COVID-19 impacts continue to be felt in B.C. schools, students and teachers say
1st COVID-19 case in B.C. was reported on Jan. 28, 2020
Five years after the first case of COVID-19 was detected in British Columbia, students and educators say the effects of a pandemic that forced schooling online are still being felt.
On Jan. 28, 2020, B.C.'s first case of COVID-19 was reported in a man in the Vancouver Coastal Health region who had travelled to China. On March 17, shortly after the start of spring break, the province announced the suspension of classroom instruction.
Much of the next two school years featured hybrid and online schooling as school boards in the province adjusted their schedules and health officials faced criticism over masking policies in schools and the release of data on the spread of the virus in school settings.
Students whose schooling was disrupted by the pandemic say the loss of social connections that came with online schooling led to a difficult learning experience.
Lucy Howey, a Grade 12 student in Vancouver who was in Grade 7 in 2020, said it was difficult for her to remember to attend online classes when they became the norm.
"For me personally, I find it was really difficult to learn online because I learned better when I'm in groups of people," she told CBC News.
"There was definitely some subjects in school that I was struggling with because I wasn't learning it properly."
Teachers and academics say the pandemic led to a decline in student mental health, while the province's teachers' union president says some educators have yet to recover from the chaos and disruption of the pandemic years.
"It's like a physical scar. You know, things heal, things kind of go back to normal, but there's always that scar there," said Clint Johnston, the president of the B.C. Teachers' Federation. "We're still dealing with gaps that [were] created."
Johnston says that students who needed extra help and accommodations suffered the most over the course of the pandemic, and he is calling on the province to provide more mental health supports for students.
"To be frank, the world [students] are in now, it still has a lot of uncertainty in it ... they need support to be able to navigate that," he said.
Digital teaching a silver lining
Jessica Rizk, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Waterloo, was the lead author of a 2022 paper about how Canadian schools adapted to the pandemic's "new normal."
The paper's authors spoke to staff and administrators about how entire systems worked quickly to adapt in-person instruction to an online format.
"For a lot of students, there was increased anxiety, there was increased stress because, again, there's this new mode of learning," Rizk said. "But also for a lot of students, school is not just the place where they learn. This is their place of socialization."
Alison Ogden, an associate superintendent with the Vancouver School Board, praised the resilience of children and staff as they weathered the storm of the pandemic.
"We see teachers relying more, and having more proficiency, in using digital tools ... to enhance instruction," she said, when asked about the pandemic's lasting impacts.
"There's a focus on student mental health and well-being, and the professional learning that happened for educators during that time continues to serve students until now."
With files from Jon Hernandez