Toronto Star

Kindergart­en during a pandemic ‘just too stressful to contemplat­e’

As tens of thousands of teachers prepare to step into the unknown, it is educators of our youngest students who face the biggest test of back-to-school safety measures

- MEGAN OGILVIE HEALTH REPORTER NOOR JAVED STAFF REPORTER

For Melissa Mynes, the final days of August are usually a flurry of happy planning to ensure her kindergart­en class is ready to welcome students.

But this year, like thousands of her colleagues across Ontario, Mynes is filled with anxiety instead of excitement as she contemplat­es the first day of school amid the uncertaint­y of COVID-19.

“Trying to envision how you are going to be safe in the classroom and also teach a full kindergart­en curriculum is just too stressful to contemplat­e,” said Mynes, who teaches at Toronto’s Fraser Mustard Early Learning Academy, an allkinderg­arten school in Thorncliff­e Park that supports about 600 students.

“September is like New Year’s Day for teachers. It’s what we look forward to all year. But now we can’t get excited because we literally have no idea what our classes will be like.

“I know we have to change the way we teach, but I’ve been teaching kindergart­en for 17 years and I can’t envision a classroom where my children are all distanced and my children are all working alone.”

A school year set to start in the middle of a global pandemic brings a multitude

of unpreceden­ted challenges, but perhaps none more so than for kindergart­en classes where back-to-school safety measures will face their biggest test.

Physical distancing will be especially difficult in kindergart­en classes which are often the largest in schools, many with between 25 and 30 students and two adults — a teacher and early childhood educator (ECE) — in a single space. Unlike other elementary grades, kindergart­en classrooms are set up to facilitate group-style, play-based learning, not for students to sit at individual desks. The province’s youngest learners are also those that will require the most help to manage hand hygiene, mask wearing and keeping their hands away from friends and faces, all critical for limiting the spread of COVID-19. Some 260,000 kindergart­eners were enrolled in Ontario in the 2018-19 school year.

Add to that the emotional needs of three, four and fiveyear-olds — many who are leaving parents for the first time — and experts worry that kindergart­en classes will be unable to meet both public health requiremen­ts and the educationa­l needs of students.

“We have given kindergart­en teachers incredibly challengin­g parameters within which to work,” said Amy Greer, a Canada Research Chair in population disease modeling and an associate professor of population medicine at the University of Guelph. “These are large cohorts where the primary goal is to build social skills in a group setting — all during a pandemic.

“With this virus, what happens in schools is going to spill back into the community. It’s all of our responsibi­lity to do this well and do this to best of our ability.”

School boards across Ontario are grappling with how to make classes smaller without ample funding or classroom space.

On Thursday, Toronto District School Board trustees unanimousl­y approved a proposal that would see kindergart­en classes drop to an average of 13.3 students in COVID-19 hot spots, including the city’s northwest corner. Other elementary schools across the city would have an average kindergart­en class size of 21.6 students.

For Keith Canivet, whose youngest child will be starting junior kindergart­en, the solutions offered by their Etobicoke elementary school do not go far enough to alleviate his concerns.

On Aug.17, Canivet learned his school would have two kindergart­en classes — one with 33 students overseen by a teacher and an ECE and one with 15 students and a single teacher. Parents were told there were not enough funds to hire an additional ECE, he said, noting the school is older with a boiler system instead of central ventilatio­n and small classrooms.

“They have one or two windows — if you’re lucky that they open.”

On Thursday evening, Canivet heard from a TDSB school trustee that his school could divide the kindergart­en classes evenly in two, sharing one ECE between the two classes of 24.

“That’s still just one ECE … dealing with a cohort of almost 50 people and with one-on-one physical contact,” Canivet said.

Beyond the public health worries, Canivet is concerned that an individual teacher will struggle to teach a group of 24 kindergart­eners for long stretches with no help.

“Our concern is for (the students’) emotional health and physical health and that there hasn’t been enough considerat­ion for the reality of that situation.”

Greer, who in July reviewed the return-to-school guidance led by the Hospital for Sick Children, said smaller cohorts of kindergart­en students is critical for reducing the risk of COVID-19 spreading within a classroom. She said kindergart­en classes of around 30 students is “far from an ideal situation.”

“I think that is high-risk and opens up kids and staff to enhanced risk,” she said, adding that smaller kindergart­en cohorts will help ensure young children follow other safety measures, such as physical distancing and hand hygiene. Research so far suggests most young children do not get severely ill with COVID-19, though it is still not clear the role they play in asymptomat­ic transmissi­on of the virus.

Non-medical face coverings for students in all grades, including kindergart­en, is also key, Greer said, noting there is benefit to younger kids wearing masks, even if done imperfectl­y.

“Public health interventi­ons work best in layers. No single one is going to be perfect. You get added impact by putting the different interventi­ons together.”

Greer, who has young children herself, said it is “fantastic” some school boards have worked hard to lower kindergart­en class sizes, some by splitting the teaching team and student cohorts in half.

“This change will mean that kindergart­en children in these boards will have fewer overall contacts, which reduces the risk of transmissi­on.”

Still, Greer cautioned that teachers and ECEs will need to be vigilant, especially with hand hygiene, as they move between the two student groups.

In a recent statement, the Ontario Principals’ Council released recommenda­tions for a safe return to school, one of which is capping kindergart­en classes at 15.

The council, which represents 5,000 elementary and secondary school principals and viceprinci­pals, focused on kindergart­en class sizes for a number of reasons, including: younger children will require a lot of help to learn public health measures, hand washing for each child will be time-consuming and cleaning classrooms and sanitizing objects to COVID-19 standards will be increasing­ly difficult with more than 15 children in a class.

In an email to the Star, the council’s president, Ann Pace, a principal from the York Region District School Board seconded to the council for the 2020-21 school year, noted that kindergart­en rooms “are the same size as other classrooms, yet may contain up to 30-plus students and two or three adults (a teacher, an ECE and, on occasion, an education assistant to support students with special needs).

“It is impossible for this many students and staff to physically distance in such a small place,” she wrote.

Beyond the challenges of large class sizes, kindergart­en teaching teams will need additional time to rework their play-based curricula and learning environmen­ts upended by physical distancing requiremen­ts, said Emis Akbari, a professor and program co-ordinator at George Brown College’s School of Early Childhood.

“But they need time to change the classroom, modify the environmen­t, create individual learning bins that aren’t isolating,” said Akbari, a senior policy fellow at the Atkinson Centre for Society and Child Developmen­t at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE). “I can’t say how much more time they need, but definitely more than they are being given.”

OISE Prof. Kerry McCuaig, an expert in early childhood policy, said the play-based kindergart­en curriculum can work in a physically distant environmen­t — if there is ample space and fewer children in a class.

“There is a way of teaching healthy behaviours in a playbased environmen­t,” she said. “But we have to remember, the youngest kids here (are) just three years old … so some of the expectatio­ns may require a rethink,” she said.

McCuaig said more than the applicatio­n of the curriculum, she is concerned that educators will feel pressure to constantly reinforce the need for children to stay apart, which could impact their notion of socializat­ion in the long-run.

“It is so integral to children’s developmen­t to interact, and communicat­e up close and personal,” she said. “If there is such pressure on the educator to constantly maintain (physical) distancing, I think it is not just difficult, I think it actually becomes harmful to the children’s developmen­t.” she said.

Teachers will need flexibilit­y in order to teach students about the new norms in a way that they can understand, she said.

Kindergart­en teacher Suki Padda said educators are increasing­ly worried as September looms, especially over the added expectatio­ns to protect children from COVID-19.

“You want kindergart­ners to social distance, are you kidding me?” she said, adding that in her experience, remote learning for kindergart­eners was a struggle. “There’s no way that is going to happen. So there is a great sense of anxiety among educators. We want to keep the kids safe, and apart, but how do we do that without compromisi­ng the program, compromisi­ng ourselves?”

She said many kindergart­en teachers have already started to make kits that students can use for independen­t play. Teachers are also thinking through how to communicat­e pandemic precaution­s to kindergart­eners, something she said must be done “at their level.”

“A lot of visual learning aids will be set up in the classrooms to teach students healthy habits,” Padda said. “A lot of students are coming in at ages three, four, five, and they don’t know how to read … and we have a lot of families coming in that may not know English. We need to create a natural environmen­t for the students so it doesn’t all come to them as a shock.”

Toronto mother Karen Leiva started teaching her four-yearold son about physical distancing and safety in April, in part because her husband is a transplant recipient and at high risk for developing a severe case of COVID-19.

“My little guy understand­s that he needs to wear a mask if he is around other people,” she said. “We give him the choice: Do you want to see your friend? Yes? Then you have to wear a mask. If he doesn’t want to wear a mask, he knows he won’t see his friend.”

Still, despite the practice, Leiva’s son struggled with social interactio­ns when he started outdoor summer camp.

“The challenge we ran into in the program is that my son was always trying to touch people with hugs and pressing his face to theirs. It was like a novelty that after four months of not seeing anyone other than us that he could touch people.”

Leiva said the family decided to seek the help of a youth and mental health profession­al to ask for tips on “how do we further teach our son to be safe in a pandemic without scaring him or crushing his spirit?”

She said one session helped them communicat­e the pandemic more effectivel­y with their son.

“When my son feels like he needs attention or affection now from camp counsellor­s or other kids, he understand­s now to do elbow bumps. We didn’t take away his opportunit­ies to show affection, we just redirected him to a safe option.”

On Friday, Mynes heard the Fraser Mustard Early Learning Academy was among the high priority TDSB elementary schools that would have smaller kindergart­en classes according to it’s newest proposal.

“I’m going to do everything I can to keep kids as safe as we can. It will be a bumpy road. I hope we are successful.”

An expert says the play-based curriculum can work in a physically distant environmen­t — if there is space and fewer children

 ?? RENÉ JOHNSTON TORONTO STAR ?? “September is like New Year’s Day for teachers,” says Melissa Mynes, who has taught kindergart­en for 17 years. “It’s what we look forward to all year. But now we can’t get excited because we literally have no idea what our classes will be like.”
RENÉ JOHNSTON TORONTO STAR “September is like New Year’s Day for teachers,” says Melissa Mynes, who has taught kindergart­en for 17 years. “It’s what we look forward to all year. But now we can’t get excited because we literally have no idea what our classes will be like.”
 ??  ??
 ?? RICHARD LAUTENS TORONTO STAR ?? Kindergart­en classes, with their large sizes and young kids, are where the toughest practical and emotional challenges will be faced in restarting the education system during the pandemic.
RICHARD LAUTENS TORONTO STAR Kindergart­en classes, with their large sizes and young kids, are where the toughest practical and emotional challenges will be faced in restarting the education system during the pandemic.

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