Diego Vara
PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil (Reuters) – Tens of hundreds of scholars in southern Brazil have been with out faculty for a month after catastrophic flooding submerged some colleges and turned others into shelters, elevating issues about their psychological well being. Arrive in your individual classroom.
Practically one-fifth of Rio Grande do Sul’s greater than 2,000 public colleges stay closed, affecting about 185,000 college students.
“Our youngsters are utterly traumatized. When it begins to rain, they panic,” mentioned Raquel Teixeira, Rio Grande do Sul’s training secretary.
Rainfall that started in late April brought about water ranges in lots of rivers and lakes in Brazil’s southernmost state of Rio Grande do Sul to rise to document highs, inflicting flooding that killed at the very least 169 individuals, in keeping with officers within the state. Greater than 580,000 individuals have been displaced.
Simply north of the state capital, Porto Alegre, close to the GuaÃba River, which stays above flood degree, BrasÃlia Main Faculty stays partially flooded. The college’s soccer subject is a swimming pool, and the school rooms and books are lined with mud.
“We have an effect on infrastructure, bodily and materials; we have an effect on educating; we have an effect psychologically and emotionally,” Teixeira mentioned.
Elsewhere in Porto Alegre, Roosevelt Faculty principal Marcio Freitas mentioned workers knew they would offer emotional help to folks and about 800 college students as soon as they return to high school, anticipated in early June Lessons resume.
“To have this (flooding) scenario in our final yr of college, mixed with shedding our previous few years of elementary faculty (to COVID-19), provides us … a extremely unhealthy feeling,” mentioned Sophia Souza Assumpcao, a senior at Roosevelt Excessive Faculty.
Principal Freitas mentioned he has encountered many challenges in his work in public training over the previous yr, however none as massive as this one. Nonetheless, he mentioned, training doesn’t give us time to undergo.
“For those who fall, you need to rise up rapidly. That is the lifetime of training.”
