ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE AND A
COMMUNITY
IN A PANDEMIC Jilll Quirk and the Heloise Lorimer STEAM Team Virtual
Stay safe... stay safe...” this was my son yelling from the truck window. Our staff parade (April 9th) was a chance for us teachers to see our students from our truck or car windows, waving and wishing everyone a happy Easter. It was an emotional drive through the neighbourhoods. A way to make sure students know that we care and that we are always there for them. Global News and CTV were there to document the touching reunification of a community. This parade was a pleasant reminder of how much we NEED our community. Students and colleagues give us teachers more than they know. The whole community was buzzing! Currently, our lives as educators have changed. We communicate over google classroom and zoom calls. Every day at 2 pm I zoom call with the grade 5 students, playing games and communicating. However, our hearts are broken. We miss connecting face to face with our students. So, we try our best. What I’ve noticed is students especially want to share how they are staying busy and what
they have been creating. This especially happens over our Google Classroom Grade 5 Hangout Page. We try to make the online course content relevant to what is happening. On Earth Day, for example, we made bracelets out of plastic bags after reading the book, One Plastic Bag about Isatou Ceesay and The Recycling Women of The Gambia. The reality of living in a pandemic is that a lot of youth are feeling the stress, so we encourage students to know that they have the ability to help each other through this! The youth can be powerful ChangeMakers. A ChangeMaker is someone who notices something that needs to be changed or improved and acts on it. If you have read or watched THE LORAX, THE LORAX is a Changemaker. If there are no Changemakers “nothing is going to get better, it’s not!”.... So... we asked the students...
(continued on next page) NOW! \\ 45
