Every year, Ms. Chambers brings a lot of warmth and laughter to the Stamford community, and this year is no exception. During online learning, Ms. Chambers keeps checking in with the students and cares about every student’s wellbeing. Ms. Chambers has been our Lower School Principal since 2018. We are very grateful that Ms. Chambers is a leader who is dedicated to building a compassionate culture at Stamford Hong Kong.

Three class representatives from the Elementary Student Council interviewed Ms. Chambers virtually on May 6. She shared some ups and downs of being a principal and led a genuine conversation with our class reps. Read and find out what Ms. Chambers shared during the interview!

Ms. Chambers was actually a Stamford teacher before she became the Principal. She had also taught in other countries. So what did she teach before becoming the Principal at Stamford? She taught kindergarten and English before she came to Stamford. Before becoming the Elementary School Principal at Stamford, she taught Pre-primary for one year at Stamford.  

Some teachers decided to become a teacher when they were little, but others did not expect themselves to become a teacher. Which category does Ms. Chambers belong to? She didn’t know she would be a teacher until she was an adult. When she was a kid, she dreamed of being a lawyer and an Olympic hurdler. Later on in life, she also wanted to become a judge. But here she is, the Principal of Stamford! For Ms. Chambers, this was not a difficult decision at all. When she knew what she wanted to do, she just followed her passion and became a teacher!

What does Ms. Chambers want to accomplish as a teacher? What does she think is the hardest thing being a teacher, and what motivates her? Ms. Chambers became a teacher hoping to make students feel happy and want to come to school. Students are her biggest motivation. She loves students, and that motivates her to keep going. She thinks that the hardest thing is to manage her time.

Being a principal is quite different from being a teacher. What does Ms. Chambers enjoy the most as a principal? She likes saying hello to the students in the morning, reading them books and asking them riddles. She also enjoys doing read-aloud for all the students, and coming into all the classes to see how everyone is doing!

What is the most challenging part of being a principal for Ms. Chambers then? For Ms. Chambers, being a principal is kind of like being a teacher. The most challenging part is juggling all those things at the same time because she has a lot to do and a lot of meetings to attend.

This year hasn’t been easy with online learning. For the principal, what is Ms. Chamber’s job like during online learning? It’s similar to being at school, but Ms. Chambers is also learning how to do the job online. She gets to check the work posted online, plan school holidays, and sometimes she joins classes too.

So, is Ms. Chambers getting used to this kind of learning? There have been ups and downs and Ms. Chambers thinks sometimes it is easier to work online. However, she really wants to get the school to open again, But, online learning has definitely improved since the beginning.

Besides Ms. Chambers’ job, we also asked her a few questions about her school life when she was a kid. We asked Ms. Chambers how her school was different from Stamford. The big difference is that Hong Kong is very busy. Ms. Chambers grew up in New Zealand and Australia, so she got a lot of outdoor spaces and would have to walk to school every day. Actually, all of her classmates walked to school every day! 

We were also curious about what kind of grades Ms. Chambers got when she was a student. Ms. Chambers told us she really loved school, so she always tried her best. Some subjects were harder than others, so she had to work harder to get good grades. But every time she tried her best and got the best possible grade that she could!

For the last part of the interview, we asked Ms. Chambers to share something about her personal life. Our first question was what was her hobby. Ms. Chambers has quite a few hobbies, such as playing with her dog and cooking! She loves to cook food from around the world. She likes to spend time outdoors too, such as hiking and swimming at the beach.

Then, we asked Ms. Chambers what she likes to do the most when she is around students. She told us that she loves reading stories. She also likes to be silly! She enjoys playing games and giving riddles to the students too!

We asked Ms. Chambers to give some advice to the students. She told us that we should not worry because everyone learns in a different way. We are on our own personal journey, so we should just focus on ourselves. Ms. Chambers invites us to reflect if we have tried our best. If we have, we just need to keep trying and not to give up!

Last, we asked Ms. Chambers to give us some advice regarding online learning. How would she make sure that everyone is being a digital citizen? Ms. Chambers said all the teachers have been teaching the students to be digital citizens. Students have also signed a contract, so we need to keep our promise.

We would like to thank Ms. Chambers again for her time for this interview with us. We truly enjoyed the conversation and we have learned a lot about her past experience. We really appreciate Ms. Chamber’s work to make Stamford such a positive place to learn!