BU professor thanked in emotional display

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This article was published 14/12/2020 (2121 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Brought to tears by the gratitude of her students, Brandon University professor Gretta Sayers received an emotional farewell last week.

As with most instruction to take place this semester, the sendoff was done via the online platform Zoom, where student Avery Walker took a moment to rally the troops.

After thanking Sayers personally, she called attention to the rest of the class, whose members turned on their video cameras in unison to reveal their own messages of thanks.

Included among those to hold up hand-written notes was student Alexandra Smale, whose message read, “We love and miss you.”

Others offered similar sentiments regarding their appreciation for Sayers’ efforts throughout a trying semester.

Smale recorded the interaction and posted it to social media, where it took off.

“I’m a bit surprised by how much it’s gone viral, but hey, we need stuff like this so I’m happy,” Sayers said. “It was quite unexpected and a very kind and thoughtful gesture at the end of a very hard semester.”

Sayers is well worth the effort, Smale said, adding that despite the occasional technical issue and an undercurrent of stress related to distance learning in the midst of a pandemic, the School of Music professor has always been there for students.

“She has asked for our input along the whole way, she makes sure she is available to all of us, she has made one-on-one check-in meetings with everybody just to see how they’re doing — she has just made sure she is available to everybody all of the time,” Smale said. “She just makes that class so much more enjoyable.

The Aural Skills class was inspired after finding a video online of a class in the United States offering a similar display of thanks to an instructor.

A Snapchat message and mass email to the class requested everyone’s participation, but Smale said she was nonetheless surprised to see the entire class of approximately 30 students take part.

“I was so heart-warmed and overwhelmed, just because that’s the first time she’s seen everybody since last year, because a lot of people like to turn their cameras and microphones off, so it was such a beautiful moment to see everybody again.”

Sayers said teaching during a pandemic has been no picnic, and that the unique online environment she has joined countless others in being thrust into has made her question her own teaching skills on occasion.

“Music has its unique challenges to be online because there’s always a performance aspect,” she said, adding that it has been a steep learning curve with various adjustments made along the way.

Although her students were keen on heaping praise on her, Sayers said they deserve their share of the credit for making this challenging semester a success.

“This group was great for sending me lots of feedback and making sure that they were giving me their perspective,” she said, adding that the students “have done tremendously.”

“They’re great students, but they’re also wonderful people and they understand that we’re doing a lot of work for them and they appreciate it so they’re doing their best work, too. … Their commitment remained high no matter what they were feeling or their state of mind.”

 

» tclarke@brandonsun.com

» Twitter: @TylerClarkeMB