Gull Lake School shares pandemic experience at board meeting presentation
It has been a very different and new experience for students and staff in the Chinook School Division to go back to school this fall during a pandemic.
Chinook trustees got a glimpse of this experience during a presentation via video conference during a regular Chinook School Division board meeting, Dec. 14.
Gull Lake School Principal Adele Kirwan and Vice Principal Deb Steinley made the presentation. They spoke about the implementation of the reopening plan at the school and also showed a video, which provided a sense of the changes required to re-open safely and the efforts to still make going to school fun and engaging for students.
Superintendent of Schools Steve Michaluk made some opening remarks and provided background to their presentation. He noted that the Reopen Chinook plan was at the centre of this year’s learning priorities document. All schools developed their own reopen plans that focused on the health, safety and wellness of their students and staff.
“Many adjustments have been made along the way and they continued to be made as circumstances change,” he said.
He expressed appreciation towards Kirwan and Steinley for their contribution towards the reopening process.
“Not only have they been flexible in their own plans, but they've assisted some of our other schools in the west cluster in helping us think through, much like other schools have done for each other,” he said. “So they've been great teammates, and I want to thank them for that.”
Kirwan and Steinley have been documenting their school’s reopening journey since August in preparation for this presentation, and it has been a beneficial experience.
“We weren't really sure what to think at the start, but now that we have been taking pictures and documenting this journey since August, we are so thankful for that,” Kirwan said. “I think there's been lots of times where we would not have made a point to take a picture or made a point to document something, not knowing that this was coming up. So we're really thankful that we've had all the photos and the opportunity for our staff to really remember what this journey has been like.”
Gull Lake School was originally going to make a presentation to a board meeting about hosting the 2020 Saskatchewan Student Leadership Conference, but that event with about 500 students from across the province was cancelled due to the pandemic.
These school presentations to board meetings will usually involve students, but the pandemic means it is not a practical option. Instead, this presentation only involved Kirwan and Steinley, who were both wearing face masks while keeping physical distance.
Kirwan spoke about some of the precautionary measures that were implemented as part of the school’s reopening plan to ensure students can remain safe. These measures are aimed at promoting physical distancing between students at different locations in the school.
“For example, only every other locker has been used,” she said. “In our computer lab you would see only every other computer being opened.”
The limitations on the gathering of students mean that school assemblies are now presented in a virtual format.
“So all our elementary classrooms are on Google Meets and I awkwardly stand in a gymnasium talking to myself while everyone is in their classrooms,” she said.
The video shown to board members contains footage of measures that were implemented as part of the school’s reopen plan to keep students and staff safe. There are images of students learning and participating in small group activities while maintaining physical distance and wearing masks.
The video features responses from students to questions about being back at school and how their learning environment has changed.
The video highlights another important aspect of the return to school plan, which is to still provide students with opportunities to have fun while they are learning.
There are scenes of students decorating doors in the school building for Christmas, which has been a longtime tradition at Gull Lake School. Students still got into the holiday spirit, even though there was not a Christmas school concert.
“There's some Christmas concert stuff in there that are just some traditions that we wanted to keep consistent for our kids so that they can have some expectations when they come to school,” Kirwan said.
The video shows a group of students performing a Christmas song while wearing masks and maintaining physical distance. There is footage of Grade 3 and
4 students visiting the special care home in Gull Lake to wish residents a merry Christmas. They are shown standing in front of a window outside the care home while waving at residents.
The video presented at the board meeting includes footage from an earlier welcome back video made by a group of Gull Lake School staff before the start of the school year. They performed a parody of the MC Hammer rap song U Can’t Touch This to introduce the new COVID-19 rules to students in a fun way.
This welcome back video and the video for the board meeting were both created by Neal Boutin, a high school teacher at Gull Lake School. The welcome back video attracted a lot of attention and was even featured on national television in a CBC News The National newscast.
“I think it went viral,” Steinley said about that earlier video. “Neal Boutin put that together as well, and he just shared it a lot and just got some attention.”
The daily challenge of providing a safe and fun learning environment for students during a pandemic can be stressful for staff. It is therefore important for Kirwan and Steinley to also take care of their staff.
“Some of the things we really looked at this year was staff wellness and how to make sure that our staff was coping OK with everything,” Steinley said. “We've done some culture kind of activities, COVID friendly off course. We did an outdoor game one time with the staff. We've done a trivia game where it was all about staff members and we had a sort of pumpkin gift exchange back in October. So we're just looking out for the wellness of our staff. That's probably been our biggest challenge.”