Students across the country are off for the Christmas break.
As we look back at 2022, we chatted with the man in charge of the Algonquin and Lakeshore Catholic District School Board.
Director of Education David DeSantis says over his decades of educating, he has never endured such difficult times as the pandemic.
“Our senior team has been in a constant state of leading in a crisis.”
“You still have to lead with grace and hope and tact and pragmatism and keep on an air of optimism, because at the end of the day our principals and vice-principals have to translate our message into our Catholic learning environment in the same way.”
“There’s been a lot of economic challenges in our families across our board and with that brings anxiety and stress and depression, emotional angst that our teachers have to deal with when the kids come.”
Online learning and the style of semesters that secondary schools had was also adjusted due to the pandemic in the early portion of 2022.
He says one of the important components coming out of the pandemic was social and emotional learning.
“Just learning all the basic values of being able to socialize, making decisions with one another, speaking nicely to each other, being able to problem solve and properly articulate how you’re feeling, to ensure that it doesn’t blow up.”
He says the social skills that become inherent with constant in-person education were lost for a lot of students.
