Our children are not OK

THE THOUGHT of our vaccinated children heading back to school this month evokes some of the fears and panic I felt 12 years ago when I began teaching CXC English at the Youth Training Centre (YTC).

Wishing for Wings, my book about that first CXC English class at YTC, captures the fear I felt because I had never taught CXC English, but it turns out I had bigger problems to deal with than teaching a syllabus.

I had to deal with a culture of poverty and the violence that defined my students' lives. They couldn’t settle to learn until they dealt with the personal and social issues that defined their lives. I am sure teachers will face the same situation with students returning to school for the first time since this pandemic. Learning will be a challenge until teachers deal with the personal and social issues that stem from the isolation this pandemic caused.

I tackled the problem by carefully choosing literature where my students could see themselves and realise that they were not alone in the fear and confusion caused by their isolation in prison. I gave them writing assignments that helped them to process their anger and sadness while giving them space to define themselves and dream of a future.

I made education relevant for them. I had to process my own fears and realise I couldn’t just think about teaching a subject. I had to help teenagers become creative, confident, discerning and analytical thinkers. It turned out that 80 per cent of my teaching had to address their social, cultural and personal situations, and that made the academic learning exciting and meaningful for them.

My students knew I cared more about them as individuals than I cared about that exam. Their faith in me and my teaching grew. They dedicated themselves to the monumental task of preparing for that CXC exam with confidence because we addressed the personal and social obstacles in their way. Their learning transcended classroom walls and YTC gates.

Every child in this country is now in the position of my first class at YTC. Our children are not OK. They have been traumatised by a culture of fear created by a pandemic that isolated them, robbed them of important socialisation and caused deep psychological and social wounds that they will need to process for years.

The Government made the decision to put their physical welfare above their mental and social well-being, and I am saying now that we must live with that decision and do right by our children. We do our children a great disservice by skirting the issue of how to deal with the psychological and social damage this pandemic caused. Blaming the Government instead of seeking solutions to deal with the problem only makes our children political pawns.

Online learning offered new technological opportunities for many students. Children who read, spent more time with their parents and learned to explore new interests grew in immeasurable ways while at home. But these benefits for some of our students didn’t outweigh the social issues. Many students could not bridge that gap between home and school.

Any of the benefits achieved from learning at home don’t mitigate the impact of losing the structured life many of our children once had, and it worsened the damage done to children who had no structured home life. Now, we need to address our children's pain, fear and depression. We can’t just throw them back in school and pretend it is business as usual. They are going to act out, bully, disappear inside of themselves or just disappear from school. The introverts are going to feel social overload.

We have to make learning more relevant than ever to reclaim the children who dropped out during online learning. We have to marry the best of online learning and classroom learning, blending the two so that children spend less time in school and communities can take more responsibility for academic support through homework centres.

It’s time to realise that education is about students – not a syllabus the Ministry of Education tells teachers to cover. I know many teachers who teach that syllabus well by climbing outside of the box. Now, more than ever, those creative teachers must reach deep inside of themselves to find creative ways to reach students.

Teachers are facing classrooms filled with children who have suffered through the same trauma together. It is a shared culture of social isolation that will require much work to rectify.