Fri-yay!

I never thought we’d make it, but Friday finally came! Today was an even more TGIF moment, as it was the start of our spring break. While this is not the week off I had planned (so long Australia, hello self-isolation in Jakarta!), I am so thankful for this week of respite. After 3 weeks of virtual school, and 11 straight weeks of school without a day off since winter break, it’s much-needed!

Just like the last day of term in real school, we had some fun today! We met as a class this afternoon on ZOOM to have a check-in. We chatted (usually all at the same time) about whatever we wanted, shared how it was going, talked about what we missed about not being together, asked each other questions, showed off our pets (a kitty, a dog, and a hedgehog!), told jokes, sang our favorite song from camp, and laughed a lot. I was reminded of how much I love this group of students. We all needed a bit of fun and to take a step back from the demands of school.

Following our ZOOM meeting, we continued chatting in Teams, sharing funny videos and memes. Here are some of our favorite videos:

My friend and colleague Vanessa is a mentor for one of my students in his Exhibition, and after their meeting, she called to ask me how she could support him, but I was on the other line with a student, so she left a voicemail. The voicemail on Teams has a feature where it sends the voicemail and a written version of their message using their text-to-speech feature. Vanessa is British, so her accent didn’t entirely translate to the written version. As I listened to the message, I was following along/reading ahead on the written version. I laughed so hard at this…

“I said, what are you struggling with what can I help you with? He said his grandma and so I’m more than happy to support him with his grandma…”

I was so confused! The message said he was struggling with his grandma, but she said he was struggling with his grammar! I immediately called her back to tell her what happened, and we were cry-laughing about it. We needed that laugh today!

This evening, after school was a distant memory, several of my colleagues and I got together for a virtual happy hour on ZOOM! It was nice to see everyone and talk about things other than school (although school creeped into the conversation a few times…we are teachers, after all). Lots of laughs and silliness was the perfect start to this week off!

Hope I can continue to see the fun in virtual school and self-isolation…it’s going to be a while! 🙂