LBI Secondary – an institution on a mission to make a noticeable impact

May 11, 2014 News

By Sharmain Grainger

The notion that there are only a few schools that produce the best performers or have the best teachers has long become a thing of the past in Guyana. And a number of schools, at various levels, have been producing the needed results to substantiate this laudable development.
Among them is a school that certainly isn’t listed among the ‘top bracket’ schools, but has a population (both teachers and students) that is intent on ensuring that its performance is firmly etched in local academic history.
That school is La Bonne Intention (LBI) Secondary, situated on the East Coast of Demerara.
In 2012 the school attained secondary status and is currently classified as a Grade ‘C’ school with just under 500 students and a teaching staff of 26. But this institution has in a matter of years proven that it is a force to be reckoned with.
This was particularly evident when a team headed by ‘Sir’ Reyon Frederick, Head of Science at the School, participated recently in both the regional and national science fairs, which were held under the theme ‘Providing Solutions for the 21st century’.
Moreover, the students with the keen guidance of their teacher embarked on a project which defined their view of a solution that has the potential of being worthwhile and long-lasting.

Teachers of the LBI Secondary School in the company of PTA President, Edwin Orford, at extreme right.

Explaining the project to this publication recently was ‘Sir’ Reyon, who disclosed that three Grade 10 students – Narayan Sikandar, Nandanie Makhanlall and Nadia Mangra – together came up with the idea for the project. And so with the theme in mind, they concluded that their project must not only emphasize sustainability but also cost effectiveness.
Moreover, the team members soon had their eyes trained on one of the most common materials around – plastic. Having accumulated enough to make a miniature walkway, the students, with the support of their teacher, were able to highlight how a person could easily build a durable walkway. The project entitled ‘Paving the way using plastic’, was brought into being simply by cutting plastic bottles into strips and gluing them together using a paste made of styrofoam and gasoline.
The idea behind this invention, ‘Sir’ Reyon explained, was to create a walkway that was cheaper than the customary concrete walkway.
“Plastic bottles could take as much as 450 years to biodegrade; I’ll be gone, my children will be gone, my grandchildren will be gone and that plastic bottle walkway will still be there,” the Science teacher confidently asserted. He pointed to the fact too that the project is one that takes advantage of recycling, since it was done by utilizing waste materials from around the environment.
“This doesn’t require you to invest too much money; it is cheap and it is also sustainable because 100 years from now plastic bottles will still be around,” he emphasized.
With the completed project, the school was able to participate in the Ministry of Education’s Region Four Science fair which was held at the Diamond Secondary School, East Bank Demerara.
The fair saw schools from across Region Four showcasing various innovative projects in the quest to compete for favourable recognition. At the end of the fair it was LBI Secondary that was able to take away the first place prize for the environmental science category of the competition as well as first place prize for the best overall project in the secondary division. The school also secured the first place prize for its project booklet which clearly explained what the project was all about.

The ‘Paving the way using plastic’ project that attracted first prize in the Environmental Science category at the Ministry of Education’s Science Fair.

And so understandably they were afforded the opportunity to head to Anna Regina, in Region Two, to participate in the National Science Fair with schools from across the country. And although they were required to ‘face-off’ with students from some of the country’s top secondary schools, Narayan Sikandar – who was deemed the project engineer of his team – insisted that he was in no way intimidated. In fact he simply described the experience as “awesome.”
But is wasn’t merely experience that the LBI Secondary School team walked away with at the end of the national fair, as their project was again adjudged first place in the environmental science category.
The outstanding achievements have given the LBI School confidence that “just about anything is possible once you put your mind to it.” And according to ‘Sir’ Reyon, the next move for the school is to participate in the Sagicor Visionary Challenge later this year, a regional Science competition aimed at promoting Science, Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subject areas.
The challenge, which is done in collaboration with the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC), targets secondary school students who are encouraged to identify a challenge facing their respective school, a school of choice, or community, and using STEM to develop effective, innovative and sustainable solutions to the challenge identified.
This challenge will see the winning school being able to secure enormous benefits, including a trip to Tampa Bay, Florida, United States.
“We are confident that we will be on that flight to Florida…It would be a great joy to achieve that,” said an understandably optimistic ‘Sir’ Reyon. He disclosed that although the school hasn’t a Science Department, since becoming a secondary level institution more efforts have been directed towards encouraging students to indulge in the sciences. In fact, the school has for the first time this year enlisted students to write science subjects at the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) level.
According to Head Master Sir Nardeo Persaud, there is no doubt that the students of the LBI Secondary School have the potential to reach higher heights, even as he predicted that the school will yield outstanding results when the CSEC results are unveiled this year.
As such, he noted that he and his teaching staff, with the support of the Parent-Teacher Association (PTA), are prepared to do everything possible to ensure that the performance at LBI Secondary does not go unnoticed.

Displaying some of the coveted trophies won at national competitions.

“In this school we don’t see ourselves as individuals, but as a family, and so we work together for the common good of all our children and these achievements have given us a further push to strive to do even better,” noted ‘Sir’ Persaud.
And since getting the school to a better standing is not merely the work of the teachers, PTA President Edwin Orford, highlighted that he and the other PTA members have been nothing but supportive to every achievement that the school has realized.
“We are looking for growth at this school and so we support everything that has to be done for our children here,” he assured.
The support of the PTA was not only instrumental in the school’s participation at the recent science fairs but a number of other activities, including Mashramani competitions, where the school was able to claim prizes for various outstanding performances.
Just last week the school was the recipient of trophies having participated in yet another Education Ministry-coordinated competition that was designed to highlight hazards present in the school environment. The Art and Essay competition embraced the theme ‘Safety and Health in the use of chemicals at work’.
Spearheading three projects in this regard for the LBI Secondary School were teachers Nathalie Hemraj and Nandanie Singh who worked with Seven Grade students Bryan Clayto, Dinesh Latchman and Yogita Dhaniram.
One of the projects completed examined the danger of stray animals in the school compound while a second considered how improperly placed instruments could be dangerous, and a third looked at the abuse of technological devices by students during classes.
“We decided to observe some of the things right in our school’s environment and it was those things that was applied to complete the projects,” the teachers disclosed.
With the use of informative collages, complete with informative details, the LBI Secondary school was able to secure first, second and third place prizes for its contributions to the Art and Essay competition, an achievement that has helped to further boost its competitive confidence.