As the school year approaches, Yellowknife hurtles into the unknown.
Students are heading back to class for an unprecedented school year that follows an unprecedented summer and an unprecedented end to last year and graduation season. Parents, students and teachers will all be stepping into the unknown together, and if they can take solace in anything it is that hundreds of thousands of families across Canada are facing this all together.
Thankfully, Yellowknife has been relatively unaffected by actual Covid-19 cases and there is currently no active spread so all measures put in place for students – such as staggered class times, mandatory masks, reduced class sizes and blended online/offline courses – are precautionary.
How these new measures will play out and how this will affect our students' ability to learn, how they socialize or the impacts on mental health remains to be seen.
Like every other school across the nation Yellowknife is participating in a huge experiment. One that is too important to get wrong.
There will be growing pains and kinks in road and the Office of the Chief Public Health Officer will have to be as flexible as the school boards have been. With all of these new measures, it's possible some of the imposed measures will turn out to cause more trouble than they are worth. Our leaders should be willing to listen and adapt to what they're hearing from students and their parents.
More than ever, parents need to be involved in their children's education. The stress that the system is already under is well-documented. Now Covid-19 and the public health orders in place have added another layer of concern, particularly when it comes to managing the youngest children in the system, say those in Grade 4 and below, and their masks.
Parents know that most children have a notoriously hard time keeping track of their belongings, especially things like winter mitts. Now educators are also tasked with not only corralling youth and their gear, but they must also ensure they are wearing uncomfortable masks, keeping their distance and sanitizing.
There are different levels of ability in the same classroom. There is an emphasis on mental health. There are 100-point report cards that take two weeks for teachers to complete for the entire class. There is a lot of work that has to be done starting next week and it won't be easy for anyone.
So perhaps we can treat these Covid-related measures like a drill for the probable second wave of infections forecast for the fall. It is something that everyone, including teens and children, may have to get used to. Like any skill or sport, the more we drill, the easier it will become and perhaps the safer we will be.
But we can hold out hope that with our continued streak of having no cases we can eventually move past the severe health measures being put on students and return to an actual sense of normality, not just the "new normal."
Until then the community of Yellowknife will have to rally behind our students and educators.
If there is anything that can be said for Yellowknifers, it's that they are resilient and it will take a good dose of that fortitude to weather the next 10 months.