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RUTH BONNEVILLE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS 49.8 grads - Maples Met School Date: Wednesday, June 10 Subject: Jean-Ashley Monkman, a Grade 12 graduate who's in her 30s; she dropped out of school because she was pregnant many years ago, but is ecstatic to have returned and earned her GED this year. Portraits of her in her grad dress in one of her classrooms at her school - Seven Oaks Adult Learning Centre. VIRUS GRADE 12 49.8: After 13 years in the K-12 education system, they were only months away from earning their diplomas, celebrating at grad pow wows and renting limos as backgrounds for their prom photos when the school year was called off. The celebrations they have long awaited have either been moved online, postponed or cancelled. The pandemic has seemingly targeted the Class of 2020, who will enter job markets or post-secondary at an unprecedented time, without many of the rites of passages the graduates before them took for granted. It sucks. We're going to be talking to tons of students about their final year and snapping photos of them in their formal attire, pow wow regalia and convocation gowns. (RUNNING JUNE 13) Maggie Macintosh Education Reporter - Winnipeg Free Press June 3, 2020