Kindergarten students have always had anxiety about their first day of school.
“Will my teacher be nice? Where do I line up? Who will be in my class?”
But one thing they won’t be worried about is how kindergarten has changed in a coronavirus world. There’s no “new normal” for them to adjust to. This will be the only normal they’ve known.
“In some ways the new safety protocols will be easier for the kindergarteners because they know no other routines,” says Eastview Elementary principal Rick Chan during a tour of the North Vancouver school in late August. “We start from where they're at and what they need.”
“September has always been about establishing routines so we're just going to have to start with new routines such as washing hands,” says kindergarten teacher Theresa Jette. “When the children first arrive they don't know how to line up as a group of 20; they're all over the place. We'll put something on the floor so we can teach them right from the beginning that this is how you have to spread out.”
Jette and fellow kindergarten teacher Marcel Eugene had just spent the past hour looking at the classroom with coronavirus eyes. How can tables be spread out to create physically distanced spaces while maintaining an environment of friendly learning? What can be removed so there’s more room to manoeuvre without bumping into one another? Where are potential congestion problems?
“It's such a partnership,” the district’s communications manager Lisa Dalla Vecchia says of how teachers and families will be working together to make school a positive experience. “Children have been living with this for a few months now so it's not too new and our teachers are fabulous. They're not going to scare our children. They're here to create a nurturing environment. It's the real world, but it's also kindergarten; we're not going to take that magic away.”
In a normal year, new kindergarten students would have visited the school in May. However, with schools closed this past spring, that wasn’t possible. Instead, the kindergarten teachers made a video and shared it with families. The school also hosted an evening session where parents sent in questions and joined a Zoom meeting where those questions were addressed. Each child has also been sent a school-specific manual to show them what to expect.
“Teachers are taking a deep breath and just agreeing to make the whole pace of the day a little bit slower while we all get in line with these new routines. We can do that in a really calm way when we just take our time,” says vice-principal Nicky May. “Let's all work together, walk this path together, and then we will move forward.”
Martha Perkins is the North Shore News’ Indigenous and civic affairs reporter. This reporting beat is made possible by the Local Journalism Initiative.
