It will be a banner week for those working at the COVID-19 assessment centre in Okotoks.
Olivia Nemecek inspired her Grade 4 classmate at Good Shepherd School to draw pictures and create a banner to show their thanks to health-care workers – particularly the ones at the centre where her mom works.
“My mom and all the nurses I wanted to celebrate them and show how much I appreciate them by drawing pictures because I love drawing,” Olivia said. “Everywhere I am seeing these little signs “Wear a Mask, COVID-19."
“I thought they would like them and give them hope that COVID would soon hopefully end.”
The banner was ideal for the previously somewhat barren walls at the clinic. Those bare walls inspired Olivia’s mom, Laurinda Nemecek to create a class project at Good Shep.
“My mom saw the bare wall and thought it was so bare, so she talked to my teacher about it,” Olivia said. “My teacher got this huge roll of paper and he told us to draw needles, masks and the whole class had a lot of fun with it.”
Having fun and camaraderie among students couldn’t have come at a better time, said Olivia’s teacher Brendan Wyant.
“Ms. Nemecek got hold of me and we had been doing some online learning and she had done some of this at home — she thought it might be a good activity,” Wyant said. “So I got all the materials and all the kids contributed.”
The students had a one-day window for their piece of art.
The class had been learning at home for a couple of weeks and were back for one day — May 6 — before going on at-home learning as mandated by the provincial government the following day until May 25.
“It was kind of a weird day, with us being back for the single day and then having to go back again,” Wyant said about May 6.
“What I really wanted to work on that day is that we enjoy each other's company and we take the time to be with each other because I know it is something the kids have been sorely missing and I know it is going to be hard on them over the next couple of weeks with them being separated from their friends.
“It was important to find something that we could enjoy as a class.”
Showing the students’ thanks to health-care workers was a terrific bonus.
“COVID-19 has affected everybody in the class and we wanted to find a way to say thank you to those who have been hard at work with the pandemic response,” Wyant said. “Each of us has their own personal response to someone who works in health-care or we know somebody who has been affected. “We just wanted to say thanks.”
It was a positive way to go into a mandated physical break from her teachers and friends, said the banner’s creator.
“It was nice – I think everyone enjoyed it,” Olivia said.
