This is Jessica Langer. She's been an educator for a decade, with her most recent teaching job being a semester-long course in marketing and creative industries at Ryerson University in Toronto.
Langer said she always sent thank-you emails to her students after the classes ended, but things felt different this time. "These students are brilliant and they're also so anxious," she said. So she took extra time to draft an apt message for them. This is what she emailed her students last week:
Langer said it was important to her to let these students know, amid their anxieties about their futures and the world, she's in their corner.
"Statistically, at least some of my students are likely to be in home situations where they don't have an advocate, she said.
"I feel very strongly that my job as a professor is to be a person in my students' lives who they can trust and who has their best interest in mind, and who can and will advocate for them," she added.