STAR TEACHERS SPILL THEIR SECRETS

Together, they’ve transformed the lives of thousands of children. But do you really know these veteran educators? Young Parents turns the spotlight on them.

Carmee Lim, 69
• 47 years in the business. Mentor principal of Mindchamps learning centre. Principal of Raffles Girls’ School from 1988 to 1999.
• She has three daughters, and eight grandchildren aged three to 12.

What would you say to young people who want to be teachers?
You have to be very passionate. Once you are, you will think of new ways to keep students interested. When I was principal at Woodsville Secondary School, I even took on teaching duties for physics for a Normal stream class. The boys liked football, so I taught Newton’s law of inertia with it – the ball can’t move unless you kick it. I hooked the concept on to something close to their hearts to engage them in learning.

What do you love most about your job?
Seeing the joy in the students’ eyes when they’re doing well. I love it when they come up to me and say they were previously my students. I have many former students who work in the civil service, financial and legal fields. I’m very happy that many are in the arts and creative sector, too. Stefanie Sun, Beatrice Chia, Emma Yong from Dim Sum Dollies, Kit Chan and Corrinne May are all RGS girls! I tell my students to do what they are passionate about and follow their dreams, so that they don’t go through life wishing they could have done something else.

How did your childhood influence the way you teach?
Play is very important. It’s the catalyst for learning at any age. When I was young, Yangzheng School in Chinatown was my playground. (Carmee’s father was a teacher there and she studied at the institution during her primary school years.) All I was interested in was beating the boys at chaptek. Sometimes, we would run around the edge of the merry-go-round while it was still rotating.

That’s so dangerous!
Yes! I was always the ringleader – and it developed my leadership skills. Physical play trained my motor skills and taught me about risk-taking, too. From this, I realised that we have to make learning fun for our students.

Has working with kids changed you?
I think when I interact with them, I look at things through their eyes, so I become more open-minded, more willing to accept ideas. When you are in a senior position, you tend to be controlling. I try not to be that way with children. With them, I’m led by their imagination.

If there was one value you could teach them, what would it be?
Just one? (pauses) That’s hard!

Yes, that’s why we asked!
I would have to say peace. To be quiet within yourself is peace. I get my students to imagine a peaceful world with no fighting and conflict. In a peaceful world, arms are for hugging, not for shoving. People think peace is too cheem (difficult) for children to understand, but it’s not. Siblings fight, and there are bullies at school. They’re already experiencing it.

What did children have during your time that you wished you could share with kids today?
The games. We didn’t have electronic games, so we had lots of imaginative play and make-believe. Last Christmas, I helped my grandkids put up a musical. We made a huge backdrop. I went online and found pictures of cartoon sheep, blew them up and let the kids cut them out. They pasted cotton wool on the cut-outs and glued the sheep on the backdrop. Let me show you the backdrop. (Carmee leads me up a flight of stairs to the second storey of her home and gestures towards the 2.1-metre by 1.2-metre backdrop on the landing.)

Wow, that’s big! If you weren’t an educator, what would you have been?
I’d probably be on stage – in theatre. I love to sing, dance and act. But in my time, you couldn’t make a living from that. So, now, this whole place (gestures to the living room) is a theatre for me. I get my grandchildren to perform on the harp, the keyboards and the violin here!

Read the September 2010 issue of Young Parents to get to know two other veteran educators, Patricia Koh and Dr Khoo Kim Choo.