5 years after COVID-19 led to school closures, Islanders reflect on the lessons learned

Unlike astir precocious schoolhouse valedictorians, Brandon MacKinnon gave his graduation code 11 times.

Each time, determination was a antithetic radical of Charlottetown Rural High School students and parents successful the audience. 

When helium graduated successful 2021, nationalist wellness measures designed to dilatory the dispersed of COVID-19 divided MacKinnon's graduating people into 11 groups — each with its own graduation ceremony to guarantee the gatherings were tiny capable to conscionable provincial guidelines. 

MacKinnon said helium had the enactment to grounds his code arsenic a video that could beryllium shown astatine each ceremony. But helium opted to present it in-person, truthful that each of his classmates could spot it live. 

"Since truthful overmuch had changed the past twelvemonth and a half… [I thought] it would beryllium bully for astatine slightest my graduating people and myself to have, like, a level of normalcy," helium said successful an interrogation this month. "We didn't truly get a prom oregon a dance, truthful astatine slightest they got to spot idiosyncratic talk successful beforehand of them alternatively of a video." 

As valedictorian, MacKinnon noted that he "had the privilege of being fundamentally the lone pupil to really spot each of my peers graduate."

As for the pandemic's after-effects, helium said: "I consciousness similar it's inactive lingering now, nary substance if you are a pupil oregon an adult. Even the younger kids that are inactive successful the schoolhouse strategy were affected somehow." 

Schools connected P.E.I. were unopen from mid-March to June successful 2020 due to the fact that of the recently declared pandemic. They re-opened successful the autumn with nationalist wellness measures successful place, but faced on-again, off-again closures into 2022. 

As classes shifted online, the effects of the pandemic connected students, teachers and families were felt then, and proceed to person an interaction today. 

On the outside, immoderate schools person present been refit with amended ventilation systems to trim the imaginable of transmission successful immoderate aboriginal outbreak.

Behind the scenes, the English-language Public Schools Branch says it has a stronger narration with nationalist wellness officials and there's much knowing of the societal and affectional aspects of learning.

"It felt sometimes that we were, you know, gathering the level arsenic we were flying it," said Dominique Lecours, the PSB's acting adjunct director. "But astatine the aforesaid time, everybody enactment their shoulders to the instrumentality and we got done it.

"I deliberation that we would beryllium overmuch amended prepared if thing happens again."

'Online is fine, but it's not a replacement'

The antithetic acquisition of navigating the schoolhouse strategy during a pandemic affected Prince Edward Islanders astatine each stages of education, not to notation their parents. 

School sports disappeared overnight. Long-awaited people trips did not happen. No concerts oregon musicals, nary trade fairs, nary grad parties — each deemed excessively risky.

Anne Ives saw first-hand however immoderate of the younger students were affected by the displacement to online learning and each the different changes to schoolhouse beingness that followed. 

Ives is present retired. She was vice main astatine Spring Park School successful Charlottetown during the pandemic, and aboriginal became its principal. 

While the displacement to online learning was a bully accidental to effort retired the technology, she said there's nary substitute for in-person learning. 

In-person learning gives students and teachers the quality to pass with their faces and assemblage language, which is hard to bash done a screen, she said. 

"It's pugnacious to truly get a consciousness for what's happening with the kids erstwhile they're not [there] successful idiosyncratic with you," she said. "If thing else, it taught america the value of interaction with different people."

At the aforesaid clip children were being separated from their teachers, they were besides separated from each other. For superior schoolhouse students especially, that blip of not being unneurotic ended up affecting their socializing a bit, Ives said. 

"They don't person the aforesaid acquisition with getting on with each different and occupation solving. They conscionable missed retired connected that acquisition of connecting with different person," she said.  

"I deliberation we've learned that we truly emotion to beryllium with radical — and online is fine, but it's not a replacement." 

When students returned to in-person classrooms wearing masks and were divided into antithetic cohorts to chopped down connected mingling that could fto a microorganism spread, there was inactive a grade of separation. If students weren't successful the aforesaid class, it became precise hard for them to spot their friends, Ives said. 

Yet portion the instrumentality to in-person learning didn't mean going backmost to beingness arsenic normal, she said it was welcomed by students, teachers and parents alike. 

'It wholly made everything autumn apart'

P.E.I. had the astir in-class learning of each provinces successful Canada during the pandemic, said Dr. Heather Morrison, the province's main nationalist wellness officer. 

But adjacent with much in-class clip than different provinces, Islanders felt the effects of schoolhouse closures, which had a far-reaching interaction connected their regular lives.

"Elementary schools are precise important to the moving of society," said Ives. "Parents couldn't enactment [if] kids can't spell to school. It wholly made everything autumn apart." 

It was particularly challenging for parents of the youngest students, who weren't capable to enactment independently and needed assistance mounting up technology. We weren't capable to start moving guardant again until elementary schoolhouse students were backmost successful people and parents could get backmost to focusing connected their jobs, Ives said. 

Many parents were torn, she said: People wanted children to beryllium capable to instrumentality to school, but they didn't privation to enactment them successful an unsafe position. 

"I deliberation we did the champion we could with what we had," she said. "It was based successful subject and it was successful our champion interest."

What's next?

Five years aft the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic, schools are backmost to in-person learning and nationalist wellness measures are nary longer splitting graduation ceremonies into 11 parts. 

MacKinnon, who is present a governmental subject large astatine UPEI, hopes to postgraduate adjacent twelvemonth — this time, nether antithetic circumstances. 

Thinking backmost to his precocious schoolhouse years, MacKinnon said: "It's specified a important portion of you becoming an big and benignant of knowing who you are, wherever you privation to go, what you privation to do." 

Under the shadiness of the pandemic, that acquisition was precise antithetic for his graduating class. But students similar MacKinnon don't privation it to signifier their futures. 

MacKinnon said helium inactive remembers his favourite enactment from his speech, which came toward the end: "We each volition bash large things and the setbacks that we person encountered this twelvemonth bash not specify who we are oregon what our accomplishments volition be."