{"id":56541,"date":"2020-11-08T10:22:20","date_gmt":"2020-11-08T17:22:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/?p=56541"},"modified":"2021-02-08T09:52:46","modified_gmt":"2021-02-08T16:52:46","slug":"moms-battle-emotions-as-schools-open-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/2020\/11\/08\/moms-battle-emotions-as-schools-open-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Moms battle emotions as schools open up"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A boy just wants to have fun: <\/strong>Ashley Lynn Archer, with her son Austin, 6. at Chief Justice Milvain School in Calgary on Sept. 20. Archer is a single mom to one child, and recently returned to work. (Photo by Chantel Goldney\/SAIT)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I<\/span>t has been seven months since parents had to adjust to working from home, or leaving work to parent and educate their children.<\/p>\n

W<\/span>ith schools open again parents are not just relieved, but also anxious.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am feeling relieved in the sense I can dedicate my full attention to my job again with no distractions,\u201d said Leighanne Bishara, a mom working from home full-time.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I do actually miss having my son home with me.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Bishara is feeling relieved, moms like Ashley Lynn Archer are concerned for what will happen if her son comes home sick.<\/p>\n

\u201cI’m relieved that he gets to go back to school and have some normalcy in his life,\u201d said Archer.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut if he has to be quarantined because of some exposure while he’s been at school, and I have to stay home with him, it’s going to be devastating financially for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite financial hardships parents who had to stay home also had to be the teacher while working at their own jobs.<\/p>\n

\u201cI heard a lot of people saying how much they enjoyed working from home as it enabled them a better work-life balance but I didn\u2019t find that to be the case,\u201d said Bishara.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was still working full-time hours and because his dad was deemed essential it was just myself home with him. So I had to figure out how to juggle my workload plus his school work which resulted in longer days.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moms like Archer also faced anxiety.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was pretty hard at first because I am not a very good teacher,\u201d said Archer. \u201cI’m the kind of person who I’ll see him struggling, and I’ll just do it for him because it gives me anxiety to watch.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Alberta Health,<\/a> 13 schools had been affected by COVID-19 here as\u00a0 of early October. And while they were outside cases, parents are still keeping their children in school.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe chose to send our son back to school because he is at a very impressionable age where it is pivotal for him to be learning as much as he can,\u201d said Bishara.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith his parents needing to focus their time on full time work or studies it was important he received the attention he needed to focus on his learning.\u201d<\/p>\n

Archer had considered online schooling, but ultimately changed her mind as her son would have been the only child left at daycare during the day.<\/p>\n

\u201cI did have him enrolled in online schooling, but he was the only one enrolled,\u201d said Archer.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe would have been the only one left at daycare when everybody else went to school. So we switched to just going to regular school.\u201d<\/p>\n

But life slowly returns to normal, and parents resume a normal schedule with the new laws in effect.<\/p>\n

\u201cI started back at work on Sept. 8, and have been working full time since,\u201d said Archer. \u201cAnd he’s back in daycare, and school now so kind of back to normal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even as things resume back to normal during this time, parents such as Bishara continue to have concerns.<\/p>\n

\u201cI enjoy being able to focus but I do miss my son,\u201d said Bishara. \u201cAnd I do also worry about the pandemic a little bit with him being in school.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"
Conquering the playground: <\/strong>Ashley Lynn Archer, with her son Austin, 6, in the park at Chief Justice Milvain School in Calgary on Sept. 20. Archer is a single mom to one child, and recently returned to work after being home for many months during the COVID-19 shutdown. (Photo by Chantel Goldney\/SAIT)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With schools across the Calgary area open again, parents face many emotions of what that will bring as children return to classes. [ READ MORE ]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":641,"featured_media":56542,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_ef_editorial_meta_text_assignment-slug":"S1 Moms vs COVID","footnotes":""},"categories":[9,1560,1106],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-56541","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-life","8":"category-pandemic","9":"category-physical-health-and-wellness"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/641"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56541"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56541\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57671,"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56541\/revisions\/57671"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}