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04-01-2016, 05:20 PM
An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:
Dear friends,
I was the principal of Shuqun Secondary from 2012 to 2015.
From 1 Jan 2016, I will be leaving the education service. I am hoping to pursue further studies. Yes, I am doing well. :) And no, before you ask, I made this decision some time before the "bullying incident" in my school. MOE and the public service is more reasonable and far kinder than most give them credit for.
To assure those of you who are still curious about the follow up to the incident, I thought I would share a picture of the 3 boys involved. The circle time in the picture was taken on the FIRST DAY after all of them returned to school. The "bully" apologised in person and in writing to both victims and to the class. Both victims forgave him and they were friends again within 2 hours. Consequences were meted out to the boy according to our school rules in private and ALL THE PARENTS INVOLVED were satisfied with the actions of the school. The boy will have to face more serious punishment under the law.
More hearteningly, in November, the 3 boys, together with their classmates, initiated and planned their own service learning project during the school's open house. They baked brownies and made drinks for visitors to showcase the work of our student-run Hideout Cafe. They told me they wanted to make restoration for the bad reputation they had brought to the school. I am very proud of them.
Many people who know the truth of the events in my school have asked me why I did not respond more actively to the various reports on the Internet when the incident happened. My answer - I did not want to feed the ongoing media frenzy and help viral irresponsible articles that were being put out by my comments. Sadly, this included supposedly "balanced" online and mainstream media who felt right to reproduce the articles choosing to feature sensationalized headlines that gave a wrong impression of the facts.
Make no mistake - these were deliberate and irresponsible decisions made by the media. For example, an online news website that purports to be a place for "moderate speech and agreeable disagreement" posted an article headlined "the school was aware of the bullying 5 months before the incident". A close reading of the report itself would have revealed that a single complaint was made to the school and the teacher involved had done the correct thing by warning the aggressor. She was not aware that the bullying resumed a few days later.
The same website chose not to emphasise comments by the mum herself that she appreciated the work that the school had done with her child and the improvements that she had seen in the child over the last 3 years. They omitted the fact that A FULL WEEKEND separated the incident from the time it was posted on the Internet, during which neither victim mentioned anything to the school nor their parents. The media chose not to mention that both VICTIMS had written to me that they felt sorry for their friend and hoped to see everyone move on. They did not clarify that the online video was NOT posted by any of my school's students (because we teach them that the correct thing to do if they care for their friends is to raise it to the teachers) but a school leaver from another school who posted it on a gaming site at 9am on a school day. There was no mention that one of the victim's mum had gone down to the police station ON HER OWN 2 weeks later to withdraw the police report because she felt satisfied with the school's handling of the incident and that it was a mistake to have gone to the police in the first place.
More at Former Shuqun Secondary Principal: Thoughts On Bullying Incident (http://www.domainofexperts.com/2016/01/former-shuqun-secondary-principal.html)
Click here to view the whole thread at www.sammyboy.com (http://www.sammyboy.com/showthread.php?222727-Cowardly-Shuqun-Sec-principal-finally-speaks-up-about-bullying-incident&goto=newpost).
Dear friends,
I was the principal of Shuqun Secondary from 2012 to 2015.
From 1 Jan 2016, I will be leaving the education service. I am hoping to pursue further studies. Yes, I am doing well. :) And no, before you ask, I made this decision some time before the "bullying incident" in my school. MOE and the public service is more reasonable and far kinder than most give them credit for.
To assure those of you who are still curious about the follow up to the incident, I thought I would share a picture of the 3 boys involved. The circle time in the picture was taken on the FIRST DAY after all of them returned to school. The "bully" apologised in person and in writing to both victims and to the class. Both victims forgave him and they were friends again within 2 hours. Consequences were meted out to the boy according to our school rules in private and ALL THE PARENTS INVOLVED were satisfied with the actions of the school. The boy will have to face more serious punishment under the law.
More hearteningly, in November, the 3 boys, together with their classmates, initiated and planned their own service learning project during the school's open house. They baked brownies and made drinks for visitors to showcase the work of our student-run Hideout Cafe. They told me they wanted to make restoration for the bad reputation they had brought to the school. I am very proud of them.
Many people who know the truth of the events in my school have asked me why I did not respond more actively to the various reports on the Internet when the incident happened. My answer - I did not want to feed the ongoing media frenzy and help viral irresponsible articles that were being put out by my comments. Sadly, this included supposedly "balanced" online and mainstream media who felt right to reproduce the articles choosing to feature sensationalized headlines that gave a wrong impression of the facts.
Make no mistake - these were deliberate and irresponsible decisions made by the media. For example, an online news website that purports to be a place for "moderate speech and agreeable disagreement" posted an article headlined "the school was aware of the bullying 5 months before the incident". A close reading of the report itself would have revealed that a single complaint was made to the school and the teacher involved had done the correct thing by warning the aggressor. She was not aware that the bullying resumed a few days later.
The same website chose not to emphasise comments by the mum herself that she appreciated the work that the school had done with her child and the improvements that she had seen in the child over the last 3 years. They omitted the fact that A FULL WEEKEND separated the incident from the time it was posted on the Internet, during which neither victim mentioned anything to the school nor their parents. The media chose not to mention that both VICTIMS had written to me that they felt sorry for their friend and hoped to see everyone move on. They did not clarify that the online video was NOT posted by any of my school's students (because we teach them that the correct thing to do if they care for their friends is to raise it to the teachers) but a school leaver from another school who posted it on a gaming site at 9am on a school day. There was no mention that one of the victim's mum had gone down to the police station ON HER OWN 2 weeks later to withdraw the police report because she felt satisfied with the school's handling of the incident and that it was a mistake to have gone to the police in the first place.
More at Former Shuqun Secondary Principal: Thoughts On Bullying Incident (http://www.domainofexperts.com/2016/01/former-shuqun-secondary-principal.html)
Click here to view the whole thread at www.sammyboy.com (http://www.sammyboy.com/showthread.php?222727-Cowardly-Shuqun-Sec-principal-finally-speaks-up-about-bullying-incident&goto=newpost).