Over the past week, varying emotions have flooded over me - anger, frustration, empathy for my colleagues.

Within minutes of school dismissal last week, just metres away, one of my five-year-olds was shot. Since then, two more students have lost their lives to violence, another is hospitalised and three are being sought for questioning. In the last couple of months, serious blame has been laid at the feet of school personnel for students' academic failures. We have even been told that now that we have received an increase in salary, we must produce. For the record, teachers have been producing from we were being paid 'anaemic' salaries.

Performance can only be judged based on all the variables.

violence-torn communities

Many of us get children from violence-torn communities. Chil-dren enter our schools at four, six or 12 already rooted in society's new value system. The behaviour pattern set by some community members has resulted in children under 12 aligning themselves to gangs. Smoking and bearing arms are commonplace for them. They sit on the corner, and at home, and not only inhale the smoke from the spliff or cigarette but smoke it as well. They are taught that the rule of the don is supreme.

The behaviour of our politicians in Parliament and their dancehall role models does not help. Attacks on teachers and schools are the norm. At school, we try to get them to unlearn these concepts, but daily they return to them. Many of these students have lost their fathers to violence and have already vowed that revenge is all they want.

In any school system, it is a steep climb to get these children to succeed. The baggage they carry must be unloaded first. No learning can take place until their social issues are corrected. Moral authority rests in the hands of our leaders and community role models. Much money has been spent on different educational programmes in the last 10 years to improve education.

difficult to learn

Principals and teachers have benefited from local and overseas best practices training and visits, which we have used to enhance our instructional strategies. However, students who come to us hungry, tired from the previous night's gunshots, drunk from the inhalation and ingestion of illegal drugs and drinks, battered and bruised, as well as secretive about what happens behind their fences and walls, will find it difficult to learn.

Our role is to be what we want our children to emulate. Let us now walk the talk and set the standards for a new and better society. Many of us who have been talking, singing, preaching the venom that has caused our children to fall, must now stand, admit we are at fault and change the way we do things around here.

Colleague teachers, take heart, and continue to do what we do best - being mother, counsellor, friend, advocate, provider of lunch money, books, etc. Let us be judged not by how we are perceived, but by what God knows we have done.

I am, etc.,

S. WILLIAMS

Principal

Hope Valley Experimental