Orientation Day: our teachers get ready for the new school year
On Monday our teachers came back from the break, and the school was full again — a few weeks before the children return. We spent the day together, and it began where every year begins: with the people.
Welcoming the team, new and returning
Some of the faces were new this year. Others were familiar, back after the holiday. Before any of the real work could start, everybody needed to know who everybody was — so we opened with an icebreaker.
It did what an icebreaker is supposed to do. People who had never met were laughing together within a few minutes, and the new teachers stopped being new teachers.
Starting with mission and vision
Our co-founders, Judy Zhang and Keath Seng, then opened the session proper — not with timetables or policies, but with why the school exists at all.
Our mission is to nurture children through high-quality early childhood education, fostering independence, courage, kindness, respect and integrity. Our vision is to be one of Cambodia’s most trusted preschools. Both of those are sentences on a wall until a teacher decides what they mean on a Tuesday morning with a two-year-old who will not share.
That is why character comes first here, and why we spend the first morning of the year on it. Academic milestones matter, and they arrive. Character is the part that has to be built deliberately, by adults who agree on what they are building.
Learning something new by making something
The afternoon was hands-on. Teachers sat down together to make a bunch of grapes — real materials, real mess, no children in the room yet.
There are two reasons we do this. The first is that a teacher who has made something herself teaches it better — she already knows which step is fiddly, which one a small hand cannot manage, and where a child will need help before they ask for it.
The second reason is simpler. It was fun. A team that has laughed together over a tray of purple grapes walks into the first week of term differently from one that has only sat through a briefing.
Before the children come back
Term 1 begins on 24 August 2026. Between now and then there is a lot to prepare — rooms, materials, timetables, the hundred small things that make a school day run.
But the first day back was spent on the team itself, and we would spend it the same way again. The people in that photograph are what a parent is really choosing when they choose a preschool.
If you would like to meet them, tours run during school hours and take about half an hour.
More from the school
Other posts
- 22 August 2026Our campus, renovated and ready for the new school yearDays before Term 1, we photographed the school after its renovation — the courtyard, reception, the reading nook, the hall and the classrooms. A look inside before the children come back on 24 August.
- 6 August 2026One month at Orange Crest for $500, until 22 AugustUntil 22 August 2026 our one-month trial is $500 instead of $699, with 50% off the enrolment fee and a free set of uniform. Term 1 begins on 24 August.