The research showed that it was the style of parenting, rather than income and social background that develop the strength of character. “Tough love” is about not giving in to pester power. Parenting this way can be hard especially for families under financial and other life stress. However, the benefit is bringing up children who are more able to control their emotions and bounce back from disappointment, and are more capable of concentrating and completing tasks.

The study is based on families in UK and this article describes several family’s experiences as well as programs that the UK government is proposing to help families learn about healthy parenting styles.

Source: the guardian website, November 08, 2009

To read the full article, please visit the following link:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/nov/08/tough-love-smart-children

Yew Chung is committed to providing a holistic education that not only nurtures students in academic achievement and character formation, but empowers and prepares them as active learners and members of a globalising world. Throughout this process of development, parents play an influential role in bringing up their children and preparing them to become contributors in an increasingly competitive, advanced, and interconnected world. In line with Yew Chung’s philosophy and under the Charter of Success, the School is ardent towards home-school cooperation, which engenders a rewarding partnership with parents to ensure that every student is best prepared and equipped for all future challenges.

To liberate our children, let us first liberate ourselves. Yew Chung believes that all parents are able to learn and grow together with their children. We would like to further offer Parenting Programmes to help each parent gain a better understanding about child development and the skills required for effective parenting. These programmes ultimately assist in raising happier, healthy children and building the bond between each unique parent-child relationship.

Below are the programmes and activities specially designed to encourage greater parent participation:

• Parenting Programme
  Every parent plays a crucial role in the growth of their child. The correlation of that greater parental involvement, participation and communication with leads to an improved quality of development means it is simply far too important to ignore. As such, Yew Chung organises a parent-specific programme on parent education to help parents come to grips with good parenting and how they can build a stronger family.
• Home-School Cooperation Projects
  With Yew Chung’s pledge towards proactive parenting, a number of Home-School Cooperation Projects are organised to promote parent involvement and to ensure that the very best support is provided to each child at home and school.
• Parent-Child Activities
  Events, activities or excursions catering to Yew Chung families are organised on a year-round basis.
• Parenting Support
  A dedicated web platform, a hotline and a designated email have been set up to enhance the convenience of support to Yew Chung families. A dedicated in-house counseling team is available to provide support or refer cases to a broad range of professional agencies. Parents in need of support are encouraged to contact us.

Dr. Anna Hui, Executive Committee Member of PECERA (HK), will be our guest speaker who will give a presentation on “Creativity Development and Arts Education in Young Children“.  Creativity has been identified as a generic skill to be nurtured in students of all levels starting from kindergartens, primary schools, and secondary schools in various learning areas, including the Arts. Dr Hui will share 2 recent studies on the effectiveness of an artists-in-residence project in 7 kindergartens funded by the Arts Development Council and a drama-in-education project in 26 kindergartens funded by the Quality Education Fund. The assessment tools vary from consensual assessment in children’s story telling, standardized assessment on children’s creative potentials and teacher observation in children’s creativity, dramatics and communicative characteristics. Results indicated that significant gains were found in children’s verbal and figural creativity as well as teachers’ observations. The collaboration between artists and teachers is crucial to the successful implementation of arts education and creativity education in Hong Kong.  Limitations and implications will also be discussed.

Dr. Anna Hui received her B.A. (English Language & Literature), Dip. Ed. (English Language), M. Phil and Ph.D. (Educational Psychology) from the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). She is currently the Assistant Professor of Department of Applied Social Studies, City University of Hong Kong. She used to serve as Assistant Director of Center for Child Development, Hong Kong Baptist University and part-time Lecturer at Hong Kong Institute of Educational Research, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her research interests include creativity of children, implicit theory of creativity in Chinese people, motivation orientation as well as gifted and talented education. She serves as the Chairperson in the Curriculum Development Council Committee on Gifted Education, TREATS (a charitable organization for children integration) and Ming Ri Institute for Arts Education.  She is also Executive Committee member of the Hong Kong Committee on Children’s Rights, and on Parenting Forums respectively.

There will also be a Report session on work and activities of PECERA (HK) in 2011 and on the 12^th PECERA International Annual Conference which was held in Aug 2011 in Kobe, Japan.

Details of the PECERA (Hong Kong) Annual Meeting 2011/12 cum Seminar:
Date: June 1, 2012 (Friday)
Time: 6:30 - 8:15p.m. (Registration starts at 6:00p.m.)
Venue: The Auditorium, Yew Chung International School – Secondary, 3 To Fuk Road, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong
Admission Fee: Free
Language: English (Cantonese simultaneous interpretation service will be provided)

Registration: seminar@pecera.org.hk  (Please provide your name and contact number)

Apathy, unfortunately, is often contagious. While there is no point debating whether there is a major norm of apathy among our students, this article’s value lies in helping parents identify whether their students are suffering from some degree of apathy and offering valuable ideas of how to help fight apathy. The article contains a list of 13 useful questions parents can ask themselves and suggestions of approaches, activities, and programmes that parents and school can utilise to help students fight apathy.

Source: College Parent Central, www.collegeparentcentral.com

To read the full article, please visit the following link:
http://www.collegeparentcentral.com/2010/04/is-your-college-student-a-member-of-the-%E2%80%9Capathy-generation%E2%80%9D/

The Finnish educational system uses a high ratio of teachers and assistants to ensure that no students are left behind. Primary and secondary schools are combined to promote stability for childhood development. Children in Finland start their main school at age seven. Reading and learning from playing is a national culture. All teachers need to hold a master degree and teaching is a highly regarded profession. Finnish educational philosophy promotes co-operation and students learn in a relaxing, non-competitive environment where exams are seldom used.

Source: Nectareal.com, blog by Greg Barr (a British expatriate living in Finland since 1988), Jan 31, 2011

To read the full article, please visit the following link:
http://www.nectareal.com/success-of-finnish-education-system/

Recently, we have received enquiries from parents that they would like to purchase the umbrella which amahs use to pick up the children in and out of the school campus. The umbrellas are the souvenirs specially made by the Parent Relations Unit aiming to promote parent-child connection. A set of umbrellas consists of a folding umbrella for adults and a one-touch umbrella for children. We hope that parents and children could enjoy the rainy days together, listen to the rain and experience the changes of weather. All these interactions will bring you precious moments with your children.

Parents could purchase the umbrella set at the Uniform Counter or click here.

You may want to know what are the symptoms of depression besides insomnia, crying, poor appetite and difficulty in concentration? If you found your child having depressive symptoms, does that mean your child has depression? The school would like to equip our parents with knowledge about adolescent depression and the ways to identify it and handle it. We are delighted to invite Ms. Mun Yee Lee, Social Worker from Hospital Authority Child and Adolescent Mental Health Community Support project as the speaker of the talk “Early Identification of Depressed Mood in Adolescent”.

Details of the talk are as follows:

Date: May 4, 2012 (Friday)
Time: 7:00-8:30p.m.
Venue: Yew Chung International School – Secondary, 3 To Fuk Road, Kowloon Tong

Reservation: Click here

In this article, Tabarrok gives examples of Germany’s successful apprentice programme (high-skill and paid training), and other northern European countries’ programmes combing classroom and workplace training that have yielded a higher STEM skill labour force. He points out that it is wrong to consider vocational schools are only for at-risk students and that such attitudes have caused under-investment in practical training education. He concludes that we need to provide opportunities for all types of learners, not just classroom learners. Going to college is neither necessary nor sufficient to be well educated. Apprentices in Europe are well educated but not college schooled. We need to open more roads to education so that more students can reach their desired destination.

Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education by Alex Tabarrok, March 4, 2012

To read the full article, please visit the following link:

http://chronicle.com/article/Tuning-In-to-Dropping-Out/130967/

Source: Nutrition Wonderland by Christie Wilcox, June 24, 2009

To read the full article, please visit the following link:

http://nutritionwonderland.com/2009/06/understanding-bodies-serotonin-connection-between-food-and-mood/