Robert Lalah, Staff Reporter

Kevaughn Cowan gets a word of encouragement from his second grade teacher Mrs. McCalla yesterday at the Red Hills All-Age School in St. Andrew. - Rudolph Brown/Chief Photographer

Seven-year-old Kevaughn Cowan was a little testy yesterday morning when his mother dragged him off to school. With summer coming to an end and the new school term starting, the youngster was one of several students who were feeling down in the mouth.

It was Kevaughn's first day in the second grade at the Red Hills All-Age School in St. Andrew, and his mother just couldn't seem to get him to stop crying.

"Just relax, baby, it soon all right," she told him before kissing him on the cheek. The boy only pouted before blowing his nose on her blouse.

Encouragement

It took a loving hug and a long explanation from his teacher Mrs. McCalla to get the boy to finally crack a smile.

"You're growing up into a big boy and when you finish, you're going to get a nice job," she told him at her desk at the front of the small classroom. Kevaughn's mother was standing nearby and smiled when the teacher got him to stop crying.

At Calabar Primary and Junior High School in central Kingston, Claudine Bowen, a grade five teacher, was herself busy wiping tears away from several children's cheeks.

"It happens almost every year when the children come back to school. Some of them don't want to leave their parents and others just don't like being at school," she said.

Meanwhile, at the Rock Hall Basic School in the hills of west rural St. Andrew, principal Joy Carr-Roulston was having the same trouble, but she didn't seem to mind.

"Hee hee!" she chuckled. "Every year the babies come back, it's the same thing. But it's okay though, we love them, and that's why we're here."