Following the announcement by MOE that schools nationwide to reopen, Kuen Cheng High School students were ready to report back on Monday, 5 April 2021. To reduce the risk of getting COVID-19, stringent health guidelines to ensure safety of all are set. Hostel students returned a day earlier to unpack and organize after moving. The day of returning to School Hostel was a bustling affair, with Junior Middle One students – incoming batch of 2021 clinging onto their parents, and seniors excitedly greeting their friends that they haven’t seen in a long time.
After settling down in their respective rooms, many students were excited to get to know their roommates. Juniors were inclined to get to know their Seniors, who had varying attitudes regarding the new kids who seemed so very different compared to the years before. Adhering to the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) was also a new experience for all the students, as they were neither able to gather together after school to eat nor hang out in large groups.
The first day of school was the first test for the Juniors. From waking up themselves to getting everything done independently, they faced many obstacles. Some of them went home right after the first night, feeling homesick and crying; the ones who stayed seemed more independent and capable of caring after themselves.
Online Lessons were carried out in the School Library where there were convenient electronic gadgets and supplies. According to an anonymous source, there were many cases of students getting sent to the Discipline Department on the first day for using Messenger and Whatsapp to ask questions regarding assignments. Why the school administration would ban our communication by using the latest app in the mobile phone, especially with our generation being born into the internet era – the Information Age, is a mystery to us all, even to this very day.
The first few days, it seemed that even the administration was hard-pressed to handle such an influx of students. Most of the Senior Twos who had Online Lessons that day went without lunch, seeing as the caterers were too busy filling out lunch boxes that were supposed to be already filled to serve food for the rest. This led to a small uproar, with students complaining and feeling dissatisfied as the same situation went on for two days.
Night time self-study sessions were arranged in school classrooms. This year, School Hostel administration had students split into various classes, with students of varying ages in a class and a teacher to look after them all. It seemed as if the system wasn’t quite efficient, as the process of retrieving laptops itself took more than half an hour compared to the ten minutes of last year. Luckily, the process sped up the next few days, saving both students and teachers much unwarranted stress.
In all, the first week was relatively dramatic, although less than welcome. The new teachers seem to still be fitting in, not quite used to having to handle quite so many students who were used to another lifestyle, in another time long gone. Even if we do not go as far as to wish for things to become as they once were, we still hope that the administration can handle situations in a smoother way.
After all, this is supposed to be our second home.
