Where should I even start when I look back at my Grade 10 year? I am reflecting on the past year as a whole and is has gone by so quickly.
I started Grade 10 after an incredible summer where my family and I did some travelling an took a one in a life time trip to Europe. I started Grade 10 with the goal to make it a very strong year, academically, and with my involvement in the school. I talked a bit about how each course shaped up to be in the pages dedicated to my core courses. I had a schedule packed with extracurriculars, school activities, classes, volunteering and a new part-time job, and I was ready to take it in stride and do more and more. The year flew by and within no time I was taking the provincial Numeracy and Literacy exams in January. By the time the semester switched I was gearing up to have a second semester that was just as jam packed.
Then, Covid-19 shut down the world.
In no way am I trying to dramatize the global pandemic but that is what happened. Seemingly over night the world shifted. Many things were put on pause and priorities shifted to the basics; health and family. The impact of Covid-19 on the world and to each individual is a huge conversation that is continuing to unfold even now (7 month after Canada initially “shut down”). But looking at a small piece of it, how did it effect my Grade 10 year.
The shift from having an activity 7 days a week, to having my whole family home all day was so abrupt. Changing from going to school every day for 7 hours and being given a schedule of when to do class work and when to go have lunch to not having so much as an alarm set to wake up. My gratitude truly goes out to everyone who worked to keep others safe and healthy and to the teachers who put health and safety first and still continued to educate us in new and difficult ways.
So, my grade ten year was not what I had imagined and did not end the way I thought it would but it happened, I am going into grade 11. Grade 10 was still valuable in the course content, and the growth that I underwent, in large part due to the changed Covid-19 brought. Still I am excited to give my all in Grade 11 and even with a new look to education given the ongoing pandemic, I am excited to see what the next year will bring.