PFFNHS students return to in-person learning in January
Mike Lawrence - Staff Writer
It’s official. Pelican Falls First Nations High School (PFFNHS) students are set to return to class for in-person learning for semester 2 after the Christmas Break on Jan 5, 2022.
Serving 24 First Nations communities within the Northern Nishnawbe Education Council and the Nishnawbe Aski Nation, PFFNHS usually hosts just over 200 full-time students.
As Darrin Head, Principal of Pelican Falls First Nations High School explained, while online learning posed many unique challenges, they were challenges the students rose to meet.
“Virtual Learning has been a significant challenge for many of our students at PFFNHS. The pandemic and subsequent move to virtual learning has highlighted the inequities that exist for First Nations communities in both access to education and infrastructure to adequately support education. Our students experienced and felt the impacts of these inequities every day while pursuing their education in a virtual environment. That said, our students demonstrated a considerable amount of resilience in navigating their way through this virtual environment and achieving the measure of success that they did, in spite of the inequities they faced. This resilience should be highlighted and celebrated and our students should be proud of it.”
The return to in-person learning will look a bit different this year, given that a small contingent of students will continue learning remotely.
Head went on to describe what the return to class will look like, explaining, “PFFNHS is opening for Semester 2 (January-May, 2022) in a blended learning model. This model consists of a combination of some students learning in-person and other students learning virtually, in the same class. Presently PFFNHS is anticipating approximately 140 students for in-person learning for Semester 2 and, through parental choice, approximately 30 students continuing to learn virtually. This total enrollment number is similar with our enrollment number at the beginning of the 2021-2022 school year.”
Head added that the return to in-person learning will follow similar guidelines to what provincial schools have instituted and will be guided by recommendations and through consultations with the Province of Ontario, the Ontario Ministry of Education, and the Northwestern Health Unit.
As Head goes on to relate, the prospect of having students return is just what he and his staff have been looking forward to, adding, “Pelican Falls First Nations High School staff are really excited to have students return to in-person learning. The past two years has been difficult on all of us. We have all faced many challenges in terms of education, mental health, and social/emotional well-being. We acknowledge that school will not be exactly the same as it had been pre-pandemic, but having us together again at the school is a welcome step back to something approaching normal, or at least a new normal.”