Being an International Baccalaureate student is hard. Being an IB student during  COVID-19 is even harder. Not only do we carry the stress of heavy IB work loads in normal times, we now have to deal with the mental stress of having to navigate our work loads with very little teaching/learning time. If that wasn't enough, we also carry the fear of being infected by the deadly virus or seeing someone we love be affected by COVID-19. Including our teachers! 

We have been abandoned by our provincial members of parliament and our school boards. We did not get the option of learning from home like everyone else in Ontario did. We've been forced to sacrifice our households' health by forcing us into classrooms and we've had less than 50% instruction time under Ontario's in class learning plan.

To make matters worse, Ontario IB students are now expected to write our final IB exams, covering 100% of all material "learned" in grades 11 and 12 to determine our final IB grades. Some of us have lost loved ones to this virus. Some of our parents have lost their jobs. We cannot ignore the mental effect this is taking on us. 

 It is extremely unfair to subject Ontario IB students to write exams worth 60%-80% of our final IB grades when less than 50% of teaching time was made available to us. We hereby ask all Ontario school boards to cancel all IB exams for May 2021 and choose the non-exam route offered by The International Baccalaureate Organization.