Dearest teachers, parents, partners and friends,

A very good morning to all of you.

Introduction

  1. Welcome to the inaugural Bridging Worlds Conference in Early Childhood Development, organized by KLC International Institute.
  2. You might have noticed that there is no Guest-of-Honour for this conference. The reason is simple. There is no one we would like to honour more than you — each one of you who have taken time to come join us to build bridges across your different domains of expertise, that as we share and learn from one another, connect and collaborate, we will sow the seeds that will spread and propel us forward on a collaborative journey towards greater inclusion in the early childhood development space. An important endeavour even as Singapore approaches its 60th birthday next week.
  3. This is a conference of VIPs. All of you are very important persons to many children, in your respective fields. If you are a parent, you are a very important person to your own children, in fact, perhaps the most important person.
  4. Having said that, we do want to thank and acknowledge the presence of government officials from Ministry of Education Singapore, Early Childhood Development Agency, SkillsFuture Singapore, Workforce Singapore, Singapore National Employers Federation, and NTUC’s Employment and Employability Institute.
  5. We also thank participants who have flown into Singapore for this conference, hailing from 12 countries and regions. There are also more than 30 early childhood groups, 16 agencies and organizations supporting neurodiverse children. Thank you for your support!

The Story Behind the Conference

  1. Seven years ago when I first joined KLC, through my interactions with early childhood centre principals, I heard their need for better classroom management training for teachers to meet the diverse needs of children. In response, we developed courses to include more strategies for children with diverse needs, and rolled them out in 2021.
  2. Then in early 2023, through a class which was part of KLC’s first run of a Masters Programme in Psychology and Counselling, I got to know Professor Meng Ying Ru, a Special Education professor from the National Tsinghua University who specialized in helping children with learning disabilities and emotional and behavioural disorders. Even after 25 years of intense work in the education sector serving from being a teacher to holding school leadership positions and polytechnic directorships, I was so humbled and glad to finally meet an expert with deep knowledge and experience concerning how to help children with additional needs.
  3. I started writing to some of the top experts in Taiwan and got connected to many others including professors in inclusive early childhood education, special education and early intervention, nursing and clinical psychology.
  4. After conversations with many of these experts, I realized that to implement inclusive education well in practice, it is important for teachers to learn to respond to children’s diverse needs appropriately. The need to significantly level up our teachers’ inclusive dispositions and skills to better support neurodiverse children became evident.
  5. In January 2024, I made another trip to Taiwan, to invite experts of kindred spirit to participate in KLC’s initiative towards inclusion. One of these Taiwan professors is Professor Tseng Shu Hsien from Chung Yuan Christian University, an expert in setting up early intervention centres, and on her own, has also set up further interventions for neurodiverse youths. She will be a panelist and will also share her papers at this conference.
  6. I also shared this initiative with ECDA, SSG, WSG and SNEF as I realized that the challenge was not just a teacher training issue, but might require changes in the early childhood ecosystem, and mindset shifts of educators and parents towards children. We are so glad that many key representatives of our government partners are here today with us.
  7. As part of the initiative, I started to engage early childhood operators in Singapore, seeking collaborations and many responded positively. Many of you are here today. Thank you for your support!
  8. It was through one of these engagements that Babilou Family Singapore extended me an invitation to the International Congress on Brain Science, Early Childhood Care and Education held at UNESCO in Paris. Thank you Ms Koh, President and Mr Busse, CEO, Babilou Singapore. It was there that I first met Professor Adele Diamond.
  9. Professor Diamond’s sharing at the congress stirred my imagination concerning what can be mindfully done in the classroom for more effective executive function development for children. There and then, I wished our educators in Singapore could learn together from her. For the past week and into the next, my dream of bringing her to the early childhood educators in Singapore is being fulfilled. Thank you, Professor Diamond, for accepting our invitation to come to Singapore.
  10. In October 2024, I gave a keynote address at the Taiwan Symposium on Special Education, marking the 40th anniversary of the passing of Taiwan’s Special Education Act, and witnessed the recounting of forty years of relentless labour in shaping their inclusive education landscape with public and government support, and each child’s access to comprehensive support protected by the law.
  11. It was at this Symposium, that I heard special needs teachers raising the need to talk with early childhood teachers. This caused KLC’s planning for this conference to take a great turn towards bridging the worlds of special education and early childhood education, which later expanded to include occupational therapists, speech therapists, counsellors and psychologists. KLC being a champion of fathering movements in Singapore, it was natural for us to include parents as well. Hence, the concept of Bridging Worlds was birthed.
  12. One occupational therapist at this conference is Ms Karina Schreurs, our featured speaker on day two. She passionately empowers educators and parents in their development roles through helping them understand the impact of stress, neurodiversity, relationships and success.
  13. So, why Bridging Worlds? Because no one knows all things. Because none of us can claim to be the sole source of wisdom and answers. There are others who can offer ideas from different vantage points, that put together, might spark new solutions. Each of us, be we educators, parents, caregivers, therapists, healthcare professionals, neuroscientists or government officials, all bring vital contributions. Real transformation for the better can happen when we connect our insights meaningfully and actualize them in practice, in sustainable and scalable ways.
  14. We build bridges so that we can safely and easily cross over the chasms that have separated us – chasms perhaps caused by ignorance or fear of the unknown. It is our hope that you will share and learn from one another, make new connections, launch new collaborations and generate solutions capable of meeting the complex needs of children today, lasting far beyond this conference.
  15. Just as I have sketched for you the journey of how we got here today to this conference, through meetings and encounters, some planned and others unplanned, I hope you agree with me that we all, individually, are the sum of our experiences. Each of us has been shaped by the experiences we have lived through.
  16. In a similar manner, every interaction that we have with a child has the potential to shape who he or she will be in the future. We could be perpetrators of trauma, or we could bring healing. We could sow in them the lie that they are mediocre, or we could inspire in them the belief that they can become truly great. We are confronted by these choices every day, every single moment we are with children. How will we choose?
  17. In the novel Wonder, which has also been made into a movie, about a boy with facial deformities starting his first year in school, and how the children around him overcome their prejudices and eventually embrace him over the course of the year, his teacher Mr Browne shared with the class this precept: “When given the choice of being right or being kind, choose kind.” This is a good precept to live by for children. It is also a good one for adults to live by.
  18. “Choose kind.” How do we “choose kind”, practically speaking?

Introducing Every Child · Every Teacher

  1. Over the last few years, as we have been contemplating the role we could play in supporting and complementing the national effort towards enhancing inclusion in the early years, we saw a space for us to start ground-up, engaging and equipping broadly across the entire early childhood development sector. We have called this initiative, “Every Child Every Teacher”. At the heart of this effort is a simple but powerful belief: every child matters, and therefore, every teacher matters too. And when we say “every teacher,” we include parents—our children’s very first teachers. Together, educators and families form the bedrock of each child’s development, and by supporting them, we strengthen the entire ecosystem.
  2. “Every Child Every Teacher”, with the acronym E – C – E – T, can be pronounced like the word “asset”, which means a person, thing, quality or skill that is valuable. And every child and every teacher is an asset worthy to be treasured, to be VALUED.
  3. And this acronym VALUED gives us practical handles on how to “choose kind”.
    • V reminds us to help every child feel validated, and every teacher to be validating.
    • A is for helping every child feel affirmed, and every teacher to be affirming.
    • L is for helping every child feel loved, and every teacher to be loving.
    • U is for helping every child feel understood, and every teacher to be understanding.
    • E is for helping every child be enabled, and every teacher to be enabling.
    • D is for helping every child develop to their fullest, and every teacher a developer.
  4. Stealing a line from Jason Wong, founder of Dads For Life, who cannot be with us today and will be on our panel tomorrow, from one of his parenting short videos, he said, “we first have to connect, before we can correct or redirect.”
  5. To paraphrase, by connecting first, we choose to treasure the life of the child, over the correctness of the behaviour, and not skewer a child over a mistake or undesired behaviour.
  6. “Choose kind.” “Every Child VALUED.” “Connect first, then correct or redirect.” You might be surprised as you develop the ECET VALUED disposition, you will find yourself more effective and energized relating with children.
  7. I know some of you are already connecting very well with children. Yet others could be thinking, “How ah? Already so busy… Still have to add on being validating, affirming, loving, understanding, enabling and developing?”
  8. It is our hope that you will see that these are not additional tasks on a checklist, but they describe a disposition to aspire towards, to be acquired and cultivated to become second nature in us.
  9. We hope that through this conference, we can all acquire some of these life-giving dispositions—to give life, not just to the children, but also to our fellow teachers. And remember, when we refer to teachers, we include parents as well.
  10. Our teachers need to be VALUED themselves– validated, affirmed, loved, understood, enabled and developed. We cannot do this alone. We need principals and centre leaders, parent support groups and communities to pour into our teachers, parents and caregivers, as they pour themselves out for the children.
  11. How can we help? How can we help? How can we help? This was the one abiding consideration as we put together this conference. The conference sub-themes were designed to flesh out the four big areas that we felt would be most impactful in bringing much needed relief:
    • The first: focus on improving children’s wellness through inclusive practices.
    • The second: focus on the equally important, teacher well-being and effectiveness in caring for children
    • The third: focus on developing collaborative relationships between parents, teachers and children
    • The fourth hopes that through the interaction of participants of diverse backgrounds, at every level of the ecosystem, stakeholders find new inspiration to make things better by doing things differently.
    • There was a fifth sub-theme on AI. But we decided to feature it by integrating it directly into the conference. We learnt by experimentation that generative AI models can be useful, but they are not quite that good yet, at matters requiring perfection.
  12. We will be featuring songs co-created through AI that would form the soundtrack for this conference. You will hear tongue-in-cheek “Bridging Worlds” remixes of our theme song that we will introduce later.

Beta Launch of KLC Actionable Ideas Record (AIR)

  1. We are also introducing KLC AIR. KLC the tagline, means Knowing, Leading, Collaborating.
  2. As we learn how to do something, we acquire deep knowing by actually practicing and doing it.
  3. For things that we are good at, or that we demonstrate strengths in, we step out to serve others by leading, regardless of our title or position. And for those things that we are not so sure about, we learn together with and from others by collaborating with others, following the leading of those who are able, and supporting where we can.
  4. AIR refers to “Actionable Ideas Record”. In this conference, you will hear many inspirational concepts. KLC AIR is designed to allow you to quickly record possible actions arising from these concepts. Not to record the concepts, but your translation of what you can do with these concepts.
  5. If you start to think, “I could do this in my workplace or at home,” and quickly key-in the ones you wish to try out and apply into KLC AIR, all your ideas will be sent back to you for your reference and action after the conference.
  6. And if you stay till the end of the conference, you will also see how we can also easily use AI, if each of you do your own contribution and write down your learning and actionable ideas, we can use AI to create something else that is useful for all of you. So we decided that instead of talking about AI, we should just demonstrate some of the simple, possible uses of AI. Nothing fanciful, nothing perfect, but I think a lot of work-in-progress that is useful enough to support us in our practical action.

Celebrating Synergy: Building Bridges Across Disciplines

  1. I wish you a fruitful time at this inaugural Bridging Worlds conference. Keep an open mind, stay curious, and feast upon this eclectic buffet of perspectives that we have curated from around the world and across multiple disciplines. Be not dismayed when you cannot get into a session of your choice, you might be pleasantly surprised by what you find in another session.
  2. Through all the sessions and your interactions with fellow participants, may you form helpful connections with experts in other fields and have a bountiful harvest of ideas that you will act on and reap amazing outcomes.
  3. Let’s make these two days count and aspire to make good differences wherever we are serving. Thank you.

Every Child ⋅ Every Teacher Theme Song Live Performance

  1. At this point, I would like to introduce our Every Child ⋅ Every Teacher theme song, not played through AI, but sung live. May I invite a good friend of ours, Mr Paul Khoo, to join me on stage, to launch this theme song for Every Child Every Teacher!