Francina Lanferman-Duncan is a teacher by profession and anyone who shares just five minutes talking with her about her job will also know she’s a teacher by heart.
When the national COVID-19 emergency measures were instituted at the start of April, one of Lanferman-Duncan’s biggest fears was what would happen to her students’ education and without any hesitation she got right down to business to fix that.
A mathematics teacher at the Essequibo Islands Secondary School situated on the island of Wakenaam, Lanferman-Duncan is said to be the first teacher on the island who took up the initiative of teaching students via WhatsApp. Since she made this move on April 4th, the day after a partial lockdown order was implemented, a number of other teachers in Wakenaam have followed suit. “I remember when we were told that school would be closed indefinitely and I said, ‘What’s going to happen to my students?’ Children are children [and] if school closes for a week or two, by the they time school reopens you have to go over every single topic because they were not engaged in learning during that period so being able to have a virtual classroom it gives me great satisfaction to know that they are still learning,” Lanferman-Duncan told Stabroek Weekend.