Students share messages of gratitude with health-care staff
Students of Fairhaven School in Saskatoon want Saskatchewan Health Authority’s frontline workers to know that they’re grateful for all health-care workers do.
“We spend our days trying to stay safe from COVID-19 and some of the students pointed out that our health-care workers are willingly throwing themselves into this thing that we’re trying to avoid,” said Logan Fossum, who teaches Grades 7 and 8 at the school.
That’s why Fossum and his students decided the focus of their Thanksgiving project would be to give thanks to health-care workers for their sacrifices.
“The pandemic has taught us a lot about giving thanks,” said Fossum. “Kindness can make the difference between someone having a good day and a bad one. It costs us nothing, but it can mean everything.”
To show their gratitude – and as part of their unit on developing letter-writing skills – the students wrote letters containing heartfelt messages to health-care workers in Saskatchewan. Other grades also got in on the act, contributing thank-you cards, poems and hand-drawn pictures.
“I want you to know that we appreciate everything you’re doing especially with hospital beds being full and how overwhelming it may be coming to work and being in a building full of people who are sick with COVID,” wrote one student. “Even with all this chaos going on around the country, you are appreciated more than you know/think.”
Said another, “Thank you for working while COVID-19 is happening.”
Yet another wrote, “Thank you so much for your work . . . Stay safe. Everyone like me [is] cheering for . . . health-care workers.”
About 30 letters and 30 cards were delivered to units at Royal University Hospital (RUH) and Jim Pattison Children’s Hospital (JPCH) and shared with staff.
“Thank you so much to Fairhaven School! This special gesture means more than you know!” said Blaire Schwartz, operating room manager for RUH and JPCH. “In a time of uncertainty, constant change, and day after day of negative news, it is a wonderful feeling that the hard work of health-care workers is recognized. Watching the smiles spread across the staff faces as they read through the letters says it all!”
Fossum said the pandemic weighs on the minds of many of his students.
“They’re very conscious of following infection prevention and control protocols. They’re aware that they’re not just doing this for themselves, but for each other and each other’s families. They know it’s larger than them.”
