ARE YOU READY FOR THE FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL?

 ARE YOU READY FOR THE FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL?

Next week marks the beginning of another school year for most Calgary students. During my lifetime I experienced 51 first days of school - 12 as a student, 5 in university, and 34 as a teacher. Every one of them was filled with positive anticipation and excitement! Somehow, I sense that the same joy that I remember is missing this year. It has been replaced by a feeling of uncertainty and gloom.

Last year’s school calendar was decimated by Covid with many shutdowns, isolations, restarts and disruptions. Students were exposed to a learning environment that challenged them on many levels. Some students worked successfully at home, while others found that at-home learning was very difficult to adjust to. My grandkids were at home four different times either from school closures or individual infections involving classmates. Students didn’t know what to expect from week to week and I think their learning was certainly different than it had ever been before. 

What they will face this year is also very uncertain. Calgary has been relatively restriction-free for the past couple of months but Covid infections are beginning to rise again and there is a cloud of uncertainly hovering in the air as we await next week’s start up. As a result, while students anxiously await the return to school to meet and mingle with their friends in a social setting, they are also reminded of what happened last year. What will this year look like?

Time will answer that question as it always does but I think we need to reflect for a moment on our first-day-of-school past experiences. I don’t feel they will ever return to the same joyful anticipation of the past before we were disrupted by Covid. Flu viruses have been with us forever. Covid is not a new disease: it is a variant of some former virus that we have just not been exposed to before. Viruses have been, are, and will continue to be with us forever. They may not be as serious as Corona has been, but the reality is that they will probably mutate into more infectious and dangerous forms in the future. The challenge is for the medical researchers and doctors to try to stay on top of the problem and become master vaccine-developers. They are challenged to stay ahead of viral mutating and that is no small challenge. Not only our new school years of the future will be determined by how successful they become, but our entire way of life will be affected. 

I don’t mean to sound pessimistic but rather realistic. Just as many other aspects of our life have been affected by Covid, our reaction and procedures to cope with a pandemic will continue to modify our personal lifestyles. Covid has reshaped our work place environment, our social interactions, our holidays and celebrations, our financial situations and how we behave and make choices every day. We are going to have to continue to become more flexible and adaptable to changes in our world that will be as significant as those that we had to face over the past year and a half. I think we best develop a mindset that recognizes that our lives have changed forever and will continue to do so. 

Over the next years, it will not only be the first-day-of-school feelings that will be different, it will become more far-reaching than that. There is an old expression, "You can never go back home” since the “home” as we knew it, has changed. I think that we can now anticipate that,” We can never go back to the life we used to have” as it will be impossible for the same reason! Enjoy today, plan for tomorrow, and fondly remember yesterday! 

I think I hear the school bell ringing!