Due to the onset of a Covid-19 pandemic, government restrictions were enforced in order to curb the spread, thus closing all educational institutions at the end of March 2020. As a result, NGC Virtual was successfully launched on April 27th and it exceeded all expectations. At the end of the first week of virtual classes, our Director Yolande La Pierre expressed, “It was wonderful to be back out and interact with the students again. There were so many firsts to celebrate this week: virtual assembly, online classes, class-wide sing-alongs, homeroom group calls, photography sessions, starting a kitchen garden sessions, form-wide physical education, drama sessions, and the list goes on. I am looking forward to what week 2 will bring!” The sacrifice and outpouring of special skills from our teachers and many workshop facilitators that contributed to the students’ holistic development and learning was highly appreciated. The workshops and classes were fun, diverse, and well-rounded due to the sacrificial nature of the many facilitators and teachers that were determined to offer quality education to the students of NorthGate College. For this, we are eternally grateful! Here is a link to a video with the many highlights of NGC Virtual. CLICK HERE
With the ‘Stay at Home’ restrictions, our school’s lab was not available for the science students to complete experiments. However, with a little creativity, labs were effectively conducted virtually! In the photo below, we highlight the Form 4 Biology students who conducted an experiment on enzymes, looking at the reaction between Hydrogen peroxide and Catalase (an enzyme found in potato).
We said goodbye to our Form 5 and Upper Six students that completed the CSEC and CAPE examinations. This group has walked through the challenge of shifting goal posts with their CXC examinations, but they were ready! Their perseverance, commitment to process and determination to finish powered them through this examination. They received all the online support required from their teachers with NGC Virtual that enabled them to be confident in their assessments. We expect that they will all have glowing results and we look forward to the furtherance of their academic careers and their development as upstanding men and women of society.
We are now looking forward to the first term of the new academic year 2020-2021 with our students on NGC Virtual. Those that would have been in Form 1 are now graduating to Form 2 and the upward mobility continues for the other forms. They are eager to advance to the next form class and engage with the new challenges and knowledge that their new context will bring.