With grinning faculty members holding up carefully crafted signs (or just as carefully arranged fruit in Mr. Melton’s case) and backed with cheerful tunes, “A Message for Our Pudong Seniors…” begins. Reminiscent of Love Actually‘s famous note card scene and Celeste MacMillan’s past faculty photo collage at a different high school in South Carolina, the video was created in hopes of lifting the seniors’ spirits as their secondary school journey comes to a close.

“I actually brought it up to Ms. Dickhaut and Dr. Lee, and while we really do miss all the kids, we felt the seniors needed some special attention,” said MacMillan – a chemistry teacher who coordinates numerous events for 12th graders, including the video.

Looking to include as many high school faculty members as possible, MacMillan rallied the administration by email, asking them to submit their assigned words to OneDrive. “Teachers are worse than kids,” MacMillan joked. “Half the teachers just emailed me their photo and asked me if was alright.”

The video came together in the end on MacMillan’s computer as a PowerPoint presentation. It is a simple, yet heartwarming effort of the SAS Pudong high school faculty, and ’20 students certainly felt the love.

“It was great to see the faces of all our SAS teachers again after such a long time apart and to know that they are still thinking about us,” said James Li ’20.

Janelle Yeo ’20 resonates with Li, adding a remark on the SAS community. “It made me recognize how SAS is truly bonded like a family. Our teachers in the video are more than “teachers” – they are human, they are our friends.”

The class of ’20 as a whole certainly recognizes the effort that went into the video. Peter Shi ’20 commented on how though the faculty were spread all over the world, they still came together to deliver this one message. Li echoes this sentiment, saying “it looks like it took a lot of effort to put together the whole video and assign words for teachers to make sentences.”

“The entire thing was an endless surprise,” said Yeo.

MacMillan and the faculty ultimately wished the video could bring some delight to the seniors’ lives. “If we managed to make the Class of 2020 and their parents smile and feel special with the video, then mission accomplished.”

As the class of ’20 thanks the faculty for the surprise, Li speaks for all seniors as he remarks, “The video really did bring a smile to our faces during difficult times.” Mission accomplished indeed.