At Singapore's Oldham Hall, a dentist and his family help turn a boarding residence into something more than a place to sleep.
The mess in our shared living room wasn't his. It wasn't mine, either. Another student had left the room untidy, and he could have asked us to sort it out ourselves. Instead, he offered to help me clean it. It was a small gesture, almost too ordinary to mention. No special occasion, no remarkable achievement, nothing that would appear in a school newsletter. Just a room that needed attention, and someone willing to give it. But I remembered.
When I first arrived at Oldham Hall, the boarding residence where I lived in Singapore, much of my life was still unfamiliar. The people, the routines, the experience of sharing a home with students from different backgrounds—all of it took some getting used to. The hall's orientation programme helped change that. I met fellow residents, began forming friendships, and gradually found myself becoming part of a community. Later came the gatherings that brought us together again: Thanksgiving celebrations, Chinese New Year festivities, evenings with pizza, snacks, and drinks. Yet it was often the smaller moments, the ones nobody had formally organised, that made the greatest impression on me.
One of the people behind those moments was a man whose primary profession had little to do with boarding schools. He was a dentist. Outside Oldham Hall, his work belonged to the world of healthcare, appointments, and patients. Inside it, he was one of the adults helping look after students whose lives continued long after the school day ended. To understand why he took on this second responsibility, I asked him about the path that had brought him there.
As a child, he had imagined becoming an architect or a lawyer. But in 1995, he experienced what he describes as a turning point in his Christian faith. He came to believe that God was guiding him towards healthcare, eventually leading him to dentistry. Years later, that same conviction shaped another decision. He believed joining the boarding community was “what the Lord wanted me to do.”
His wife felt a similar calling to Oldham Hall, and their children supported the decision. Rather than allowing these responsibilities to separate them, the family moved into the residence together. His wife also serves as a boarding mentor. For him, the move was not simply an unusual addition to an already demanding professional life. It was an expression of beliefs that had long shaped the way he understood his purpose.
That purpose becomes visible in surprisingly ordinary ways. Students know him through evening room checks and the small things he brings to make boarding life more enjoyable. There are snacks, pizza, drinks, and gatherings that give residents an opportunity to spend time together beyond classrooms and schoolwork. When I asked what motivated him to do these things, he did not talk about recognition or reward. Instead, he spoke about the love and grace he believes he has received from God, and his desire to share them with others.
It would be easy to reduce that answer to a simple description of generosity. But the longer I thought about it, the more I realised that his care was not defined by any single grand gesture. It existed in the repetition of small responsibilities, carried out even when there was nothing particularly memorable about them. At a boarding school, much of what makes daily life comfortable happens quietly. Someone checks on the rooms. Someone prepares a gathering. Someone makes sure that after the day's lessons and activities are over, there are still people looking after the place where students live. These acts may not attract much attention, but their absence would be difficult to ignore.
And behind them are people with lives and responsibilities of their own. When I asked about the challenges of balancing dentistry, family life, and boarding duties, his answer revealed a side of the arrangement that students do not always see. Because his wife also serves at Oldham Hall, much of their downtime is taken up by hall responsibilities and meetings. As a result, he explained, they “don't get to spend as much time as a family as we would like.” The same family that helps create a sense of belonging for students must also make an effort to protect time for itself.
I found myself returning to that answer. In a boarding community, it is easy for students to experience care without thinking about where the time for that care comes from. A celebration feels like an enjoyable evening; a room check becomes part of the routine. We see what these moments add to our lives, but not always what someone else has rearranged to make them possible. His faith gives him a reason to make those choices, but it does not make the practical demands disappear.
Yet when I asked what he wished more people understood about boarding staff, he was reluctant to place himself at the centre of the story. “I am quite happy to receive less attention,” he said. He described himself instead as part of a team whose members take turns filling the gaps when the daytime staff finishes their duties. There was something revealing about that answer, particularly when so much of what defines a successful school is measured through its students, teachers, examination results, and visible achievements.
Far less attention falls on the people whose work continues outside the classroom, whose contributions are woven so closely into everyday routines that they can become almost invisible. But the care provided by boarding staff is not separate from a student's education. For those living away from home, the experience of growing up also unfolds in shared rooms, late-evening conversations, celebrations, and the ordinary difficulties of living with other people. These are the places where students learn not only how to study, but how to live alongside one another.
When I asked what he hoped students would take away from gatherings such as Thanksgiving and Chinese New Year, he returned to the importance of recognising what people share despite their differences. “Despite different cultures, backgrounds, or citizenship, we are not so different from one another,” he said. Perhaps that is one of the quiet purposes of a boarding community: to make unfamiliar people feel less like strangers. Through shared experiences and everyday interactions, a place that initially feels temporary can gradually become somewhere students feel they belong.
Still, the most revealing answer of our conversation came when I asked him a question that seemed as though it should be easy. Could he recall a particular moment when a student had opened up to him, or when a simple conversation had made him realise that his presence had made a difference? “Nothing comes to mind readily,” he replied. He remained confident that he was in the right place, doing the work he believed he was meant to do, but no particular story immediately came to mind.
I had expected a memory. Perhaps a conversation with a student, a moment of gratitude, or an occasion when he had felt especially appreciated. Instead, there was that simple answer, and it made me reconsider what I had been asking. Perhaps the question itself assumed that meaningful care would announce itself through an extraordinary moment, something the person offering it would always remember. But care does not necessarily work that way. Sometimes it becomes part of the ordinary rhythm of a person's day, so ordinary that the person offering it does not think to turn it into a story.
The person receiving it may remember differently. I thought back to my arrival at Oldham Hall, to the unfamiliar faces that became friends, and to the evenings when the boarding residence felt a little less like an institution and a little more like a place where I belonged. And I thought about our shared living room. The clutter hadn't been his responsibility. He had a profession, a family, and plenty of other duties demanding his time, but he had helped me tidy it anyway. When I asked him to recall a moment when his presence had made a difference to a student, he could not immediately name one. I could.