Monika Peternel’s eight-year-old son is just like most kids in his grade. He loves playing football, basketball, and video games more than his homework, even though his mom insists he should focus more on school because those things are “a privilege.”
And just like most kids in his class, Peternel’s son struggled with reading until he reached Grade 2.
The issue seems to be that Peternel's son, like many other children in his grade, had much of his education during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Her son was first enrolled in remote online learning before eventually being pulled out due to Peternel's struggle to balance her job and inconsistent class hours with her son. Instead, Peternel became her son’s teacher and did asynchronous learning with him.
“First day, I thought I was going to put my head through the wall," the Hamilton mom said. "The second day, I thought I was going to put my son’s head through the wall.
“Academically it was a struggle, especially since junior and S.K. are huge years ... especially for my son," Peternel said.
She wasn't the only one to notice these issues.
The Toronto District School Board released a research report on the pandemic’s impacts on kindergarten children in November 2022.
It broke down academic and behavioural issues, and their impact on children's school experience. This is based on surveys and interviews with parents, kindergarten teachers, and other educators during the pandemic and in the recovery process back to normal.
Despite how much schools did to ensure students aren’t behind academically, kids still lack the typical formal and informal learning from in-person kindergarten that could have given them opportunities to develop reading, writing, and numeracy skills, according to the report.
The TDSB report revealed 32 per cent of Grade 1 students did not meet targeted reading behaviour expectations in January 2021.
Many experts are not surprised, including Todd Cunningham, clinical psychologist and founder of Bright Lights Psychology Clinic, who is also a professor at the University of Toronto. He observed the struggles among children.
“By the time we’re moving into Grade 1, we’ve laid all those foundations. But again, those kids who went through COVID during kindergarten, we’re still taking some time to learn some of those foundational pieces,” Cunningham said.
He said young boys were seen to have suffered more from these consequences than girls. The typical conditioning within kindergarten that teaches them school-based routines is lost on them, “because they’re just being boys.”
Sitting in class for long periods, using language more appropriate for school-based routines, and engaging in language-based activities are a few activities boys were seen to be struggling with as opposed to girls, Cunningham said.
Children aren't only struggling with academics.
Teachers observed new behaviours in children, attributed to the lack of social opportunities and family pressures during the pandemic, according to the TDSB report.
They included socially withdrawing from peers or adults, physical and argumentative interactions with other kids, and higher levels of separation anxiety.
More extreme instances outlined in the report were the “adultification of children,” where kids incorporated trauma from home. Some kids would take extra food home from class for their families. Others would include issues like financial insecurity during playtime rather than make-believe, the TDSB report stated.
“Kids who were very close with their families having now transitioned back into schools, that creates more stress for them as they have to navigate the complex social life of school. So, it’s not surprising that we’re seeing these higher stressors,” Cunningham said.
The TDSB report explored possible methods of tackling these issues, including emphasizing building relationships with families, or incorporating more playing while learning through interactive games. Both strategies were reported to be effective, giving parents and educators more insight on how to support their kids.
Strategies like these, however, are not enough.
Cunningham said mental health literacy is important for educators to help kids struggling with the transition into school. He said he believes teachers should be trained to understand atypical behaviours from students and how to respond to them.
“Teachers understanding about how the behaviours are emotions, understanding how to understand and what creates challenges [in the classroom],” Cunningham said.
Kindergarten children weren’t the only ones to feel the repercussions of the pandemic. Gina Franchino, a Mississauga mother of a child with dyslexia, has had ongoing issues with the system dealing with children with learning disabilities.
Franchino said she was asked to attend a parent-teacher interview with her daughter's third-grade teacher. They discussed some issues observed in class, including her daughter's reluctance to read and her struggles with recognizing and spelling words. Her daughter was falling behind, and it wasn't her fault, she said.
"It's not a big school, so it's not like they always have people there to deal with things like this," Franchino said. "Her teacher recommended that she get diagnosed so we could get an IEP from the school, but we've been on the waiting list for more than a year now."
According to the Ontario government website, an Individual Education Plan (IEP) is designed for students who “have educational needs that cannot be met through regular instruction and assessment practices at schools.” These needs are often met with accommodations or additional programs outside of school.
A child is evaluated by the Placement, and Review Committee to determine if they require special accommodations, the website said. In Franchino’s situation, the diagnosis would be key to being eligible.
It's a common situation for children with learning disabilities. Dyslexia Canada, a charity that provides support to people with dyslexia, says families are often on wait lists for one to two years.
The lack of support from schools only emphasizes this problem. Following budget cuts to education by Ontario Premier Doug Ford in 2023, according to the Ontario Secondary School Teacher's Federation, many schools cut priorities with students in special education.
The union stated in April that the province’s underfunding of public education led "to worsening working and learning conditions in Ontario schools, which has fuelled an unprecedented staffing crisis for teachers and education workers."
It said the cuts affected students’ access to mental health services, and "a high number of psychologists, social workers, and other mental health professionals are leaving education because they can find higher wages and better working conditions elsewhere."
That means wait times persist for students across the province who need access to vital mental health support, the union said.
The cuts were not unexpected.
The Financial Accountability Office of Ontario reported in 2022 "that the Ministry of Education spending plan in the 2022 budget has a cumulative $6.0 billion shortfall that will need to be addressed either by allocating more funding to the ministry or by introducing measures that will lower program costs."
Despite these losses, there have been positive developments for students with learning disabilities, specifically, the integration of assistive technology.
Cunningham said the primary weakness of those with learning disabilities is symbolic processing. Materials provided online were often understood with assistive technology, such as text-to-speech, which allowed these students to excel compared to in-person schooling.
However, the lack of accessible support for these students creates hurdles within the education system despite the technology.
“[They didn’t] receive what we call remediation, the interventions to rewire the brain to be able to process symbols better, but it was so broken up [during COVID] that it didn't follow the fidelity of the programs properly,” Cunningham said.
“A lot of these students need to go back to these programs to be able to strengthen their abilities,” he said.
Peternel’s son has been thriving in the present day as a third grader. He received program remediation from a Hospital for Sick Children reading program called Empower Reading, a reading program developed for adolescents struggling with literacy.
“He still struggles with his academics, but like a normal amount for a kid,” Peternel said. “At least now I only have to worry about making sure he does his homework himself, instead of having to teach him.”
