June 2020
COMMUNITY NEWS
RenfrewCollingwoodCommunityNews.com
Norquay PAC parents adjust to school at home by Deanna Cheng
The Renfrew-Collingwood Community News reached out to the Norquay Parent Advisory Council to see what life is like for their members and, in late April, two mothers shared their lives over the phone. The Vancouver School Board suspended all in-class learning on March 17, 2020. Three days later, the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation closed down all of its playgrounds. The school board has since announced a plan for students to get part-time in-class instructions, starting June 1. Students from kindergarten to Grade 5 will have school twice a week while Grades 6 and 7 will have school once per week. High school students will be contacted by their schools for further instructions. Leslie Bishko, a mother of one, said it was really hard to know and have clear direction at the time because guidelines and instructions changed every day for the first two weeks of March. She has settled in since. “I limit myself to reading one news article a day. That’s it.” She has also stopped looking at the websites tracking the number of COVID-19 cases globally. The silver lining of this situation is the opportunity for Bishko and her husband to be more involved with their 12-year-old daughter’s education. “It’s always been a little bit of a black box for us. We never really felt engaged with what was happening with her schoolwork,” Bishko said. “And now we are engaged, and I think that’s really important.”
Norquay Elementary re-opens on June 1 with a gradual entry plan for students. Photos by Julie Cheng The basketball hoops were removed from the Norquay school playground. It remains to be seen if they’ll be put up again when students return on a part-time basis in June.
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And the silver lining goes both ways. Bishko said her daughter sometimes struggles with going to the teacher for help because she gets self-conscious about being singled out in front of her classmates.
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