THUNDER BAY - The Lakehead District Public School board hopes to reverse a trend that has seen a growing proportion of SK students arriving at school with challenges that could affect their development and success.
Those challenges include the level of their physical health. Board officials suspect some of the children, even at such an early age, are spending too much time playing video games instead of engaging in healthy outdoor activities.
Evidence of the scope and nature of the problem comes from Early Development Instrument (EDI) data, retrieved from questionnaires about their students that SK teachers across Ontario fill out every three years. Over time, the data shows trends, and some recent results for the Thunder Bay area are worrisome to board officials such as Donica LeBlanc, Supervising Principal - Early Learning Lead with the Lakehead board.
"When we look at the Thunder Bay-Atikokan region we see that the physical health and well-being piece (which covers numerous things such as readiness for the school day, physical independence, and gross and fine motor skills) is one area where the vulnerability has increased by 6.4% from 2005 to 2015," LeBlanc told tbnewswatch.com.
She said the percentage of students with identified vulnerabilities is 23.8 per cent within the board's jurisdiction for the most recent assessment period, while Ontario's overall rate is 16.1 per cent, "so in comparison across the province, we are high," adding that she feels anything over 10 per cent should be considered "pretty scary."
LeBlanc said lots of children are saying "No, I don't do outside, I just play video games. I actually had a child say that to me one day. I felt sick."
While physical health and well-being is the area where the data show students are most at risk, the EDI data also identifies a problem in in the area of Communication Skills and General Knowledge.
As examples of communications skills, LeBlanc cited "the ability to tell a story, take part in imaginative play, communicate their own needs, articulate without sound substitutions."
General knowledge might be demonstrated by a student knowing that leaves fall from trees in the autumn, or that an apple is fruit.
Education officials have theories about what might be contributing to the students' difficulties, but say no one really has the definitive answer.
"We observe parents when they come to things like Best Start hubs or to child care or even coming to school, (and) lots of parents are on their phones...Some places have rules now where if you're with your child for this moment, you don't sit and text on the phone," LeBlanc noted.
She is in the process of setting up meetings to develop an action plan, but said solutions need the involvement of more than just educators.
"It's a city issue...We have to focus in...and start looking at our city collectively, really working on what we can do to support families," LeBlanc said.
She hopes that with the participation of community partners, some steps might be taken immediately to try to encourage outdoor play and the development of students' gross motor skills in schools.
"For example, instead of a teacher saying 'You know, if we don't get this done today, we're not going to the gym,' " that efforts are made to get every child to the gym every day.
LeBlanc feels that while some existing community programs "are wonderful," they don't necessarily meet the needs of children who are the most vulnerable. As a result, she said, these programs may need restructuring.
There may be cause for optimism that the trend identified in the EDI data in Thunder Bay can yet be turned around.
According to LeBlanc, vulnerability rates among children in Terrace bay and Schreiber have gone down following a community effort. "We're interested in finding out what they've done and what we need to do."
