Dear Students,

Last spring, you left your classrooms without your pencil cases, books, hoodies, and beloved desk pets. You didn’t even have the chance to say goodbye. We sent you home not knowing how long it would be, and as the days stretched to weeks and the weeks to months, we realized we sent some of you home to boredom, isolation, hunger, neglect, or violence.

It wasn’t our fault, but we felt it deeply, and oh, how we pined for you, thought of you, tried so many different ways to reach you.

Then fall came, and a brand-new school year. But when you eagerly returned, logging in online or filing in through the doors, school as you knew it had been reinvented, pared down to a sliver of its former magnificence. And yet, you have risen to the challenges of huge change in education.

We’re Impressed by Your Adaptability.

Thank you for wearing your masks all day without complaint. We love how you rock those cool designs: a giraffe’s grin, sparkly bling, cute plaid that matches your button-up.

Thank you for accepting our own half-faces, reading our eyes and knowing just by that whether we’re smiling, serious, or in need of a virtual hug. When we covered our faces, we covered one of our most important teaching tools… but you’ve adapted like champs.

Thank you for sitting at your own desk without complaining, embracing your little piece of real estate rather than lamenting last year’s flexible seating.

Thank you for rolling with the tech issues that come from logging in from home. We’re so sorry we explained the whole math lesson on mute, and we’re so glad you’re willing to sit through it all over again.

Thank you for Zooming with your cats, brightening the lesson with the addition of whiskers.

Dear students, we see your adaptability.

You Give Teachers Hope.

Thank you for continuing to laugh and play. We love your joy.

Thank you for continuing to believe in magic and imagination in a world full of pain. You help us believe in magic, too!

Thank you for singing alone, mingling your beautiful voices on video so a choir can still be a choir.

Thank you for shooting hoops, running laps, lifting weights. We see you making sure you’re ready for the day that school sports return.

Thank you for working hard for student government, preparing for events that may never happen.

Thank you for studying, taking notes, absorbing information both online and in-person, toiling towards a graduation celebration you’ve earned, even though the stage may be virtual.

Dear students, we see your hope.

We Appreciate Your Resilience and Cooperation

Thank you for washing your hands until they’re chapped and red, keeping your wincing to yourself when the sanitizer burns into the cracks.

Thank you for kindly pointing out the dropped pencil to your classmate without touching it yourself.

Thank you for waiting patiently in front of the paintbrushes for five minutes for one to be handed to you, instead of reaching into the bin yourself.

Thank you for carefully covering your sneeze and looking around to make sure no one is upset by it.

Thank you for accepting prepackaged food with the same enthusiasm you showed for hot lunch last year.

Thank you for shouldering the world’s collective anxiety, and still showing up to learn.

Dear students, we see your resilience.

Dear Students: We’re Glad to Be Your Teachers.

Thank you for forgiving us wholeheartedly for leaving you alone when you may have needed us the most.

Thank you for checking in with us when we seem down, cracking a joke, throwing an elbow bump our way, telling us you just LOVE math, or writing us a note that says, “Yur the best techer” at exactly the moment when we’re broken, afraid, and so tired, that we feel we’re failing you.

And thank you, from the bottom of our hearts, for knowing intuitively that we are all doing our best for you.

We are so very grateful for your presence in our classrooms, on our screens, in our lives, and in our hearts.

Dear students, we see YOU.