Why COVID-19 isn't the only reason many Sask. students will stick with online learning when classes resume
While school students continue to enjoy their summer vacation, many won’t be returning to the classroom in a month’s time.
That's because the pandemic has led some families to choose permanent online learning, something Saskatchewan’s Flex Ed online virtual school is seeing the results of that firsthand according to principal Ann Cook.
“When COVID came, we grew by more than triple our student population,” Cook told CTV News.
Since numbers surged to almost a thousand enrolled students, administrators of the homegrown Saskatchewan school started hiring more staff and expanding their programs to accommodate the increased interest.
The numbers are anticipated to stay the same for the coming school year with a few extras expected to enroll over the next month. Cook says they have students and teachers from all across the province with two-thirds made up of Kindergarten through Grade 9 students and one-third in grades 10 to 12.
Teachers at the virtual school follow the Saskatchewan curriculum.
Before COVID-19, people came to the school for a variety of reasons.
“They came to us because they travel, or they’re training to be professional athletes, they have long bus rides or they live in a remote area, or they’ve been bullied, or they have anxiety or different challenges," Cook said.
"They’ve come for all different sorts of reasons and this year we are finding people are saying, 'we came because of COVID, but we’re staying for the great education.'”
In 2012, the program became funded by the province and while there is an enrollment or registration fee of around $300, sometimes the charge is waived if a student qualifies or if a family has more than three children.
The courses are designed to be flexible to accommodate different student personalities and learning styles.
Camdyn Leverick is a Grade 8 student and started Flex Ed last school year and says she likes the program because teachers give the assignments, sometimes in a group online lesson or sometimes individually and the students work through them at their own time.
“It helps a lot with learning time management skills and focusing on your work when you’re supposed to be working,” Leverick told CTV News.
Leverick says she wanted to try Flex Ed because working online is a completely different environment where you can focus on your own work rather than worry about other students in the class.
The Leverick family is opting to stick with online learning heading into the school year.
She says initially she wanted to focus on the schoolwork, but about four months into the program she joined the school’s theatre club, one of many extracurricular clubs offered and met friends with similar interests.
She also, found her marks improved since joining Flex Ed which is similar to what her brother Koehn saw also.
“Mine have definitely improved by a lot. I was probably a 75% student, now all of my assignments were over 90%,” Koehn Leverick told CTV News.
He plays competitive hockey and golf and is able to fit high-level sports training into his day.
The Grade 6 student says, he can usually finish his school work in three hours then the rest of the day is open.
Their mom, Kristy Novak Leverick says, she put her younger son, into the program because of some issues he was having in a regular school then as a teacher herself she bought into the program so much she was hired as a teacher with Flex Ed.
She is now the vice-principal and enrolled all four of her children in the program.
Her son is especially flourishing in the program, because he struggles with written responses to assignments, but has the option of using voice to text when handing in work, she says.
“Having that verbal option gives him the ability to put it all on paper, where if you asked him to handwrite that, you’d get a fraction of his knowledge because the challenge was too great,” Novak Leverick said.
In this case, the individualized program allows her son to get all of his work translated and then, his teachers spend more time showing him how to edit his work and ensure proper punctuation and grammar as being used.
The family plans to head to their cottage at Emma Lake in September while kicking off the 2021-2022 school year.
As for the Saskatoon Public Schools, a spokesperson tells CTV News the division won't know definitive enrollment numbers until September, but that its online learning centre was overwhelmingly popular during the 2020-21 school year with enrollment hitting 3886 students by March.
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
Doctors say capital gains tax changes will jeopardize their retirement. Is that true?
The Canadian Medical Association asserts the Liberals' proposed changes to capital gains taxation will put doctors' retirement savings in jeopardy, but some financial experts insist incorporated professionals are not as doomed as they say they are.
Something in the water? Canadian family latest to spot elusive 'Loch Ness Monster'
For centuries, people have wondered what, if anything, might be lurking beneath the surface of Loch Ness in Scotland. When Canadian couple Parry Malm and Shannon Wiseman visited the Scottish highlands earlier this month with their two children, they didn’t expect to become part of the mystery.
Fair in Ontario, flurries in Labrador: Weather systems make for an erratic spring
It's no secret that spring can be a tumultuous time for Canadian weather, and as an unseasonably mild El Nino winter gives way to summer, there's bound to be a few swings in temperature that seem out of the ordinary. From Ontario to the Atlantic, though, this week is about to feel a little erratic.
What do weight loss drugs mean for a diet industry built on eating less and exercising more?
Recent injected drugs like Wegovy and its predecessor, the diabetes medication Ozempic, are reshaping the health and fitness industries.
He replaced Mickey Mantle. Now baseball's oldest living major leaguer is turning 100
The oldest living former major leaguer, Art Schallock turns 100 on Thursday and is being celebrated in the Bay Area and beyond as the milestone approaches.
What a urologist wants you to know about male infertility
When opposite sex couples are trying and failing to get pregnant, the attention often focuses on the woman. That’s not always the case.
'It was instant karma': Viral video captures failed theft attempt in Nanaimo, B.C.
Mounties in Nanaimo, B.C., say two late-night revellers are lucky their allegedly drunken antics weren't reported to police after security cameras captured the men trying to steal a heavy sign from a downtown business.
Bank of Canada officials split on when to start cutting interest rates
Members of the Bank of Canada's governing council were split on how long the central bank should wait before it starts cutting interest rates when they met earlier this month.
It could take years to catch up on child vaccinations in Ontario post-pandemic
Ontario is still playing catch up on routine vaccinations that many children missed during the pandemic and public health officials are warning that it could take years to solve the problem.