Teens hail return to classroom

TOWNSVILLE students have opened up on their online learning experience and their emotions on returning to school.

Year 11 and 12 students have just completed their first week back in the classroom after a prolonged absence.

Southern Cross Catholic College student Tyler Shaw said it was great to be among her peers once more.

“I am so glad to be back at school because I feel like I am very slowly getting back to my normal life,” Tyler said.

The 16-year-old said it was hard to adapt to learning from home and the increased workload of the ATAR system.

“I’m used to being able to ask questions and receive help straight away if I don’t understand something,” she said.

“But in saying that my teachers replied to my emails quite quickly and held Google meets (video calls) with the class to go through answers and explain things.

“I completed the majority of the work set in each class to the best of my ability so I believe I will be fine for the rest of the year. But it was very different and hard not being able to see my friends every day.”

Tyler said she was motivated to attack the back half of 2020, but was concerned some students won’t have the same attitude.

“I think many students will find it very difficult to find the motivation or get back into a normal routine, especially the students who weren’t completing the work from home.

“You will probably find that a lot of kids will drop out because of these reasons.”

As well as missing out on school, the Year 11 student hasn’t been able to get into

Hawks Boxing Gym tinue her training.

“It has been extremely hard not being able to box these last six weeks,” she said.

“My mental health has definitely been impacted. Hawks is like my second home so it’s been hard transitioning from training there almost every to conday to not at all for this large amount of time. Boxing is my escape from my busy life and helps relieve my stress.”

Fellow Hawks boxer Brayden Rawlins was also happy to see the end of home schooling. “It made it difficult,” he said. “I prefer being in the classroom. The teachers tried their best, and I was trying to focus on what I could understand.

“There was some thoughts of giving up, but you had all day to finish the work so I’d try and get it done.”

Brayden said that he was looking forward to resuming his work experience as a carpenter.