HALIFAX – Since the school year began, Diana Calderón has spent most weekday afternoons driving her 14-year-old daughter to the Halifax junior high school she should be attending, timing their visits with recess so the teenager can spend a few minutes with her classmates.

“I’m driving her so she can see her friends and talk to them during that time… we do this almost every day,” Calderón said.

“Sometimes we don’t go… when she says: ‘I don’t want to go today, I feel too sad,’” she said, adding that her daughter finds it painful to not be allowed in the classroom with her friends when recess ends.

The single mother said she’s been desperate to give her daughter moments of normalcy and time with her peers since their lives were upended in August.

Calderón, who is originally from Colombia

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