Drive-by parade lifts spirits of elementary school students
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 18/04/2020 (2183 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
The COVID-19 crisis has separated Manitoba children from their teachers, but the staff members at Ryerson School did their best to reconnect with their students Friday afternoon.
A group of about 30 teachers, educational assistants and secretaries from the K-to-6 school in Fort Richmond staged a car parade through their neighbourhood, waving and chatting with students and their families.
The event came at the end of a full work day for staff and it became a morale booster for everyone involved.
“It went really, really well,” said Ryerson principal Kathy Bru, noting the idea has been used in other centres with good success. “I have to say, honestly, we didn’t know what to expect. Our community is a very diverse community and 60 per cent of the families don’t speak English so we tried multiple means of communication to get our message out to them.
“It was fabulous. It ended up taking us longer than we thought, about an hour, we were thinking 45 minutes. There were so many families out, either on their lawn or on their front step. When we went by the apartments we had families properly social distanced.”
Many of the vehicles were colourfully decorated and some students had prepared signs for the event.
“We got a lot of positive feedback from the families, saying it was the highlight of their day, and for all of our staff, it was the highlight of our last five weeks to see all the kids again, and their families, and how excited they were.”
The parade route was planned so the cars would pass right in front of students’ homes or they only needed to walk a short distance to view the festivities.
Ryerson has an enrolment of 282 students and Bru estimated she saw approximately 70 per cent of them along the parade route.
“I joked, it was the lamest parade filled with the most love in the world because we didn’t have any floats or anything like that,” said Bru, who informed her staff of the plan on Wednesday. “We decorated our cars as quickly as we could.”
Bru wouldn’t rule out a repeat performance.
“It was such a great way to end the week,” she said. “I mean, I think it would lose its appeal if you did it every Friday for the people in the neighbourhood, but I could definitely see us doing something like that (again).”
mike.sawatzky@freepress.mb.ca
Twitter: @sawa14