School’s out for summer in classic fashion

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This article was published 30/06/2022 (1360 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For the first time in three years, elementary students streamed out of St. George School — with melting freezies and garbage bags of leftover belongings in hand — to mark the end of an academic year altogether.

Angela Huntinghawk said she feels relieved her son finished Grade 6 with in-class instruction rather than online school, which is how the majority of Winnipeg students ended their respective levels in June 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“He’s getting the social interactions that he needs to thrive and to be confident,” she said outside the K-8 building in the Louis Riel School Division.

Shortly after 2:30 p.m. Thursday, the playground was packed with parents hand-delivering cards and tokens of appreciation to staff members. Students hugged their peers and teachers before beginning summer vacation. There were few dry eyes among school employees.

“Today was special,” said Robbie Mager, who had to wipe away tears more than once during an interview in his office, including after a student knocked on the door to thank him for being “a good principal.”

“I think people were dragging themselves across (the finish line), but they tried to make it as normal as they could for the kids.”

End-of-year concerts, convocations, field days, community barbecues and extracurricular celebrations are among the highly anticipated events that have returned to Manitoba schools.

The June 30 celebrations at St. George School resembled pre-pandemic traditions, but the principal said they culminated an academic year that was even more difficult than 2020-21. Even though COVID-19 remains an ongoing concern, there were many community expectations school life was resuming to “normal” throughout the year and it created uneasiness among both staff and students, Mager said.

Vice-principal Susan Ciastko said she is more tired than she has ever been in her 30-year career in education.

“We’ve also noticed it in the kids. They just didn’t have the same stamina as they’ve had in the past, but it’s OK — we made it. We had to get to the end for everybody to know what it was like again.”

More than 110 school days have been remote in Winnipeg-area divisions between 2019-20, 2020-21, and 2021-22. Students have missed approximately 20 per cent of in-person instructional days scheduled during that period.

While disruptions have been minimal this year — there were fewer than 10 face-to-face learning days cancelled in 2022, in comparison to roughly 60 in 2020, the novel coronavirus has interfered with academic and extracurricular activities.

Numerous classrooms in the city have made sudden pivots to e-learning due to COVID-19 clusters, high absenteeism rates or a combination of both. Countless individual students and teachers have also stayed home in response to positive test results.

Manitoba’s decision to lift public health orders around mandatory quarantine periods and masking in K-12 classrooms on an arbitrary date (March 15), came as a shock to many. Hospitals remain overrun with ill patients and the death toll continues to climb. Others, however, welcomed the shift to a new phase of the pandemic, which touts recommendations rather than requirements.

Following two difficult years of uncertainty, the last couple of months have been “encouraging,” said J.J. Ross of the St. James Assiniboia School Division.

“All of the things that we’ve done this spring since spring break are busting at the seams,” said the phys-ed and health education co-ordinator. “You provide an opportunity and (kids) are lining up at the door.”

Ross indicated when the province lifted most every public health restriction in mid-March, students flocked to join available lunch-time intramurals and extracurriculars. There has been record-breaking participation in activities including badminton and track and field in SJASD.

Meantime, there is excitement about the return of face-to-face send-offs for educators who have retired in recent years or are capping off their careers in 2022, said James Bedford, president of the Manitoba Teachers’ Society.

Some education workers who had planned to retire in 2020 initially held off amid all the uncertainty.

“You’re transitioning from being a teacher into whatever lies next and that’s a big occasion in any person’s life and many members want to mark that occasion. They want closure,” Bedford said, adding he has attended many in-person retirement parties in recent weeks.

Given this year has been “tremendously difficult” for teacher and student mental health, in part due to persistent and unprecedented staffing shortages, the union leader said there is much relief that summer break has arrived.

The 2022-23 academic year starts Sept. 6.

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @macintoshmaggie