Karlie Brady

Journalist

The oldest and youngest students from across the Douglas Shire returned to school earlier this week much to the relief of many year 12 students at Mossman State High School.

With the easing of COVID-19 restrictions, students in kindy, prep, and years one, 11 and 12 were allowed to return to school after weeks of learning from home.

For Mossman senior, Shari Heke, leaning from home was a fun novelty at first but she never thought she would be so happy to be back at school.

“I was excited to come back,” she said.

“I missed coming and seeing my friends and it was much harder working from home than I thought it would be.”

Classmate Jay Heidke said the prospect of missing out on a chunk of her senior year for an undetermined period of time was troubling. 

“I was pretty upset that we had to miss out on some of the normal school activities, like going to our last swimming carnival,” she said.

“I thought school might have been put off for a while but we came back pretty quick so that’s good.

“At the start, I was a bit worried about how I was going to communicate with my teachers and all that but they handled it pretty well and made all the work as easy as they could for us to learn from home,” she said.

For fellow year 12 student, Brooke Hage, the school gates were a welcome sight on Monday morning after weeks of learning from a mixture of textbooks and online content.

“It's been pretty good coming back and getting to see my friends and interact with my teachers,” she said.

“People tell me that after graduation you're going to miss school a lot, so I guess this was a small taste of what it's going to be like, especially at uni where there is a lot of online learning at home,” she said.

Students in years two to 10 are currently still learning from home across the state but are expected to return to classrooms from 25 May.