Story of school

Written By: Manohar Regmi

 

Mostly, I wake up early in the morning because I used to go to work, starting from nine in the morning. But, after covid I lost my job.

I read both world war first and second, they were announced. Every single day I thought in these last two years the whole world is too much frightened not only because of Virus and all but also results that might be in coming future, Is not this unannounced world war? Every single country is fighting with this virus. Once in my university we were reading Einstein law of relativity (conversion of mass into energy) teacher told us that Einstein said he do not know about third world war but in fourth people will fight with stones, woods, and arrows. We asked how? Teacher replied that “maybe he wants to say that third war will be the end of human beings”. Is not this like what Einstein said? We lost many people, there is no medicine for this virus. Vaccines are on the way, but scientist are at the stage of finger cross.

A Man and his son with mask were rushing towards school.

I said “Ola Namaste! Are schools open?”

He said” yes”.

He added that schools are open because covid are less dangerous to child and teacher told him that child have high immunity power to wards these viruses. So, we do not need to worry much. He wants to keep his son at home, but he was worried with his studies so, he could not keep his son at home.

We used to see each other almost every day with the time we became friends. He is so kind and helpful. He is from Nepal. They were living in Almada from last three years. They like Almada very much. He mentioned Almada is friendly and has tolerant community with strong social cohesion. Almada favours cultural diversity, peace, and tolerance between different people. Alongside it has low crime rate and has fantastic climate.

One day he said that he is very much worried about his son’s studies.  His son is good in mathematics and can communicate in Nepali and English but poor in Portuguese and son’s teacher wrote an email to him saying his son is not good in Portuguese, cannot pronounce words correctly and behave like very small child, not motivated to his studies.so, he might need therapy. Father was worried and wrote  an email to the teacher asking,” what he needs to do? “

But teacher did not reply to this email. I asked him to forward that email to me and I forwarded that email to friend of mine professora Isabel, teacher at Monte Caparica and to my teacher professora Fernanda, works at ministry of education. Both teachers replied that it might be normal because Portuguese is not child’s first language. We also booked an appointment with the doctor and doctor also said similar things, we requested with doctor to book an appointment with speech therapist. Now, we are waiting for the letter form therapist.

On July, friend of mine was at school to register him for cycle 2 but teacher told him that his son must repeat cycle 1 because he does not speak good Portuguese and he was absent during covid. She suggests him to fill the matricular for cycle 1. It was already late to register him for cycle 1, teacher did not tell anything on time whether he must repeat, or he can go to grade 2. More to this, we found that teacher did not register him in the system in grade 1 last year.

We went to agroupamento, we spoke with sectaria and explained all the problems that we faced with the teacher. She was shocked and wanted to speak with the teacher. We agreed to meet other day. We went to the secteria with the little boy. She was again shocked and said that the teacher told student is a girl, but he is not.

Sectaria said that she spoke with director of the school and advised us to change the school and put him in the cycle 1 again. We had no choices and agreed. I wish all coming year would be good for him and I hope in new school he will learn to speak Portuguese. In his case we tried to find what is happening so we were able to find a little clue but there are many other problems related to children in immigrants’ community and parents still in confusion what is going on.

These little children do not have any other options because they are dependent to their parents and parents want to live in Portugal. There are many examples in the world, that immigrants have made the country proud of them. For instant, Sergey Brine, born in Moscow is the founder of biggest American companies ever founded Google. So, lets believe on them they might be the future leader of the nation. We request government to make students learning and ensuring no child falls behind.