Akash Sama­roo

Chil­dren in Laven­tille are miss­ing school but not in the sense of an in­abil­i­ty to ac­cess learn­ing ma­te­r­i­al, they long for in-per­son class­es once again.

They told Guardian Me­dia, the dig­i­tal plat­forms are not help­ing them re­al­ize their po­ten­tials.

“I’m a vi­su­al learn­er. If some­body tells me to do some­thing, I need plen­ty ex­am­ples. I’ll need to see them to ful­ly un­der­stand. If you send it by text, I won’t un­der­stand,” Form 1 stu­dent Hasi­nah By­ron said.

The 11-year-old, like oth­er Form 1 stu­dents, start­ed sec­ondary ed­u­ca­tion via dig­i­tal class­rooms.

It means that for al­most three months in­to the aca­d­e­m­ic year, Hasi­nah is yet to de­vel­op any bonds with her class­mates or teacher.

“In school I does usu­al­ly talk and talk and ask the teacher a lot of ques­tions but now with on­line class­es I don’t like to talk to them every minute, but then since I don’t know the peo­ple in the class, I feel em­bar­rassed to ask the teacher.”

A few streets away, 14-year-old Jay­don Solomon has sim­i­lar chal­lenges.

“I find the work hard­er to un­der­stand. When the teacher’s ex­plain­ing the work, she just ex­plains it once and that is it af­ter that, and then you don’t get enough time to ask any­thing af­ter be­cause each class is one hour long,” Jay­don told Guardian Me­dia.

The Form 1 stu­dent said he is not en­joy­ing vir­tu­al class­es.

“It’s lone­ly and bor­ing. Nor­mal­ly I’m ac­tive and play­ing but now I’m in­side all day. It’s not good.”

Jaydon Solomon. Form 1 student

His lone­li­ness was felt by oth­ers. In Mor­vant, 14-year-old Den­zel Mundy sat on the steps to his grand­moth­er’s house singing along to a track be­ing played on his phone.

Singing is one of Den­zel’s pas­sions which he shares with his friends in school. But due to COVID-19 reg­u­la­tions, he is, for now, a one-man-band.

“Sir, on­line school not go­ing too good you know. My friends and I used to walk home from school. We’d make jokes, play some in­stru­men­tals...I like to sing com­ing down the road.”

Den­zel is usu­al­ly an ac­tive stu­dent in class. He re­count­ed many times he was the first to vol­un­teer to an­swer ques­tions in school. He tries to keep that rep­u­ta­tion on­line but he miss­es the stu­dent in­ter­ac­tion.

“So, if I was in class, and I didn’t know a word, you try to sound it out but if you’re not get­ting it, you look to your friend next to you and touch them on their shoul­der and ask them. Some­times they might get vex and say to leave them alone or an­oth­er stu­dent would help you when they hear you get blank,” Mundy said while rem­i­nisc­ing with a smile on his face.

The work­load is al­so an is­sue for some. Near the St Barb’s bas­ket­ball court, an­oth­er Form 1 stu­dent, Jalila Best told Guardian Me­dia that she was strug­gling to cope.

Denzel Mundy, form 1 student

TIMOTHY CHASTEAU

“I strug­gling sir. Some­times I have work un­til late in the night and I end up falling asleep while do­ing it. Even af­ter one class, there’s an­oth­er class and an­oth­er un­til they give you a lunch pe­ri­od but even dur­ing that time you have to eat and try to fin­ish some of the home­work they give.”

Un­like the oth­er sto­ries in this se­ries, there’s no call for do­na­tions but rather for ed­u­ca­tors to lend an ear. These chil­dren are mon­i­tored by the Roots Foun­da­tion and there is a high ex­pec­ta­tion of suc­cess from them.

But they too are not im­mune from the dif­fi­cul­ties of re­ceiv­ing an ed­u­ca­tion in the new nor­mal. The chal­lenges are mul­ti-faceted and na­tion­wide. Whether your house is on the south­ern coast­line or five min­utes from Port-of-Spain.

Hasinah Byron, Form 1 student.