"Mystery" Guest Zoom

If you are like me, chances are you are Zooming away weekly, daily, or somewhere in between.  You may have been bombarded with tons of blog posts about how to reach your kids digitally since this has become the "new normal" in education.  And I want to tell you....YOU ARE DOING AN AMAZING JOB!!

So I want to offer you just a short & sweet suggestion that has worked for me during my Zoom meetings.  I was thinking of a way to entice my students to return to our programmed Zoom meetings and also a way to build community.  Finally, one day, I thought "What if I invite a "mystery" guest to our sessions as a speaker that the kids have not seen since we left school?"  I quickly thought about who to invite.

My first guest was our instructional coach who gave my students a tour of her backyard which included recently purchase baby chicks.  The kids loved it!  My second guest was our Outreach Consultant.  I was able to create a break out room and sent her to the room first followed by half of the students who showed up for our meeting.  She had a pre-planned activity for them.  After about 15 minutes, we swapped the two groups so the entire class had an opportunity to speak with our Outreach Consultant in a smaller group setting.  This also allowed me time to speak with my group regarding current assignments and praise for the work they have been achieving.

After seeing how successful this turned out, it made me think of who else can I invite as our "mystery" guest and I came up with these suggestions:

1.  Invite the librarian to read a book about maintaining a positive growth mindset during these difficult times or perhaps a good story about overcoming isolation.

2.  Invite your proctors to play a simple interactive game with them.

3.  Invite the health aide to present a video on how to protect themselves from unwanted germs.

4.  Invite a math coach to play a simple, low-prep math game with everyday items.

5.  Invite a teacher who has had your class in past years just to say hello or you can even invite a teacher from next year's grade level to tell them how excited they are to start meeting them.

There are so many options you can do with this simple and fun engagement routine.  It is quite obvious that our students have the need to stay "connected" in some fashion with their school community members.

Whatever you choose to use from this blog post (or perhaps not), just remember that your students are VERY fortunate to have you as their teacher because YOU CARE and are doing the best job any teacher can under these current circumstances.  Please take care of yourself and thank you for your time!

Happy living and teaching!
Gustavo Macuil