Representatives from the Department of Education and various sport and community organisations discussed the importance of coming together and continuous learning during the first official day of Bermuda public school yesterday.

Activist and former teacher Glenn Fubler, of Imagine Bermuda, believes this collaboration will bridge the gap between private and public schools on the island.

He explained: “We know that the students who go to public school are in one environment, private school students are in another one. “We have to melt that divide by bringing everyone together.”

Several others, including scientist Carika Weldon, Nekesha Holdipp, Department of Education social studies education officer, and Aaron Crichlow, founder and managing director of Bermuda Is Love, spoke during yesterday’s event at City Hall.

Ms Holdipp said students need to feel a sense of belonging while in school and that educators need to continuously adapt with the times.

She explained: “If you’ve been in education for any period of time, you recognise that it’s going to change because the world changes and demands change, so we have to do so.”

Ms Holdipp added: “It’s about helping develop [students] into their best selves, whatever that may be.

“It’s not about being prejudicial, but it’s understanding that children have various gifts and talents and we have to develop them the best way that we know how to.”

Dr Weldon said students can help adults learn and look at things differently.

She said: “I’ve done some science classes and they ask some questions — I say ‘that’s a really good question, I wish I had thought of that’, so we need to make sure that dialogue is open.”

Mr Fubler hopes to assist students by reinstating and modernising a “homework hotline” that existed in the 1980s.

He explained: “[The hotline] wasn’t overly used, we may have gotten about half a dozen calls each night, but the important thing was that people appreciated building that community.”

Planet Math and other organisations have shown interest in being part of the revived homework hotline, which may launch as a pilot programme next month. Other interested parties should contact glennfubler@gmail.com.

Support Public Schools Bermuda, which provides school and office supplies and other items to public schools on the island, and Bermuda Is Love, which is dedicated to ensuring that everyone’s basic needs are met on the island, were recognised with certificates during yesterday’s event.

Joan Dillas-Wright, the President of the Senate, Dennis Lister, the Speaker of the House of Assembly, David Sam, president of Bermuda College and several others committed to lifelong learning through a joint proclamation.

Part of the proclamation read: “The success of the learner requires interdependent engagement, forging connections in every aspect of our lifelong journeys.”

The proclamation added: “Guided by this ‘north star’, we commit to exercising humility, owning all of one’s mistakes reframing them as learning opportunities that call for a ‘take two’.

“As we, all of Bermuda, do what we can to embed this understanding throughout our individual spaces, such efforts will no doubt foster a greater collective cultural wisdom.”

Signatories also promised to “leverage personal agency to engage life’s challenges head-on for the betterment of us, thus benefiting the whole of our island society”.