A Heart for Education - From Tax Lawyer to Early Childhood Teacher
By the mid-1990s, Ms Winnie Royden had achieved all the marks of conventional success: a law degree from the London School of Economics, a master’s degree from New York University, and several years working on Wall Street as a tax lawyer. But when she returned to Hong Kong with two young children in tow, she had an awakening that has resonated deeply to the present day when Winnie can now be found sitting in the principal’s chair of Christ Church Kindergarten (CCKG).
The inspiration for this shift was her children. On returning to Hong Kong, Winnie began to look closely at their education and applied the hard research skills she mastered as a lawyer to learn more. The deeper she dug, the more enthralled she became with education as a career and a vocation. She decided to get some classroom experience, securing a part-time English teacher position in the primary school run by her family church, Christ Church (no teacher qualifications were required back then), and she enrolled in what was then called the Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) at the Faculty of Education, HKU. She graduated in 1997.
“If I were not a mother, I would have never thought about studying education, but I was curious about what was going in school – that was basically my motivation,” Winnie said. The PGCE – which would be the first of her two teaching qualifications from the Faculty – also exposed her to secondary school teaching through her practicum. “However, during my studies, I reflected that everything you need to do with a child is actually in the foundation years of kindergarten.”
Soon after graduating, she was offered a teaching job at CCKG, where she has been based ever since. Her eagerness to keep learning about early childhood education was unabated. “Governments around the world have been professionalising early childhood education and raising the standards, and there has been a lot of research on the topic,” Winnie said. “I wanted to learn more and brush up my knowledge and therefore I applied to do my training again at HKU in 2017.”
This time, Winnie studied in the Postgraduate Diploma in Education (PGDE) programme and she was able to focus on early childhood education. Unlike the more traditional approach of the PGCE, this programme focused less on the teacher and more on the student.
“Everything was focused on children and it was evidence-based and emphasised informed practice. I came across a lot of practices that I realised I had been doing and now there were names for them. Obviously, there were a lot that I had not known about, but now I can speak with more confidence when talking with parents and show them that my approaches are based on research, rather than just my experience.”
Winnie was promoted to principal after obtaining her PGDE and is as enthusiastic as ever about teaching young children and instilling good values in them. “It’s like going into a new job every day, they are so delightful and caring and creative, and they have the openness and humility to accept what you tell them. It is just a happy job,” she said.
Ms Winnie Royden enjoys teaching young children and instilling
good values in them.
