Hwa Chong Institution
Charles Low
Mr Charles Low began his career in manufacturing, working for the Matsushita group of companies as a Project Planning Specialist before switching career to his first love, teaching. Charles was one of the pioneers in the implementation of Positive Education in Hwa Chong Institution and has adopted an organic approach to the way PosEd is lived, breathed and experienced in the school.
River Valley High School
Dawn Wong Choy Keng
Dawn has more than 20 years of educational experiences spanning from being a Development Officer in Temasek Polytechnic to teaching in mainstream schools. She has joined River Valley High School since 7 years ago first as a teacher and subsequenltly as a Year Mistress.
River Valley High School
Mark John Cordiner
Mark has been a teacher at River Valley High School since 2011, and a Year Master since 2015. As part of the Student Development Team, he is in charge of Senior High (16-18 years old) students' holistic development and well-being.
Title of Session: A Culture-Building Approach to Positive Education in Hwa Chong Institution
Synopsis: Positive education was piloted in ProEd Consortium, Hwa Chong Institution, in 2012 to enhance school-wide wellbeing. After three years of laying the ground work through promoting positive relationships, action and language, we moved on to the next phase of implementation where we focused on making student experiences more engaging and enriching. In this session, we will share on our journey since 2012, one that is founded on a model of culture-building and making positive education ‘our way of life’, by highlighting specific strategies, such as engineering a ‘positive education calendar’ that harnesses the power of social rituals to foster a sense of community, reshaping parent engagement by shifting from providing information to facilitating activism, and leveraging the class unit to promote positive culture and tackle behavioural issues. The outcomes over the years have proven that flourishing people do perform better in many/ all aspects of their lives.
Title of Session: Presentation from River Valley High School
Synopsis: River Valley High School believes that confident students with personal mastery of their character strengths will flourish in school and enjoy quality relationship with peers. An awareness of character strengths therefore plays a vital role in improving every student’s own sense of wellbeing. As such, the Student Development Team (SDT) In River Valley High School (RVHS) has adopted a strategic whole school approach to wellbeing with a focus on the use of character strengths. The presenters will share the journey that RVHS has gone through in building character strengths as the foundation of the school’s positive education programme and some of the strategies they use.