An­na-Lisa Paul

“It is a great feel­ing to be able to see my friends af­ter al­most a year at home and be­ing able to in­ter­act with my teach­ers again. It was an un­be­liev­able ex­pe­ri­ence.”

This was the word from a Form Four stu­dent of the Diego Mar­tin North Sec­ondary School, min­utes af­ter he ex­it­ed the com­pound yes­ter­day.

He as­sured, “We are ad­her­ing to the COVID-19 pro­to­cols to stay six feet away from each oth­er, wear our masks and sani­tise.”

Vow­ing nev­er to take the op­por­tu­ni­ty to at­tend class for grant­ed again, the 16-year-old Diego Mar­tin res­i­dent added, “It is a great ex­pe­ri­ence af­ter the past year to be able to in­ter­act with peo­ple out­side of my house again.”

Un­fazed by re­ports that a teacher had test­ed pos­i­tive for the COVID-19 virus last week, the stu­dent said school of­fi­cials con­tin­ue to sani­tise the class­rooms be­ing used as soon as ses­sions are con­clud­ed dai­ly.

Of­fi­cials from the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion yes­ter­day con­firmed the teacher’s last day at school was on April 15 and that, “the school has been cleaned us­ing COVID pro­to­cols mul­ti­ple times since then.”

How­ev­er, a 16-year-old fe­male Form Four stu­dent told Guardian Me­dia that she had opt­ed to log in to class­es on­line as “this is my pre­ferred medi­um right now.”

Say­ing the Forms Four and Five stu­dents who were al­lowed to re­turn to school on Feb­ru­ary 8, had been giv­en the op­tion to at­tend class­es phys­i­cal­ly or con­tin­ue with on­line learn­ing—the young woman said, “I don’t come to school every day, as I can stay home and still do the work.”

Asked if she had doubts about re­turn­ing and in­ter­act­ing with oth­ers, she shook her head in con­fir­ma­tion.

Form Five stu­dents at­tend class­es from Mon­day through Wednes­day, while Form Four stu­dents have their op­por­tu­ni­ty on Thurs­day and Fri­day.

Ad­min­is­tra­tive of­fi­cials yes­ter­day said there were no more than 40 peo­ple at the school at any giv­en time, which in­clud­ed stu­dents, school of­fi­cials, jan­i­to­r­i­al staff and the guards.

An­oth­er stu­dent said he was hap­py to be back as he had been re­ceiv­ing help to com­plete his School-Based As­sess­ment (SBA). His friend added, “It feels good to see peo­ple I didn’t see in a long time but I kin­da keep­ing to my­self be­cause I don’t want to get the virus.

“I com­ing to school for my own good and I have a pur­pose be­cause I need to do my work.”