Local First Nation schools prepare for return of students

Students will attend school two days a week and will be assigned learning at home when not at school. There will be two different groups that will attend the school: Cohort A will attend Monday and Tuesday and Cohort B on Thursday and Friday.

Director of Education for Sturgeon Lake First Nation Tyrone MacPherson told paNOW they’ve bought disposable masks for students to wear everyday.

“Masks within the classrooms or the cohorts will be encouraged but not mandatory within the classroom,” he explained. “Our teachers will be wearing protective face shields but when students are outside their respective classrooms such as the hallways, bathrooms or other public areas of the school masks are mandatory.”

To ensure there was parent feedback on the plan approved by their leadership group MacPherson explained they shared it over their local radio station and on social media as well as delivered it to all 283 homes in the community. They also held an information session for parents.

He added they conducted a survey with parents where he figures they had feedback from about 45 per cent (173 student families) of parents with students in the school. He said 27 per cent didn’t have the confidence level of returning their child to school. The rest of the respondents were good with the plan and felt safe sending their child to school. He said the feedback was important to get and is a reason why they decided to go with the two cohorts per week.

They will also provide remote learning for those who can’t or don’t feel safe returning to school. He said they’ve trained all staff on Google Classrooms as part of their delivery systems whether they’re in the school or not. They purchased around 170 chrome book laptops and mobile wifi devices.

He said from Grade’s 7 to 12 they have enough computers to cover everyone if they need to go to an online solution. And they will speak with parents of the younger grades to figure out how they can serve them in home learning and have prepared to do so.

“I think this is an excellent opportunity. The world is going to be a little bit different for a while as a teacher but it also gives us the model we’re using – the smaller class sizes and lower student-to-teacher ratio – it gives us a chance to really individualize instructions,” MacPherson explained.

Muskoday First Nation

The Muskoday First Nation Central School (MFNCS) has similar procedures including starting on Sept. 8, for Kindergarten to Grade 9. Pre-kindergarten students will begin Oct. 1.

MFNCS principal Liza Brown told paNOW there will be remote learning options for students who will be staying home.

“Between March and June, we had set up a system where we were doing home deliveries for home work so we’re going to maintain that,” she explained. “Within the first few weeks we’re going to be working specifically on getting an online piece put in place for our students who are at home to have their ability to do virtual learning with our teachers.”

The school will also divide them into two different cohorts who will attend school two days a week.

All students will be required to wear a mask to board the school bus and will have assigned seating. Masks will stay on until they’re in their classroom, where they will wash their hands before removing their mask. Although for every move out of their desk they will need to keep their mask on.

All these classrooms will have a regime of frequent hand washing throughout the day as well as hand sanitizer.

She explained all decisions came from the Muskoday First Nation Pandemic Planning Committee which included the health centre.

“Muskoday’s stance has been that until it is deemed safe that it’s best to be taking as many precautions as we can for the safety of the students,” Brown said.

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Ian.gustafson@jpbg.ca

by Ian Gustafson

Local First Nation schools prepare for return of students

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