This article was written by high school student Michael Fuma.

In an unexpected address to the nation last Friday, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong announced the implementation of a month-long circuit breaker in response to the rapid spread of COVID-19, shutting down non-essential services and remodeling education to be home-based. For students, staff, and families of the Singapore American School community, this meant another full month of distance learning. For many of us students expecting to return to school this week, this was disappointing and somewhat distressing news for a variety of reasons, ranging from academic to social to extracurricular.

How will we be assessed?
What will happen to our grade transcripts?
How will we continue on-campus extracurricular projects?
What if the situation doesn’t get better after a month?
Will we come back to school at all?

These are all legitimate concerns—and scarily enough, nobody yet has legitimate answers. Take it from me as a section editor for the Islander Yearbook with publisher deadlines impending and piles of work still unfinished, “distance journalism” with no clear end in sight is just about as bad as it sounds. But it’s in uncertain times like these that it becomes all the more important for us to keep our optimism and work to support the rest of our community.

The high school administrative team has been working with resolute industriousness through frequent late nights and last-minute meetings in order to make the best decisions—and also some of the hardest—for the staff, students, and the wider community at SAS. One teacher described this as one of the best administrative teams he’d ever worked with. Our teachers have also had their already heavy workloads compounded by the difficulties of transitioning to an unfamiliar, remote medium of teaching. They, too, have also been toiling incessantly to ensure that online classes go on as normally as possible.

As students, we must now also do our part. We must be responsible by observing the Singapore government’s circuit breaker regulations, staying at home whenever possible and washing our hands routinely. We must be respectful by keeping distance learning running smoothly, behaving sensibly and appropriately during online class, as we would in physical class. But perhaps above all, we must stay positive as a community and extend our collective utmost to continue school and live as normally as reasonably possible.

As the future is not ours to see, this is a difficult time for us all. But oft-iterated are proverbs that the strength of a community is revealed not in times of safety and certainty, but in quandaries of difficulty and doubt. Indeed, by working as a community, we can and we will get through these uncertain times—together. So as we all continue to Zoom in from every corner of the Lion City, let’s do it the Eagle Way—and remember that while we are isolated, we are not alone.