A new school year begins at Tiyan High with optimism, gratitude

A little over 24,000 students across the Guam Department of Education returned to school today for the new school year. In Central Guam, class is now back in session for 1,018 Tiyan High School students as their first day kicked-off.

The high school wasted no time getting their students acquainted back to the classrooms and socializing with their friends and peers. Assistant principal Joel Punzalan gave the runaround of how the return to classes went, telling KUAM News, "It’s great to see that they’re back in school. A lot of happy faces, they’re seeing their friends and we’re just ready to rock and roll to get a little bit more of the sense of normalcy."

"We’re back in operations, so all 1,018 have their schedules, the students that don’t have their schedules, we’re working on it right now and there’s just a couple of them. So we’ve had a very very smooth run this year so far."

Punzalan said that after experiencing the COVID pandemic, it’s good to have the students back on campus interacting with one another, the teachers and the staff. "Just to see the happiness of the kids and to know that face-to-face is the absolute best way for them to learn," he happily said. "I’m excited for this year and I’ll be glad to see the kids really progress and move forward with their education."

Taking a look into the classrooms, the students looked eager and excited to learn from their new teachers.

Science teacher Mary Garvilles shared she’s teaching five classes this year, but added that she wouldn’t have it any other way. "If they’re going to get anything out of my class, it’s who they are, who they want to be, who they are as productive citizens of our society," she said. "I teach science and so I want them to be logical, reasonable students that can help make solutions for whatever everyday problems that they have."

With the school year just starting, Garvilles already planned out what activities she’ll be having the students do. She said, "Lots of hands-on activities. I believe that students have different styles of learning so I try to use as much strategies, whether they’re visual, they’re tactile, they’re hands on, kinesthetic types of learners. But most importantly for me, it’s not about getting the answers, but how did you get to your answer and how did you process and be logical to get to there?

"So my lessons are, a lot of it are what we call STEM, with an engineering design process. I use a lot of lab activities in my science class and because this is anatomy, they’ll be doing a lot of dissections and a lot of creepy-crawly fun stuff that will just get them going with their mindset and how it applies to real life and how they can learn from it and also teach others."