Teacher Strike Student Support: How Parents can Help with Learning and Wellbeing

By Julie Diamond

When schools close due to a teacher strike, parents often feel pulled in two directions. You want to support your child’s learning, but you also worry about stress, disruption, and uncertainty. While this can feel challenging, it’s also a chance to nurture learning in fun, creative, and low-pressure ways. The key is balance: keeping academic skills fresh, encouraging curiosity, and protecting your child’s mental health.

As a teacher and founder of Diamond Teachers Group, a tutoring company serving Alberta families, Julie Diamond has seen firsthand how a few practical strategies can keep learning alive at home while supporting your child’s wellbeing.

Land Acknowledgement

This land has welcomed First Nations from across Turtle Island, and settlers and visitors from around the world. Alberta lands are part of Treaties 4, 6, 7, 8 and 10, and the homeland of the Métis.

Alberta Mamas respects and celebrates the sovereignty, lands, histories, languages, knowledge systems and cultures of all Indigenous, Métis, and Inuit nations. We are striving to better listen, understand, and learn from the Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing.

We are all Treaty people.

1. Prioritize Mental Wellbeing First

Before diving into academics, remember your child may feel anxious about the strike. Talk openly about what’s happening in an age-appropriate way, and reassure them that learning can happen anywhere.

• Create calm routines: Predictable schedules such as morning reading and afternoon outdoor time help kids feel grounded. It sounds simple but goes a long way!
• Use art for expression: Drawing, painting, or doodling can be a great outlet for processing feelings. Art reduces stress and promotes mindfulness. We have tutors who offer art sessions to help kids manage emotions creatively and it is really incredible to see students build their confidence and focus through art.  Check out How do I support my child’s mental health through art? for ideas you can do at home together.
• Encourage movement: Physical activity boosts focus and mood. Try short dance breaks with a Just Dance video on YouTube, backyard scavenger hunts, or family walks while practicing the five senses: 5 things you see, 4 you can touch, 3 you hear, 2 you can smell, 1 you can taste. It’s fun, grounding, and a great way to connect as a family.

2. Bring Learning Into Everyday Life

Children thrive when learning feels relevant and hands-on. You don’t need worksheets or textbooks to make progress. Everyday experiences can become learning opportunities.

• Cooking as a classroom: Let your child help plan and cook dinner or try baking together. Younger kids can measure ingredients (fractions in action!), while older kids can scale recipes or calculate grocery costs.
• Financial literacy lessons: Involve kids in budgeting for groceries, comparing prices at local stores, or setting up a savings jar for a family goal. If you have a teen at home, discuss credit cards with them, explore the different rewards and benefits, and explain how interest rates work. Talking about money and budgeting with your child from an early age helps them develop a healthy and confident financial mindset.
• Art and creativity: Challenge them to design an invention, illustrate a comic, or create a “mood board” for a story idea. These activities build executive functioning skills while sparking imagination. 

3. Smart Screen Time, Not Endless Screen Time

During a strike, screens can easily take over. While it’s tempting to let kids binge shows or games, balance is key for their growing brains.

• Mix educational with recreational: For every episode of a favourite show, try a documentary, a math puzzle app, or a short online tutoring session.
• Minecraft with a twist: Challenge your child to build multiplication arrays, design a scale model of your home, or create a budget-minded city. Kids love the creativity of Minecraft, and with the right prompts, it becomes a powerful math tool.
• Set limits together: Involve your child in creating a daily screen-time agreement. This builds accountability and reduces conflicts.
• Second language: If your child is enrolled in a second language program, have them watch their favourite show in that language.

4. Keep Skills Sharp With Fun, Simple Activities

Short, playful learning sessions at home can go a long way in preventing learning loss.

• Math: Younger kids can practice number sense (multiplication, division, subtraction, and addition) and play card games like “24” or ‘Multiplication War’ (the card game of War that you played as a kid with the face cards as 10, and the Aces as 1 or 11). 
  Older students work on probability or problem-solving and play dice games like Yahtzee or challenge them how to solve a Rubik’s Cube. 
• Literacy: Create a family “book club” where everyone reads a chapter together. Encourage kids to write alternate endings, journal their day, or write letters to a family member.
• Cross-curricular fun: Try a “family project of the week” such as building a birdhouse, planning a mini science experiment, or mapping a dream vacation. These activities naturally weave in research, math, and communication skills.

5. Stay Flexible and Supportive

Above all, avoid turning your home into a pressure-filled classroom. Strikes are temporary, and children are resilient. By mixing structured activities with downtime, you’ll help them feel safe, connected, and capable of learning outside of school walls.

• Celebrate small wins: Whether it’s finishing a puzzle, baking cookies, or solving a tough math problem.
• Give space for downtime: Kids may need extra rest, creativity, or unstructured play to cope with stress.
• Keep communication open: Ask how they’re feeling and listen without judgment.

During the Alberta teacher strike, your role isn’t to replace the classroom. It’s to create a supportive home environment where your child can keep growing, stay curious, and feel cared for. By blending everyday learning opportunities with mental health support, creative outlets, and balanced screen time, you’ll not only keep academics moving forward but also strengthen family bonds that last long after the strike is over.

You’ve got this! 

Julie Diamond is the Founder and CEO of Diamond Teachers Group.