At-risk students at the Swallowfield Primary and Junior High School on Whitehall Avenue, St Andrew, are being assisted in their fight for survival through the collaborated efforts of a few altruistic individuals and organisations.
This is being done through the Prevent A Dropout programme, the brainchild of Betty Ann Blaine, convener of the Hear the Children's Cry committee.
Staffers from the Royal Bank of Trinidad and Tobago (RBTT) have also come on-board to provide mentoring for the students.
The programme is open to students the aged 13 to 15 who are finding it difficult to stay in school because of numerous social and academic challenges.
So far, the project, which started in September 2007, has resulted in remarkable turnarounds for close to 30 students.
Programme coordinator, Maxine Cooper, yesterday told The Gleaner that all the students from the group last year were successful in the Grade Six Achievement Test, passing for top high schools.
Unfortunately, however, only 28 were able to move on to high school as two of the girls became pregnant before graduation.
Prevent A Dropout provides remedial learning, life skills, careers, mentorship and parenting classes (for the parents), counselling and guidance for the students.
Thriving school campus
A visit to the institution yesterday revealed a thriving school campus with active and energetic students. They appeared no different from students in any other school across the country; but unfortunately, deep within the recesses of this apparently functional environment are a few children who carry burdens not even the strongest, most well-adjusted adult should ever have to bear.
Mathematics teacher Novelette Caldwell said this year had proven to be even more challenging because of the myriad of social and psychological issues affecting many of the students.
"They come from different homes and different situations. Some of them are from homes where there is no parental supervision and I think that that's the main issue that we have," she informed.
Cooper and Caldwell said that in most cases many of the children were in fact brilliant students who had been left to struggle on their own.
"No one has ever taken the time out to talk with them, to give them a listening ear, to let them feel special and needed," Cooper related.
"Last year, we had a young man whose mother and brother were murdered in front of him and his father was incarcerated," she informed. "That's a hard situation for a child to deal with."
She explained that this kind of experience undoubtedly affects the child's ability to learn.
"We found this year that we have a lot of non-readers, more than we had last year," Caldwell informed. She also said many students were not even able to do basic addition and subtraction.
"So we have to start from pre-primary level and work our way up," she said.
The women were, however, excited about the children's prospects in the programme.
"They show exceptional potential and they have become very excited about learning and interested in sitting their exams," Caldwell said.
athaliah.reynolds@gleanerjm.com