Our school has a daily chapel. Sometimes this chapel features a unique tradition: one of our seniors gives a talk to the whole community. Obviously, there won’t be any chapels of this sort for a while, though our seniors will be recording videos of their talks that will be shared. One of the young ladies in our Residential Life program wanted to practice before doing the ‘official’ recording, so one of our ‘parents’ set up a Zoom meeting. A couple dozen or so of us signed in, applauded, muted our mics, listened to her talk, and then unmuted to applaud again. It was a heart-warming experience and the talk was great.
This is an example of the small things humans are doing to make things better during these trying times. It may seem irrelevant to some that people signed into Zoom to watch someone practice a talk but it meant the world to this kid. And it was important for our community as we seek to find practices that will normalize what we’re experiencing.
Today, I’m ‘meeting’ with my classes via Google Meet. While I’m leaving time for them to ask questions about their online classwork, my main concern is to ask how they’re doing and how they’re using their time (not to berate them about time-management but to make sure they’re connecting with family and friends and finding things to keep them busy). So far, it appears that it’s like a weird hybrid of summer break and homework, but they seem to be doing well and that’s what matters most.
LePort 
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