Weekly thread. Last week, my thread got lots of attention. Thank you to everyone who shared my thoughts. We returned to in person classes this week. No further cases that would keep staff or students out of school. Overall, it was a great week and it was nice to be back. /1 As predicted, not all of our students returned. Some have sports commitments they don’t want to miss out on, some have medical concerns, some simply don’t want to be forced to self isolate again. The unpredictable nature of this pandemic is weighing greatly on our students. /2

It’s 12:20 and I can’t sleep. I’m not afraid of getting sick or dying. For the last 2 weeks, COVID has dominated my thoughts. It’s everywhere I look - social media, television, road signs on Alberta’s busiest highway. I’m headed back to my amazing K-12 school in 7 hours. /1 We won’t have all of our students and staff there because of the fallout of our COVID outbreak. Some students who started the year with us won’t be returning, and I completely understand why their parents have made this decision. The lack of stability is incredibly hard. /2

A thread - data to back up my belief that we need to implement further restrictions in our province, now. Every metric - positivity rate, R value, the age of those being infected - is way too high right now. The variants may not be deadly, but they are far more transmissible. /1 In 10 days, my rural K-12 school had 15 cases (students and staff). Our grade 3 class alone had five cases. I am confident that some cases were due to inschool transmission. We moved to online learning 7-12 for a week. The whole school went to at home learning for 2 days. /2