During the school closures in spring of 2020, I really missed my students, and I was aware that many of them were lacking an outlet for their emotions while they were stuck at home. I implemented a "Distance Learning Journal," which was an optional assignment that I posted to Google Classroom. Every week, I gave a new prompt, but I invited students to write about whatever was on their mind. I then responded to their journal entries and returned them for the next week. The two artifacts below are from the journals of two students who wrote to me every week.