Teachers of the ABC Learning Centre in Green Island, Hanover, pose with male students last week Friday as they celebrated Boys Day. From left are Yvonne Samuels, Tamara Mullings, and Sheila Gardner.
Three-year-old ABC Learning Centre student Antwain Francis indicates, by raising his right hand, that he wishes to answer a question during Boys Day.-Photo by Claudia Gardner
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Claudia Gardner, Assignment Coordinator
WESTERN BUREAU:The ABC Learning Centre in Green Island, Hanover, staged its Boys Day last Friday.
According to principal of the early childhood institution, Marcia Allen-Murray, Boys Day was first observed three years ago.
Originally, Boys Day was centred around fathers coming in to be with the boys, so it was like a Boys and Fathers Day, where we invited speakers to come in and interact with them. Even though they are small, they recognise their roles as boys. There were no girls at school, and so they recognised the importance of having girls around, too, she said.
The boys were allowed to take charge of some of the activities at the school, including presiding over their devotional exercise and helping their teachers to tidy the classrooms.
They were also given a motivational talk in the morning by Corporal Shaun Anderson of the Hanover Fire Departments Fire Prevention Unit and were later treated to hot dogs and ice cream.
Senior teacher Yvonne Samuels told Western Focus that Boys Day was preceded by Girls Day, which was held a week earlier.
Most times, the girls are the ones who want to keep devotion, so the boys now get to display some of the things they have learnt. The girls are always the ones who want to sweep, and things like that, she said.
The next event on the institutions agenda is a fundraising banquet, which will be held on the school compound tonight. In addition, on June 30, the school will stage its annual graduation exercise, which will see 26 Kindergarten Three students being honoured in a send-off ceremony.
ACTIVE PTA
Allen-Murray said the schools parent-teacher association (PTA) had been very active this year. She said an events planning sub-committee of the PTA had helped to organise several fundraisers and parent programmes.
The ABC Learning Centre was established in 1994. Over the years, the small school has seen its students performing well in diagnostic tests.
Our record has been very good, Allen-Murray said. The primary schools are very pleased with the levels of readiness of our students for grade one. Our level is at a high standard, and so schools outside of the geographic zone readily accept our students because of their performance. They always master the assessment test administered by primary schools to incoming children from basic schools, she said.