The Quebec government declared yesterday evening that Montreal and Quebec City have entered the red zone of the pandemic, which is the highest of alerts. They announced that there will be new health measures put in place to keep the population safe. The measures include not making any visits or accepting any visitors into your home, with some exceptions. As of October 1, 2020, all bars, dining halls, museums, libraries, casinos and cinemas will be closed. Restaurants will only be allowed to offer take out. These safety measures will be put in place for 28 days. The government is confident that if everyone does their part to remain socially distant, wear a mask and keep sanitizing their hands and living space, we can help to stop the second wave of the virus from getting out of control.
Shopping malls, businesses and schools will remain open. Schools, especially, are considered essential services. This is good news for us at EC Montreal. We can remain open and continue to deliver in person lessons.
We are so proud of our EC Montreal team of staff, teachers and students. Since we reopened on August 31, everyone has been very respectful of all of our safety measures. They have also been extremely considerate of those around them. We have seen some students even wipe their desks clean before leaving for the day.
We were recently chatting about schools remaining open and we patted ourselves on the back saying there is actually no safer place to be right now than the EC Montreal school! Students must take the stairs up to the school, avoiding small spaces like the elevators. Everyone must complete a daily health screening form and anyone with symptoms is not permitted inside. We take every person’s temperature and do not allow anyone with a temperature exceeding 37.2 degrees to enter the premises. All the classrooms are set up to ensure every person is two meters away from other students and the teacher. Masks are mandatory inside and outside the classroom. Once you are in the school, you must stay in your own classroom, even during break times. We have restricted the bathroom to one person at a time by placing occupied signs on the doors. We thoroughly clean the classrooms and high touch surfaces at the end of each lesson. We have placed plexiglass at the entrance and at the front desk as well. Hand sanitizers can be found at the entrance, outside the restrooms and in every single classroom. One of our most important safety measures is our schedule and the blended learning format. The schedule was designed to ensure that students are not taking public transportation during rush hour. Classes all start at noon and end at 3:15 p.m., giving students a chance to get home before the evening traffic rush. In addition, the in person lessons only take place three days per week; Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Students have online lessons on Tuesdays and Thursdays as well as their special focus classes. This is to limit the physical time we spend on public transportation and in the school. We can confidently say that all our students and staff feel extremely safe at EC Montreal!
It is disappointing that we are in the second wave of the pandemic and we will not be able to enjoy Montreal’s wonderful restaurants and tourist attractions for the next few weeks, however, there are still a lot of wonderful outdoor activities to enjoy in the city and most restaurants will be offering take out options.
We will keep our fingers crossed that these new safety measures will decrease the number of positive covid cases per day and we can resume our activities sooner rather than later.
Until then, see you at EC Montreal and if you haven’t travelled to Montreal yet, remember that you can get a head start on your language learning by joining our online lessons available in both English and French! You will not only get a taste of the language, but will also get a taste of the destination as you will be connecting with students who are here taking classes, in person, at EC Montreal!
EC Montreal has found a way for us to stay connected and still remain physically distant on EC Virtual. Through our Online English Courses or our Online French Courses, you can make new friendships and form new bonds.
