Students displaced by Fiona learn lessons in co-operation, resiliency

All children on P.E.I. are officially back in classrooms after post-tropical storm Fiona — and some are learning lessons not taught in textbooks.

Damage to É​cole Évangé​line and Cardigan Consolidated have forced students to be resilient, work together and adapt to a new environment.

About 200 students at É​cole Évangé​line have been set up at the Acadian Festival grounds in Abram-Village,

About 100 Cardigan students have moved into their own space at Montague Regional High School, about 12 kilometres down the road from their regular school.

Montague principal Robyn MacDonald said the first few days have worked well.

"I think it's really important for our students to see the importance of helping someone else whenever the chips are down or whenever there is something we can do to support other people in our community and I think in this case it was another school."

É​cole Évangé​line suffered extensive damage from the storm, and teachers and staff had to get creative after about two weeks with no classes. They turned the local music centre into a classroom for Grades 7-9 and the rink into a classroom for Grades 10-12.

"It was quite surprising what we can do with material like that and yeah, it looks like classes. It's impressive. The teachers did a lot of work," said principal Dominique Morency.

School authorities estimate it will take at least three months of work just to make the least damaged part of the building reusable.

The students don't seem to mind.

"It was really exciting cause the whole school was transformed into a different place so it was really interesting, it will be a fun few months," said Grade 4 student Leah Arsenault.

Morency said it's important to bring some normalcy back into students' lives. 

"When you wake up, it's like OK what do I have to do? How will it go? But we were really prepared so I think the next is just go with the flow and take one thing at a time."