Sto­ry and pho­tos by Rishi Ra­goonath

Teach­ers and stu­dents of St Joseph’s Con­vent San Fer­nan­do took part a day filled with fes­tiv­i­ties on March 18 in ho­n­our of the Feast of St. Joseph and the school’s Recog­ni­tion of Ex­cel­lence cer­e­mo­ny.

The day be­gan with Mass led by Fr David Khan of Our La­dy of Per­pet­u­al Help RC Church who re­flect­ed on the life of St Joseph.

“In all of scrip­ture, we do not hear St. Joseph speak­ing. What we do hear of St. Joseph is what he is think­ing and we, as hu­man be­ings, can­not help but think of things, but are the things that we think about are things that will mer­it bless­ing, or are they things that we think about that will lead us astray?” he asked.

He con­tin­ued, high­light­ing the chal­lenges of mod­ern life: “We see how easy it is—we just passed through the sea­son of Car­ni­val—and we see how easy it is to fill our minds with the things that will not mer­it the bless­ing of our mighty God. How easy it could cap­ti­vate us and take us away from what is re­al­ly se­ri­ous and what is im­por­tant in life.”

Na­dine Joseph-Den­nie, Act­ing Prin­ci­pal, con­grat­u­lat­ed the stu­dents for their out­stand­ing achieve­ments and em­pha­sized the school’s mis­sion to shape ex­em­plary young women who are guid­ed by Catholic val­ues. She al­so ac­knowl­edged the ded­i­ca­tion and hard work of the stu­dents.

“We cel­e­brate the ded­i­ca­tion, per­se­ver­ance, and achieve­ments of many of our stu­dents. Ex­cel­lence is not just about grades; it is about com­mit­ment, cu­rios­i­ty, and the re­lent­less pur­suit of knowl­edge,” she said.

The cer­e­mo­ny was at­tend­ed by Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion, Nyan Gab­s­by-Dol­ly who pre­sent­ed a tro­phy to Pres­i­dent’s Medal win­ner Ali­cia Dipchan.

Spe­cial recog­ni­tion was giv­en to sev­er­al stu­dents for their ex­cep­tion­al aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance, in­clud­ing Zaria Ifill, Most Out­stand­ing in CSEC Ge­og­ra­phy, and Alex­ei Aqui, who was Most Out­stand­ing in CAPE En­vi­ron­men­tal Sci­ence. Oth­er no­table awards in­clud­ed Open Schol­ar­ships for Chelsea-Marie Scope in En­vi­ron­men­tal Sci­ence and Ce­leste Smith in Lan­guage, as well as Ad­di­tion­al Schol­ar­ships for Shar­nel Ali in En­vi­ron­men­tal Sci­ence and Ori­ana See­tal in Lan­guage.