Manitoba students, teachers, parents navigate week of remote learning

Tens of thousands of Manitoba students got ready for a return to school Monday morning — most of them doing so from their own home.

The province hopes the week of remote learning that begins Monday will give everyone more time to prepare for a safe return to the classroom next week — but educators remain concerned.

Maples Collegiate principal Scott Shier told Global News he doesn’t know how teachers are expected to juggle back-to-class preparations — especially given COVID-19 public health restrictions — with teaching remotely at the same time.

“I don’t know if I could teach in these times. The stress that’s put on our teachers, they can’t teach the way they used to teach,” he said.

“We remind them of that many, many times over, but still it’s stressful for them because they feel like they’re failing their kids as well.”

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Shier said students are inevitably experiencing learning loss — particularly in areas like math and science — and it’s going to be difficult to properly distance everyone in a large school when they return on Monday.

“We’re trying to mitigate it as much as we can here. That’s our goal when our students come back, and our staff — we’re going to have 1,700 people in this building, so that concerns me.”

Although students have gone through periods of remote learning earlier in the pandemic, Shier says this time is different, because remote learning isn’t accompanied by a large-scale shutdown outside of school.

“They’re fatigued with this, and they’re with their friends outside of school, so they feel they can be with their friends in school,” he said.

The jury is also still out on whether the extra week at home will have any impact on the spread of the virus, particularly the Omicron variant now assaulting the province.

Epidemiologist Cynthia Carr said it’s hard to say what kind of benefit the move will have, as there hasn’t been much time to study the impact of the Omicron variant of the virus on the classroom — and with Omicron spreading “like wildfire” in the community, household spread is a greater concern.

“Schools were out over the Christmas holiday, and Omicron was first identified here in Manitoba around Dec. 7, so we don’t have a ton of schoolplace data,” she said.

“I can see the number of cases associated with schools, they were just over 1,200 between Dec. 22 and Jan. 4 — but for the most part, kids weren’t in school during that time period, so we’ll have to wait and see.

“You don’t have to catch it or transmit it in school for the schools to be impacted.”

For schools in remote communities like O-Pipon-Na-Piwin Cree Nation, 130 kilometres north of Thompson, remote learning isn’t much of an option — even as COVID-19 cases are on a sharp upswing.

Chief Shirley Ducharme said her community of 1,000 people has experienced 89 new cases in the past nine days, with more than 100 samples still out for testing.

“Because of poor Internet services, (remote learning) definitely not an option. That’s something that our First Nations and our leadership have been really pushing for.

“We are not as lucky as other people who can go into remote learning, so that really jeopardizes our students from continuing on with their education.

“Monday they will deliver homework packages, but that wasn’t as successful the first time around, because a lot of people don’t have the background and education that they can assist with their children, especially in the high school setting,” Ducharme said.

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