By Staff Writer
College education started up mid-week last week and it has been a struggle for both teachers and students having to adjust.
Learning under the COVID 19 pandemic health restrictions environment is just one of the many major adjustments for everyone.
After more than 2 months of State of Emergency (SOE) lockdown, the assessments of where students are from their home learning is a major undertaking for teachers.
For Samoa College with its large school roll, the immediate concern for teachers since classrooms re-opened last Wednesday, was to police social distancing and making sure students wear masks.
College Principal, Ms. Karena Fa’asisila, said it is easier with students who practice health safety measures at home.
But being young young people with their own social rituals, trying to keep them from body contacts with their hand slap ‘high-5s’ greetings, is one example of the headaches for teachers.
Not all the students are back also for the Vaivase based school with only 3 of the 4 class levels allowed back, basically for health security adjustment reasons.
In addition to health issues, Ms. Fa’asisila and her teaching staff, have to find ways to speed up the learning for students who did not respond well to home learning.
The challenge according to the Samoa College principal, is to see how far back the students are with their learning and bringing them back to the levels they should be in at this time of the year.
Many of the schools went into electronic online learning to try and maintain students education while away from the classrooms.
Ms. Fa’asisila is hopeful the whole process of back to school adjustments can be done in the next couple of weeks and for everything to flow smoothly again for everyone.
The Prime Minister, Fiame Naomi Mataafa, in making the official announcement for the return to classroom learning, is assured of vaccination protection for the young people.
She highlighted the latest health update on the vaccination programmes where 88.3% of the college level age group of 12 to 17 years old already vaccinated.
The back-to-school return started with the National University of Samoa more than a week ago, 10 May 2022.
“All Colleges including those of the government, private and mission will resume this Wednesday, 18 th May 2022,” PM Fiame declared in her announcement.
“Primary schools will resume on Monday, 30th May, 2022 and pre-schools
will resume on Monday, 4th July, 2022.”
Vaccination cover for the younger age group from 5 to 11 years old are at 83.5% with the administration programme continuing at all district hospitals and centres at the TTM Hospital.
“Vaccination remains our best defence against severe effects of COVID 19, leading to hospitalisation or death,” the PM added.
Students in their school uniforms are again visible around central Apia at many of the common locations where they congregate before and after.
The busy Savalalo bus depot is the main gathering spot for most.