It is often said that strength comes through in adversity and the teachers and students at St. George's Preparatory School have certainly proved more than willing to rise to the challenge left by Hurricane Fabian.

Five out of the school's 12 classrooms were damaged in the storm almost a month ago after a tornado ripped through the building, damaging walls, desks and chairs, and wiping out a number of text books, wall hangings and educational material.

But, two weeks after Fabian lashed the Island leaving a trail of destruction, the teachers at St. George's Prep rolled up their sleeves and headed for new surroundings.

They had salvaged what they could, ducking under fallen beams and reaching through downed walls in order to collect as many teaching tools as possible.

And yesterday, after just eight days working out of St. George's Community Centre, which used to be part of the old St. George's Secondary School, and after help from schools around the Island, passers-by could be forgiven for thinking nothing had happened.

Uniform-clad students aged between five and 11 sat quietly, attentively listening to their teachers; colour adorned the classrooms as educational friezes hid the blandness of the walls; and it was business as usual with the same routines and traditions in place.

Principal and teachers admitted it had been a hard slog to get the community centre school-like in such a short space of time, but they also acknowledged how lucky they had been to have such a stand-in facility at hand.

Principal Mary Lodge praised her teachers for working around the clock after Fabian to bring a sense of learning to the community centre.

"In the circumstances, we have been blessed," said Mrs. Lodge. "We moan about only having one phone at the school, about having to combine some of our classes, teachers and students having to share bathrooms, having no privacy in the administration area, and about losing books and other things, but we could not have wished for a better place to come to. And it could have been much worse.

"It really is as close to what we had at St. George's Prep as we can make it.

"We would normally have nine classes, but we now have 147 children in six classes because we don't have so many classrooms here, but everything is continuing as normal.

"We still have all the same routines and traditions in place. The children line up the same way, and we still have merit badges and all of that stuff. Just the surroundings have changed."

Mrs. Lodge said St. George's Prep, which is an aided school, may not be re-built for another 18 months to two years, but she is hoping to be able to return to the old site later this year with the help of portable classrooms.

Although the community centre is a good stop gap for the school, she said she wanted to return to the old system of having nine classes as soon as possible, instead of the system now, where some classes have to be combined with as many as 31 students to a classroom.

However, she said there were advantages, as well as disadvantages, to the move, and both students and teachers were making the best of them. On the down side, there is no art room, so teacher Kimberly Simmonds-Emery is mobile and has to visit each of the classes individually.

However, on the brighter side, thanks to the kindness of well-known musician Eddie Ming, who has a studio just yards away from the community centre, students can now have their music lessons in the surroundings of a real pro, with all of his studio equipment on hand.

Primary two teacher Anne Kermode is in her first year of teaching and is having to cope with a makeshift classroom that houses two P2 groups combined, instead of them being separate, as usual.

But to make matters worse, her colleague, who was teaching the larger P2 group with her, is now off sick so a substitute teacher has stepped in.

Yet, despite all of that, her classroom is bright and colourful, adorned with children's pictures, the alphabet, words and numbers. "My classroom at the old site was all done and ready when Fabian hit," she said.

"It was even prepared down to the name tags on hooks, and lesson plans were ready. But then the hurricane hit and everything was a mess. We decided to go under the beams to salvage what we could and we managed to save a lot of reading material, which was good."

But Mrs. Kermode said she had simply got on with the job at hand. Although she and P2 teacher Jo Dill had done most of the decorating in the classroom themselves, she said they were trying not to get too complicated because they would be moving again. "We feel we have been very lucky with this room," she said. "It's bright and spacious and it has air conditioning. The community centre, as a whole, has been fantastic.

"And, as for the kids, they have been awesome, and so resilient. They are all functioning really well."

Mrs. Lodge said although the curriculum had changed slightly, she did not believe the students' learning would be affected.

She said: "Some of the older teachers think it's going to probably be one of the best years we will have in terms of curriculum because we are now back to basics.

"We are back to reading, writing and arithmetic.

"Not that we didn't do that before, but the curriculum was greater before. We had computers in every classroom at the other site, but we don't have them here."

And she added: "The kids very much still have a sense that they are at school because all of the familiar things are around them.

"They have done well and we are very proud of them."