BY KARYL WALKER Editor - Crime/Court Desk walkerk@jamaicaobserver.com Sunday, May 18, 2014
ALTHOUGH faced with numerous challenges, principal of the Bob Marley Primary and Junior High School, Roxanne Williams, is determined to make a positive difference in the lives of the students whom she is mandated to ensure become upstanding members of society.
The institution is based in the district of Stepney and was renamed in honour of Reggae King Bob Marley, who attended the school when he resided in nearby Nine Miles as a child.
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| The contentious pit latrine. |
As a junior high school the institution is populated by students who did not manage to achieve satisfactory scores in the Grade Nine Achievement Test (GSAT) so the 11 teachers have a mammoth task of bringing the slow-learning students up to scratch.
But this has not dampened Williams's spirit and she is hell-bent on making the best of what she has to work with.
"It is a challenging environment. This is what I inherited, but we as administrators will have to come up with ingenious ways and use unconventional teaching methods to impart knowledge to the students," she said.
Chief among her woes are the lack of computers in an age where knowledge of technology is needed to move forward.
"We have only one computer that is in the administration department. These children don't know how to use computers and that is not good. We need to get these children on par with their peers across the island or sadly, they will be left behind in the race of life," she said.
The school has for years been getting assistance from the Bob Marley Foundation, which has built a classroom block and provides a $10,000 monthly stipend to offset the cost of the school's breakfast programme.
A representative of the Foundation told the Jamaica Observer that a move was afoot to acquire some computers for the school. more
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