By Heidi Nicodemus
STUDENTS will be allowed to attend face-to-face classes today as about a hundred public schools nationwide opened to slowly go back to pre-pandemic mode but despite this marked the Philippines as the two last countries in the world to do so after more than a year of distance learning due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
In an assessment report by the United Nations Children’s Education Fund (UNICEF), the Philippines and Venezuela were identified as the two remaining countries that have yet to return to a majority of in-person classes though Venezuela was ahead in resuming face-to-face classes for its more than 11 million students on the third week of October the current year.
With the slow reopening to face-to-face classes, many Filipino learners welcome the move, feeling ambivalent as they expressed excitement and apprehensions.
“I will (now) be able to focus my attention on the students and their studies, but somehow I am also nervous because I was not able to teach (in person) for one year,” one young student remarked in an interview.
The student described the situation as giving a little hope for normalization as even her parents have been clamoring to have face-to-face classes again because of the difficulties posed by the so-called distance or online learning system being implemented by education and health authorities to protect the health of learners and prevent them from being infected with by Covid-19.
The parent whose daughter was in kindergarten and not experienced in-person classes yet and is now in Grade 1 enthused that her son’s modular distance learning was quite difficult because her hadn’t had face-to-face classes due to the quarantine lockdowns.
She added that she herself experienced difficulties in setting time to teach her child but with the recent announcement that face-to-face classes would resume, she said she was confident that her child would now have her teacher help in guide her thoroughly.
Last week, education undersecretary for finance Annalyn Sevilla pictured the situation as triggering excitement and eagerness from most students who would be returning to school but she cautioned that the pilot implementation of in-person classes should serve as a chance to prove that the youth is the country’s hope for the future.
“Things will never go back to normal and we are creating this ‘new normal.’ And that’s OK, we have to show them that we can do it. If our children can demonstrate that it’s possible to build the new normal, then the adults could have the confidence that they can do it as well,” Sevilla concluded.
(Photo courtesy: Philippine Star)
