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By profession I am a high school educator and coach. Our province closed schools back on March 16th, my last day in my school building was March 19th. Our provincial government unveiled a supplemental learning plan for students to be delivered using various platforms of distance learning. It has come with many mixed reviews, namely regarding marks integrity, which I will not get into here. I am fortunate that I am still getting paid in full regarding my job, as is my spouse who is a school administrator.
In terms of the land area size of Saskatchewan, where I am from, it would be the equivalent in land size to Texas, New Mexico and Maryland combined. We only have approximately 1.2 million people in the province however. As of today, our province has had 301 covid-19 cases with 3 deaths and 136 people recovered (of the 301). We have been required to follow both provincial and some federal social distancing recommendations. Only essential businesses are open, some day cares were permitted to remain open with an eight child maximum capacity. There is an inter-provincial travel restriction but nothing other than a suggestion to not travel unnecessarily within borders.
Our Premier (like a state governor) hinted yesterday that he will be outlining the loosening of some of the regulations by early next week. Sadly it has been hinted that students will not be returning to school before the summer including elementary, middle, and high schools along with post secondary institutions.
With so little occurrences and so many recoveries in our province, this news has really bummed me out as I was hoping that in the least we could return to school after our May long weekend, mid month. I don’t doubt that some of these social distancing measures have helped the situation, and it helps that I live where there is a low population density, but this lack of interaction and ability to go out and essentially “live life” is really starting to bum me out and I can’t envision me doing well or being in a great state of mind looking ahead over these next 10 weeks. My youngest is struggling with being cooped up at home all the time. I really hope commonsense prevails in both the US and Canada with regards to being sensible for letting people get on with their lives when there is not a pronounced risk to health, because my fear is that this is becoming more political than anything.
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