AMIDST the rising anti-social behaviour amongst students, Shantelle Morrison, guidance counsellor at Norman Manley High School in St Andrew, has appealed to stakeholders in education to implement programmes in schools that will help students cope during face-to-face classes since COVID-19 had kept them away from that setting for some two years.

According to Morrison, many children were exposed to a lot of physical, sexual and mental abuse while confined to a home setting.

She argued that the experiences during the period in which schools were shuttered generated negative behaviours in some children who have been displaying antisocial conduct in schools.

Morrison was a participant in last Friday’s ‘Healing Camp, the Student Edition’, which was organised by the Jamaica Association of Guidance Counsellors in Education (JAGCE) at Church on the Rock in St Andrew.

JAGCE accommodated more than 250 students from primary and high schools islandwide, as well as guidance counsellors who accompanied them. The aim of the camp was to offer healing messages to the children who are hurting, in order to help them cope again in the physical school setting.

On Friday the students were split into groups and were taken aside and asked to highlight the challenges they faced and the pressures that were impacting them. According to Morrison, the students expressed disappointment with the lack safe spaces and that nothing has been set up to address the mental and emotional problems.

“While they were away a lot of negativity was spoken into their lives. Now they are back in school, they feel they just ran straight back into learning and nobody is taking the time to process their feelings and emotions. They would have experienced so much abuse, depression and anxiety and fear while they were away and they want a safe space to process those feelings.

“I think the biggest thing shared by the students is that they want a safe space to express their emotions. They were locked away and never had anywhere to release their negative emotions. I think they need consistency. We need some programmes within the school that will allow students to step away from the teaching and learning a little bit to go through all the emotional and physical trauma they would have experienced during the pandemic,” she said.

Two of the camp’s participants, Shaneika Brady and Ciara Cranston, said there was a struggle understanding their mathematics teacher, and being stressed by assignments, respectively.

According to Brady, “With the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate Exams [CSEC] approaching, I haven’t started studying. I have School-Based Assessments and I have to finish the whole a dem. With mathematics, I do not understand anything. I have to be going to other maths teachers to get an understanding. It just mek mi feel mad and angry.”

Cranston told the Jamaica Observer that throughout the pandemic she did not have a device to log into online classes. Sometimes, she had no Wi-Fi.

“When mi come back a school mi start fi pick up a little, but some a di things mi caan understand. That makes me frustrated. I missed my small number of friends and I wanted to come back to school to see them. Now that I get to see them, I don’t want to go back to school. Sometimes I just feel stressed. The teachers are stressing us out with assignments that they pressure us to do. I still don’t have a device to do the tests.”

President of JAGCE, Tracyann Taffe-Thompson said the message to students is that they can rise again from all their trauma and negative vibes.

“No matter the situation they are facing, they are to remember that they are destined for greatness. Whatever they learn, we are hoping that whatever is shared, that they will multiply and share it with their peers who are not here. I want to big up our four main sponsors, Page Turner Publishing, Bigga, Brainware and Promo Prints. We also had silent sponsors in the form of family and friends, who we thank.”