Teacher Time: Encouraging Students During COVID

A well-used phrase, but still useful.

The music teacher and I hold a “Listen & Draw” sessions for our students every week. We hope that it helps them “gather” and relax together while making some art. He typically holds the Zoom with a playlist he curates while I do a side-by-side recording of the whole session and the lettering project of the theme for that week. Every weekly Listen & Draw session we hold for our students, we get a little better at it. Being thrown into this situation where this virus has forced us to learn new-to-us delivery methods of getting content to our students has required some flexibity, ongoing assessment, and revisions. And, of course, I’m always trying to better my lettering in the process.

• From the first Listen &Draw session, I tried to find an encouraging phrase to letter for them.

• I started recording the Zoom side-by-side with the Procreate drawing on the second session.

• The last two sessions (and their videos) have had themes and music that suited the theme.

• This theme was, of course, “dance” (in honor of our upcoming 8th grade dance). I thought this phrase was good advice. But, this time I felt the drawing of the phrase went better with the message. It has a little dance-like movement in it!

  I don’t think I’ve ever captured the feeling of a phrase before. This wasn’t perfect. But it’s a start!

We have one more L&D session to go.

Next week is a big week with our 8th grade graduation. So we may just have to rock steady with making anymore revisions to our sessions. Crazy to be just hitting your stride with something and it’s almost time to close shop for the school year.

But, it was a nice run while it lasted!