help adults and children better understand one another. “Students are valued as strong, capable, resilient and rich with wonder and knowledge,” says Fang. “A love of language is one of the core values that we impart onto our students. Mulberry House offers a strong bilingual programme with a dual-language curriculum. Students are immersed in an integrated environment where each classroom has an English and Mandarin teacher. With exposure to both languages throughout the day, children quickly pick up the skills and knowledge to communicate in both English and Mandarin, learning in a way that is meaningful and relevant to our students.”
Read more: Mulberry House is paving the way for bilingual education
Beyond its focus on languages, Fang and Mulberry House founder Jessica Ye Trainor have built a school on the foundation of holistic values. “Mulberry House is passionate about their belief that the early years are crucial for the future, which, for kindergarteners, means a life of motivated learning, curiosity, cultural awareness, confidence, and global responsibility,” explains Fang. It’s apparent that these values are part of their daily operations and span across all aspects of the curriculum. “Children quickly develop the skills and knowledge to ask and answer questions, investigate, problem solve and think flexibly about the world around them. In addition, we focus on key skills and attitudes we would like our children to develop. These are math, language and literacy, arts, science, social, personal and emotional skills and physical education. These are all integrated into our daily programs within the classroom.”
As the saying goes, it takes a village. Fang believes that it requires teamwork to achieve what they’ve set out to. “Our aim is to build bilingual, caring, confident, resilient young children who are explorers, thinkers and communicators. These are the skills children need for the future, and we aim to set these foundations now. Our strength is working in partnership with our parent communities, involving parents in the learning, giving parents a voice and working together as a community to support our children to learn and grow.”
