Students from kindergarten to grade five could be back in Richmond classrooms part-time on June 1.
Ken Hamaguchi, chair of the Richmond Board of Education, said operating standards and guidelines are expected soon from the province on how this new phase of learning will work.
There will also be some part-time learning as needed for students in Grades 6 to 12 and remote and online learning will continue, he explained.
But many details are still unclear, Hamaguchi added, for example, how much time students will spend in classrooms, what the schedule will be, how students will be organized at schools and how many parents will choose to send their kids back.
Teachers are also waiting for guidelines from the province, but in the meantime, they are wondering how they will manage when they go back to classrooms, explained Liz Baverstock, president of the Richmond Teachers’ Association.
Some concerns are childcare for their own kids, health issues and workload issues, Baverstock said.
“When you have lots of questions, you’re anxious about what this is going to look like,” she said.
One big question is what classrooms will look like in this new era, Baverstock said, and it’s expected things will be structured very differently — fewer kids in a classroom, fewer kids moving around the classroom, a new classroom setup — and teachers need “concrete information” on expectations.
Baverstock said she’s grateful there are a few weeks before this shift back to the classroom happens, compared to some jurisdictions where school has resumed more abruptly.
Currently, teachers are creating learning plans and communicating and connecting with families and students in a very different way, given the “complete shift” in the teaching model, Baverstock said.
It’s incredibly frustrating for teachers as new things are continuously rolled out in the COVID-19 situation, but they are not given all the information they need, she added.
“(Teachers are) working incredibly hard and yet the variables keep changing,” she said.
But, she added, health and safety will remain the highest priority.
Details on the fall also haven’t been worked out yet either, Hamaguchi said. “Essentially we don’t know what September will look like.”Currently, the school system is in Stage 4 whereby there is care for children of essential workers and vulnerable children.
During the current pandemic, learning is broken up into five stages. Currently, Stage 5 is a full shutdown and Stage 1 is when school is fully in session. The school district will move into Stage 3 as of June 1.
