New normal for MacLeod School

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This article was published 04/10/2020 (1818 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When schools in Saskatchewan were closed on March 20 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, nobody knew when students would have the opportunity to return to classroom settings for in-person learning again.

For three months students were given the opportunity to continue their education with remote learning options prior to their summer break. After months of planning, preparation, and implementation of strategies to promote health and safety protocol, students returned to classrooms on September 8.

Without any scenario in the last 100 years to measure returning to classrooms during a pandemic against, it was an unknown situation heading into the first week of school. Attending school during an active global pandemic isn’t something staff, students, or parents could have ever expected.

The Safe School Plan was developed by the Ministry of Education and the Response Planning Team to provide guidance to the 27 school divisions in Saskatchewan in preparation for the return. Each school division then used the provincial plan to develop their own return plan for the context of their school settings and then each school specified the plan to fit their community.

MacLeod Elementary School

Elementary schools provide different challenges with younger children not necessarily understanding the circumstances around a return to school with Covid-19 still active, but MacLeod Elementary School Principal Tammy Cole says the first day back went about as well as she could have hoped.

“The first day was great,” said Cole. “It was great to have the kids back. Having the kids back is the icing on the cake and makes absolutely everything that we had to do worth it. We were very happy for that moment. I’d say for the last month we’ve been working hard just getting everything ready.”

With staff and parents being in communication in preparation for the return, Cole says it made a huge difference and everyone was on the same page with proper protocols upon the first day.

“The kids were great,” she said. “All of our teachers had called all of our parents prior to make sure they understood when our staggers were and what had to be done each day with the kids coming off the bus and the kids coming in off the playground. They all knew we were meeting at the track and that’s where we needed to go and that went amazing.

“A lot of parents are really happy to have their kids coming back. Lots of parents did stay in their cars and a few were on the track—that’s where we recommend they pick kids up from—watching the kids line up. I think that the consensus is that things went well and that’s really good. I think that the kids are all very happy and happy to see each other. It was all very good.”

School might look and even sound different, but there weren’t any unforeseen challenges or situations with the return, Cole said.

“It went pretty much as smooth as we were hoping,” she said. “We have 14 bells now so there was just one glitch on one bell, but other than that there weren’t any big challenges.

“The changes will take time because they’re a little different than what we normally had, but they will become practice. Everything was just new in that sense, but we’re hoping everything will just become easier. At the end of the day all the bus kids got on the bus accordingly, so that was smooth. All the preparation and planning really helped us get ready for it and it went well.”

The reward for all the work that’s gone into the planning, preparation, and actual return was seeing the kids and giving them at least a somewhat normal experience again after months of dealing with the pandemic says Cole.

“Everybody was really happy to have the kids back,” she said. “For all of us that was the endgame. It’s basically been 166 days without children, so knowing that they were beginning to come today definitely led to lots of happiness.

“We’re very fortunate that here we have classrooms of students. The cohort part was kind of our normal practice. We don’t have any split grades and we’re very fortunate that our school is already in natural cohorts. It made it much more simple.

“We just had to make sure we planned ahead and communicated,” she said. “We had to make sure we had time set aside to do our school safety planning and discussing all those pieces. We’ve also communicated all of those out to our parents in advance. We felt like everything went really well. So far, so good.”

With a Covid-19 case within Indian Head Elementary School causing the school to start the year online, Cole says MacLeod Elementary School has the flexibility to make the same move to remote learning if a similar situation were to occur in her school.

“Definitely, yes we could (go online),” she said. “It’s all within our planning system. A parent letter just went out basically outlining those kinds of things (protocols if student or staff show symptoms or test positive for Covid-19). It goes through level one, two, three, and four so that they have a heads up of what could happen. We’re at level two right now and we want them to know where things could possibly go, if needed. In the orientation we had lots of great questions from parents about testing and protocols. We’ve been given guidance on all of those things from Sask Health, the ministry, and our school division. All of the planning just seems to have every important piece in place. We know exactly what to do with everything that could arise, we’re confident that we know what to do.”