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Dear Ernest Manning High School Families, 

Thank you to all members of our school community for your cooperation and adherence to the guidelines outlined by AHS during the retrieval of personal items. For those members who still have personal belongings within the school, rest assured that they will be safe and available upon our eventual return to school. For those families with medical supplies stored at the office, please contact the main office to make an arrangement for pick up. 

March break is to continue as planned for the week of March 23- 27, 2020. I ask all Ernest Manning High School community members, including our staff, to recognize this is a “break” and is meant to be a time to enjoy family and to stay safe. During March Break, I anticipate communication will be less frequent, I still encourage you to check your email for system messages, and I will re-connect with our community after the March break. We continue to better understand the unusual and challenging events of classroom cancellation. We don’t want to overwhelm students and families with programming expectations or offerings while we settle into day 5 of this new reality. In addition, it is important that consistent messaging and resources are offered to students across the CBE and Alberta. The resources found on the CBE “Learning At Home” webpage have been reviewed by CBE staff and offer wonderful learning opportunities for students to engage in. Again, I encourage everyone to become involved in things that interest them and provide some physical and mental rigor. Maintaining a balanced and consistent routine for children, including regular sleeping and eating times, breaks for activity and outdoor time, and healthy boundaries on screen time are very important to bringing normalcy to our days. 

This past week has been met with a lot of mixed emotions. Hallways and classrooms are quiet and simply make up the structure of a building. The children, whose laughter and energy 2 | 2 is greatly missed, is clearly what makes Ernest Manning HS a strong and vibrant community school. As we learn new words and protocols such as social distancing and self-isolation, we are challenged to contemplate things that matter most and we are faced with uncertainty. Uncertainty is heavy! However, this notion of a “new normal” offers up the opportunity to re-align and take note of what is most important, what is truly valued and connect with loved ones. 

I would never have thought that I would be quoting the Chief Medical Officer of Health in Alberta, Dr. Hinshaw, but her advice is now more important than ever. Dr. Hinshaw tweeted, “The days and months ahead will be difficult for all of us. We need to face this pandemic together and respond to this extraordinary crisis with extraordinary kindness. I want to remind Albertans: it is together that we will overcome.” Take a deep breath, be kind to one another and take care of yourself, family and friends. 

Kind regards, 

Myra C. Hood​