Stella Maris Primary teachers excited to be back in classrooms

Teachers of the Stella Maris Primary School in Georgetown were excited to return to the physical classroom on Monday, as they have had numerous challenges with online classes.

Miss Carlet Merson told DPI that she will now be better able to supervise her class with face-to-face sessions.

“The first challenge was getting accustomed to the online class, which I know very little or nothing about but I’ve made it through with that, another challenge for me is not getting to know exactly what the children are doing at home.

“My biggest fear is, are they listening, are they paying attention, are they even there listening to me? So that actually, to know the level or the amount of work that they were actually doing at home.”   

She added that she will be engaging her students on “one-on-one” discussions to understand their knowledge level and preparing little demonstrations and tests to help in the learning process.

Meanwhile, other teachers expressed similar sentiments and said they will find ways to work with their students so that they can learn effectively.

Miss Chandrani Persaud said she feels better being in the classroom since there will be more participation from the students.

“I’m enthusiastic …we have come up with a plan, hopefully we get to put that in place, lots of videos and stuff like that, to keep them, you know awake cause they would’ve been home and their brains would have gotten a little lazy,” she said.

Another teacher, Miss Kashau Persaud said she’s anxious to be back at school, but is however disappointed with the number of students that came out.

“Getting the children engaged today is quite a challenging task for me…but we’ll try to do our best, what I planned to do is to, do discussion through WhatsApp method and post it in the group in the evenings so the others who are at home will be engaged later on and will encourage those who want to come out.”

Miss Persaud said teaching online had brought with it some difficulties with internet connectivity and in getting adequate devices to teach. She has however committed to doing her best to ensure her students get up to speed with the work.