Back to school challenges: First steps to ending one of world’s longest shutdowns

More than two years after Covid emptied our classrooms, students are resuming in-person learning. The lost time will be challenging to make up – but possible (after all, challenges are empowerment by default).

Millions of students throughout the Philippines headed to school last week as in-person classes began to fully restart for the first time in more than a two-year hiatus, ending one of the world’s longest pandemic-related shutdowns in a school system already plagued by severe underinvestment.

Our schools have long endured from shortages of classrooms and teachers, leaving the vast numbers of poor children who cannot afford private schools and rely on the public system with inadequate teaching.

Now, after losing more than two years of in-person interactions, schools face the monumental challenge of educating many students who have fallen even further behind. Going back to school will likely look a little different from what parents and children were used to before.

The threat is still here but it's okay to start from where we are and with what we have right now. As we welcome children back into the classrooms, let’s remember that this is the first of many steps in our learning recovery journey. As the trend puts it perfectly, “Papunta palang tayo sa exciting par t .”

For now, students are just happy to return to school. For two years, they only saw their friends and classmates on small screens, and this has caused severe mental and emotional stress more than we could ever imagine.

It will be challenging, but I know it's only a matter of time before we see the light breaking forth.