Hello Teacher Friends.

I’m writing to you from a not-so-great place: my house in the middle of COVID-19. It has been about twelve (?) weeks of social-distancing. Twelve (?) weeks of working/teaching from home while mothering. Twelve (?) weeks of not being near family and friends. I’m at my breaking point and I know you feel me.

I was a relatively stable adult before this happened. I took my antidepressant regularly and practiced meditation and breathing techniques. I have always been open about my mental health struggles. As an educator I felt it was imperative to be honest with myself and my students (age-appropriately, of course) about the hardships of maintaining a stable mind whilst being an adult, or more to the point, a working mother. This is hard on a normal day. Fast forward to yesterday. I was a wreck and all the hopeful awesomeness I have been working on for my students fell away and revealed a cracked Orchestra Lady.

Fortunately, I have a loving husband and children who noticed my descent and acted to remind me to take my meds, drink water, blow my nose, and wipe away my tears. And it turns out when I mentioned this to my teacher lady squad, they all cosigned my experience and told of theirs. We are all truly in this together. The good, the bad, and the crazy. Whew.

Let’s get to the fun part of this post, shall we? Bitmojis!

Bitmojis are hot in the teachersphere right now. Educators all over Facebook and Instagram are sharing how they use Bitmojis in their classrooms, real-life and virtual. As a matter of fact, creating virtual classrooms is all the rage and there are so many fantastic tutorials around.

If you are looking to jump in head first, or just dip your toes in, check out the Bitmoji Craze for Educators Facebook Group. They have all the deets, tutorials, fixes, and fun.

I have been using my Bitmoji in my classroom for a couple years now, but everything I did was fairly mundane. I thought I was hot stuff for using them on my daily agendas. Now that we have had to move to more online instruction, I thought to redo my agendas to make them more aesthetically pleasing. But my main takeaway is that I can create fun and pleasing backdrops for lessons, slides, and agendas with ease. Learning how to create a virtual room (with or without a Bitmoji) has been a game changer. I have used my skills in presentations and have been inspired to try making materials for my students using Canva. I’m totally sold.