Teacher Appreciation Day
Teachers at Futuro Verde are a small community of kind and loving humans committed to education, and are always supporting each other and helping each other out. This year, for the first time, we celebrated Teacher Appreciation Day and Thanksgiving together and we shifted the focus from the American tradition of Thanksgiving, to show love and appreciation for our staff. We did one personal reunion with each group and their crew teacher to work on thanksgiving and one big event with the school to celebrate teachers. The outcome was very positive for students and teachers.
During previous years, Futuro Verde used to focus more on Thanksgiving day and appreciate teachers along with every other positive aspect in life, while the students would enjoy the wonderful meals prepared for the occasion. However, this year the committee focused on doing something for teacher appreciation and we thought about the student’s doing presentations for the teachers, such as dances, poems and music recitals. While I went around asking teachers what they would like to do for teachers day, they mentioned that they wanted to relax and be able to enjoy the event. This comment from the kindergarten teachers shifted my idea into doing something where teachers could be involved and really enjoy it. Consequently, I came up with the idea of creating a teachers’ game where students participated as organizers and audience.
The day started with administration sending out a video of the teachers since the first day and giving out presents for each teacher. Through out the day food were coming into the teachers office to celebrate our bid day. Student’s were giving presents and hugs to their teachers too. The first hour of the event was dedicated for thanksgiving through an intimate activity with each group, their crew teacher and a guest teacher. During this hour, students did activities to show their appreciation about diverse aspects of life, such as family, friends, school and others. This was an opportunity for students to reflect about their lives and share their appreciation to others. In the next hour we did the Teacher’s game, where teachers previously signed up for specific games that they wanted to play, such as musical chairs, sign if you know it, sack race and tuck of war. The bigger student’s were involved in the organization: IB student’s took care and entertained kindergarten students, 10th grade set up the games and were judges, 9th grade helped organized all the sitting arrangements for the audience and 8th and 7th grade helped putting all the resources back and cleaning after the event.
The event was a complete success. The students laugh and enjoy cheering for their teachers, watching their teachers having fun and being children for one hour. The teachers gave great feedback, they were able to participate in games where they actually wanted and got prices if they won. Moreover, through the event administrators were giving out ruffle prices involving a range of relaxing experiences. Many teachers were so happy and please that they ask for the event to become an annual tradition. The day really felt as an appreciation day for teacher from beginning to end and made us deeply feel appreciated by administration and students.
More importantly, it made us feel like we belong to a friendly and loving community.
