Teachers’ Appreciation Day

Audrey Ho (DP1B)

On 24 June 2020, we held our annual Teachers’ Appreciation Day Event via Zoom. We had started to plan for the Teachers’ Appreciation Day in October 2019, and were feeling optimistic about the event we would hold at the end of the academic year. We came up with many ideas of how we could show our gratitude to our teachers and enthusiastically worked together to get ready. All of us had high hopes and expected that we would be ready with many activities that everyone could enjoy by the time 17 June 2020 rolled around.

What we did not expect was having school closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic and our performance teams decided to pull out in May as we were not able to practise together due to the regulations on social distancing. We compromised with a complete change in arrangements, limiting what we could do as well as the time we had to prepare. As such, we prioritized the preparation of personalized pouches and cards as well as engaging the rest of the school in writing thank you messages to teachers. As more students submitted their thank you notes to us, the situation brightened up for us, allowing us to feel more confident that the teachers would feel appreciated when they received the notes from us. 

On the day of the event, our committee went into each classroom to host a Zoom meeting online so that our school could meet virtually to take part in a Kahoot competition. The objective of the Kahoot was to enable students in SIS to know more about our teachers and appreciate the experience they brought to us outside the classroom. We felt particularly nervous when some of us had difficulties in joining the Zoom meeting room or loading the Kahoot game. Overall, we completed without great struggles. 

To conclude, this event would not have been able to happen if our committee did not have the support of teachers and students who were willing to step up to support us when we were in need of help. We learnt a lot about how events at school are run, how to maintain communication with team members when working on a bigger project and improvising and making changes according to the situation. As a person, I think that this event has helped me to develop and become more confident of my abilities. Despite all the work and worries, I still got to enjoy myself and saw how our efforts had paid off.