essay about teachers in pandemic

The changing role of teachers and technologies amidst the COVID 19 pandemic: key findings from a cross-country study

Maria barron, cristóbal cobo, alberto munoz-najar, inaki sanchez ciarrusta.

“Whoever teaches learns in the act of teaching and whoever learns teaches in the act of learning" wrote the Brazilian pedagogue Paulo Freire in his famous book “Pedagogy of Freedom” (1996). 

Despite the overwhelming consequences of the pandemic, this global crisis has also been an extraordinary time for learning. We are learning how adaptable and resilient educational systems, policy makers, teachers, students and families can be. In this blog (which is part of a series highlighting key lessons learned from a study to understand the perceived effectiveness of remote learning solutions, forthcoming) we summarize lessons learned in different countries, with special focus on teachers and how they had to quickly reimagine human connections and interactions to facilitate learning. The role of teachers is rapidly evolving becoming in many ways more difficult than when learning took place only in person. 

How has the pandemic changed the role of teachers?

Two crucial factors have shifted due to the pandemic. First, pedagogical adaptations have proven to be pivotal as the traditional lecturing in-person models do not translate to a remote learning environment. No matter the type of channel used (radio, TV, mobile, online platforms, etc.) teachers need to adapt their practices and be creative to keep students engaged as every household has become a classroom - more often than not - without an environment that supports learning. Some countries are supporting teachers with this. In Sierra Leone , where the main remote learning channel is radio, a ‘live’ and toll-free phone line is open for students to call teachers with questions and schedules of radio lessons allow time for children to help their families with daily chores.

Second, the pandemic has recalibrated how teachers divide their time between teaching, engaging with students, and administrative tasks. In Brazil according to a survey conducted by Instituto Peninsula, 83% of teachers did not consider being prepared to teach remotely, 67% were anxious, 38% felt tired, and less than 10% were happy or satisfied. The pandemic has highlighted the need for flexibility and more time for student-teacher interactions. For example, in Estonia teachers were given autonomy to adjust the curriculum, lesson plans, and their time allocation. 

How systems have supported teachers in their new role?

Almost 90% of countries that responded to the survey of Ministries of Education on National Responses to COVID-19 conducted by UNESCO, UNICEF, and the World Bank (2020) supported teachers by sharing guidelines stressing the importance of: providing feedback to students, maintaining constant communication with caregivers, and reporting to local education units to keep track of learning. Fewer governments took a different approach: Costa Rica developed a digital toolbox with pedagogical resources such as a guide for autonomous work, the state of São Paulo in Brazil organized frequent two-hour conversations between Secretary Rossieli Soares and teachers  through the mobile application developed by the state. These conversations and tools allowed governments to have an open line of communication with teachers to better understand their concerns and adjust remote learning programs.

As teachers started to implement these guidelines and recommendations, they found themselves balancing educating and providing feedback to students remotely, filling administrative reports, and taking care of their families. Some governments recognized early-on that their well-intentioned teacher support systems ended up generating burnout. Peru’s Ministry of Education was open to receive feedback and reacted rapidly by changing the guidelines to reduce teacher’s administrative workload. The state of Minas Gerais in Brazil developed the mobile application ‘Conexao Escola’ to encourage teacher-student interaction during designated time after each class, avoiding a situation in which students contacted teachers through WhatsApp or text message throughout the day. In Uruguay, teachers were expected to fill administrative information, but instead of requesting new information from them, the government decided to use GURI, a digital platform that has been used by Uruguayan teachers for over 10 years to report information such as student attendance and grades.

Beyond providing guidelines and tools, some governments have leveraged existing professional development programs that worked before the pandemic. The state of Edo in Nigeria trained all 11 thousand primary school teachers who are part of the Edo-BEST program in the past two years to effectively use digital technologies in the classroom; during the pandemic, this in-service teacher training program transitioned from in-person to remote training. Similarly, in Uruguay, The Institute for in-Service Teacher Training took an existing coaching program online to provide remote pedagogical support and Ceibal strengthened its teacher training program and Open Educational Resources repository. While over 90% of Uruguayan teachers were satisfied with the remote training received during the pandemic, some expressed the need for further training.

What impact have technologies generated in this changing role?  

Faced with the pandemic, countries have combined high-tech and low-tech approaches to help teachers better support student learning . In Cambodia, for example, education leaders designed a strategy that combines SMS, printed handouts, and continuous teacher feedback , taking advantage of the high mobile phone penetration in the country. The approach goes beyond providing low-tech materials: it gives information on how to access learning programs, ensures students access paper-based learning materials, and includes home visits to monitor distance learning activities. Teachers are also expected to provide weekly paper-based resources to students and meet them weekly to provide their marked worksheets and issue new ones for the week ahead.  

Technology has also enhanced government-teacher support , adapting existing coaching programs to be delivered remotely (as the mentioned cases of Nigeria and Uruguay), creating spaces for peer support programs (for example the Virtual EdCamps initiative, created to facilitate peer-to-peer learning among teachers) or establishing EdTech hotlines for teachers (like in Estonia, where the HITSA – the Information Technology Foundation for Education - opened an educational technology information line to solve any technological question teachers might have).

Technology interventions should enhance teacher engagement with students , through improved access to content, data and networks, helping teachers better support student learning, as laid out in the World Bank’s Platform for Successful Teachers , where effective use of technology is one of the key principles to ensure cadres of effective teachers. 

How policymakers can support teachers during the reopening of schools?

In order to build back stronger education systems, countries will need to apply those teaching initiatives that have proved to be effective during the remote learning phase and integrate them into the regular education system. It is critical to empower teachers , investing in the necessary skills development and capacity building to exploit the full potential of remote and blended learning. 

Equally important is to free teachers’ time from administrative tasks (as Brazil, Peru and Uruguay did), focus on what is pedagogically effective, and provide socio-emotional support for teachers.  The pandemic and the extended school closures have changed the role of teachers and most of them were not prepared for such change; a comprehensive strategy is required for socio-emotional monitoring and psychosocial support to ensure teacher wellbeing and avoid burnout.

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Becoming a Teacher: What I Learned about Myself During the Pandemic

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Introduction to the Article by Andrew Stremmel

Now, more than ever, we need to hear the voices of preservice teachers as well as in-service teachers during this pandemic. How has the pandemic affected them? In what ways has the pandemic enabled them to think about the need to really focus on what matters, what’s important? What were the gains and losses? These are very important questions for our time.  In this essay, Alyssa Smith, a senior studying early childhood education, attempts to address the lessons learned from her junior year, focusing on the positive aspects of her coursework and demonstrating an imaginative, growth mindset. This essay highlights the power of students’ reflection on their own learning. But I think it does so much more meaningful contemplation than we might expect of our students in “normal” times. Alyssa gains a new appreciation for this kind of active reflection—the opportunity to think more critically; to be more thoughtful; to stop, step back, catch her breath, and rethink things. As a teacher educator and her mentor, I believe this essay represents how the gift of time to stop and reflect can open space to digest what has been experienced, and how the gift of reflective writing can create a deeper level of thinking about how experiences integrate with one’s larger narrative as a person.

About the Author

Andrew Stremmel, PhD, is professor in early childhood education at South Dakota State University. His research is in teacher action research and Reggio Emilia-inspired, inquiry-based approaches to early childhood teacher education. He is an executive editor of  Voices of Practitioners .  

I’ve always known I was meant to be a teacher. I could feel my passion guide my work and lead my heart through my classes. So why did I still feel as if something was missing? During the fall of my junior year, the semester right before student teaching, I began to doubt my ability to be a great teacher, as I did not feel completely satisfied in my work. What I did not expect was a global pandemic that would shut down school and move all coursework online. I broke down. I wanted to do more than simply be a good student. I wanted to learn to be a great teacher. How was I supposed to discover my purpose and find what I was missing when I couldn’t even attend my classes? I began to fret that I would never become the capable and inspirational educator that I strived to be, when I was missing the firsthand experience of being in classrooms, interacting with children, and collaborating with peers.

It wasn’t until my first full semester being an online student that I realized the pandemic wasn’t entirely detrimental to my learning. Two of my early childhood education courses, Play and Inquiry and Pedagogy and Curriculum, allowed limited yet meaningful participation in a university lab school as well as engagement with problems of substance that require more intense thinking, discussion, analysis, and thoughtful action. These problems, which I briefly discuss below, presented challenges, provocations, possibilities, and dilemmas to be pondered, and not necessarily resolved. Specifically, they pushed me to realize that the educational question for our time is not, “What do I need to know about how to teach?” Rather, it is, “What do I need to know about myself in the context of this current pandemic?” I was therefore challenged to think more deeply about who I wanted to be as a teacher and who I was becoming, what I care about and value, and how I will conduct myself in the classroom with my students.

These three foundations of teaching practice (who I want to be, what I value, and how I will conduct myself) were illuminated by a question that was presented to us students in one of the very first classes of the fall 2020 semester: “What’s happening right now in your experience that will help you to learn more about yourself and who you are becoming?” This provocation led me to discover that, while the COVID-19 pandemic brought to light (and at times magnified) many fears and insecurities I had as a prospective teacher, it also provided me with unique opportunities, time to reflect, and surprising courage that I feel would not otherwise have been afforded and appreciated.

Although I knew I wanted to be a teacher, I had never deliberately pondered the idea of what kind of teacher I wanted to be. I held the core values of being an advocate for children and helping them grow as confident individuals, but I still had no idea what teaching style I was to present. Fortunately, the pandemic enabled me to view my courses on play and curriculum as a big “look into the mirror” to discern what matters and what was important about becoming a teacher.

As I worked through the rest of the course, I realized that this project pushed me to think about my identity as an educator in relation to my students rather than simply helping me understand my students, as I initially thought. Instead, a teacher’s identity is formed in relation to or in relationship with our students: We take what we know about our students and use it to shape ourselves and how we teach. I found that I had to take a step back and evaluate my own perceptions and beliefs about children and who I am in relation to them. Consequently, this motivated me to think about myself as a classroom teacher during the COVID-19 pandemic. What did I know about children that would influence the way I would teach them?

I thought about how children were resilient, strong, and adaptable, possessing an innate ability to learn in nearly any setting. While there were so many uncertainties and fear surrounding them, they adapted to mask-wearing, limited children in the classroom, and differentiated tasks to limit cross-contamination. Throughout, the children embodied being an engaged learner. They did not seem to focus on what they were missing; their limitless curiosity could not keep them from learning. Yet, because young children learn primarily through relationships, they need some place of learning that helps them to have a connection with someone who truly knows, understands, and cares about them. Thus, perhaps more than any lesson, I recognized my relationship with children as more crucial. By having more time to think about children from this critical perspective, I felt in my heart the deeper meaning children held to me.

My compassion for children grew, and a greater respect for them took shape, which overall is what pushed me to see my greater purpose for who I want to be as an educator. The pandemic provided time to develop this stronger vision of children, a clearer understanding of how they learn, and how my identity as a teacher is formed in relationship with children. I don’t think I would have been able to develop such a rich picture of how I view children without an in-depth exploration of my identity, beliefs, and values.

In my curriculum course, I was presented a different problem that helped me reflect on who I am becoming as an educator. This was presented as a case study where we as students were asked the question, “Should schools reopen amidst the COVID-19 pandemic?” This was a question that stumped school districts around the nation, making me doubt that I would be able to come up with anything that would be remotely practical. I now was experiencing another significant consequence of the pandemic: a need for new, innovative thinking on how to address state-wide academic issues. My lack of confidence, paired with the unknowns presented by the pandemic, made me feel inadequate to take on this problem of meaning.

To address this problem, I considered more intentionally and reflectively what I knew about how children learn; issues of equity and inequality that have led to a perceived achievement gap; the voices of both teachers and families; a broader notion of what school might look like in the “new normal”; and the role of the community in the education of young children. Suddenly, I was thinking in a more critical way about how to address this problem from the mindset of an actual and more experienced teacher, one who had never faced such a conundrum before. I knew that I had to design a way to allow children to come back into a classroom setting, and ultimately find inspiration for learning in this new normal. I created this graphic (above) to inform families and teachers why it is vital to have students return to school. As a result, I became an educator. I was now thinking, feeling, and acting as a teacher. This case study made me think about myself and who I am becoming as a teacher in a way that was incredibly real and relevant to what teachers were facing. I now found inspiration in the COVID-19 pandemic, as it unlocked elements of myself that I did not know existed.

John Dewey (1916) has been attributed to stating, “Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.” Learning may begin in the classroom, but it does not end there. Likewise, teaching is not a role, but a way of being. The ability to connect with children and to engage them meaningfully depends less on the methods we use than on the degree to which we know and trust ourselves and are willing to share that knowledge with them. That comes through continually reflecting on who we are in relation to children and their families, and what we do in the classroom to create more meaningful understanding of our experiences. By embodying the role of being an educator, I grew in ways that classroom curriculum couldn't prepare me for. Had it not been for the pandemic, this might not have been possible.

Dewey, J. 1916. Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education . New York: MacMillan.

Alyssa Marie Smith  is currently an early childhood education student studying at South Dakota State University. She has been a student teacher in the preschool lab on campus, and now works as a kindergarten out of school time teacher in this same lab school. In the fall, she plans to student teach in an elementary setting, and then go on to teach in her own elementary classroom.

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Pandemic teaching, in their words

Jessyca Mathews, 43, Flint, Mich.

English teacher at carman-ainsworth high school, teaching experience: 20 years.

Justin Lopez-Cardoze, 31, Gaithersburg, Md.

Seventh-grade science teacher at capital city public charter school in washington, d.c., teaching experience: nine years.

Ben White, 46, Knoxville, Tenn.

Sixth-grade english teacher at the private webb school of knoxville, teaching experience: 21 years.

Terence Freeman, 73, Lawton, Okla.

English teacher at lawton high school, lawton public schools, teaching experience: 14 years at the u.s. military academy at west point, 26 years at lawton high.

Myron Curtis, 35, South Riding, Va.

History teacher and football coach at broad run high school in loudoun county, va., teaching experience: 11 years.

Laura Estes-Swilley, 50, Plant City, Fla.

English teacher at durant high school, hillsborough county public schools.

Khalil Abouhamad, 35, Escalon, Calif.

Special education teacher at east union high school in manteca, calif..

Andrea Ainsworth, 35, Escalon, Calif.

Second-grade teacher at waverly elementary school, linden unified school district.

Amanda Lhéritier, 43, Richmond, Va.

Montessori early-childhood teacher at the private tuckahoe montessori school, teaching experience: seven years, we noticed you’re blocking ads.

Exploring how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted teacher expectations in schools

• Published: 22 May 2024

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• Agnes M. Flanagan   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-0494-6042 1 ,
• Damien C. Cormier 1 ,
• Lia M. Daniels 1 &
• Melissa Tremblay 1  

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Expectations are beliefs that someone should or will achieve something. Expectations influence performance—positive expectations improve outcomes, whereas negative expectations worsen them. This interaction is well known in the context of education and academic performance; however, we do not know how teacher expectations changed during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study used a descriptive qualitative approach to explore the impact of the COVID-19 public health measures on expectations in schools. Specifically, to what extent did teacher expectations for students and themselves change during this unprecedented period. In addition, to what extent did teachers’ perceptions of what administrators expectated from them change during this same period. Twelve teachers were purposefully sampled across Canada and interviewed in the spring of 2021. Interviews were transcribed and analysed using qualitative content analysis. The results generally indicated that expectations for students and for teachers (i.e., themselves) changed. Students were still expected to do their best and teachers still generally had high expectations for themselves, but their expectations were tempered depending on each group’s needs. For example, if students showed significant behavioural or emotional needs, academic expectations were reduced. Administrators made some efforts to be supportive and realistic during this time; however, many participants felt it was not enough and found their administrator’s expectations were unrealistically high. Furthermore, participants described greater difficulty developing relationships with students during the pandemic, which also impacted how much teachers could expect of them. The findings contribute to the literature by providing suggestions for future research and proposing an expanded version of a conceptual model for expectations in schools. More importantly, the findings can inform school leaders on how to best support teachers, and how teachers can support and advocate for themselves, during high-stress situations or extreme circumstances such as a pandemic.

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Coronavirus and schools: Reflections on education one year into the pandemic

Subscribe to the center for universal education bulletin, daphna bassok , daphna bassok nonresident senior fellow - governance studies , brown center on education policy @daphnabassok lauren bauer , lauren bauer fellow - economic studies , associate director - the hamilton project @laurenlbauer stephanie riegg cellini , stephanie riegg cellini nonresident senior fellow - governance studies , brown center on education policy helen shwe hadani , helen shwe hadani former brookings expert @helenshadani michael hansen , michael hansen senior fellow - brown center on education policy , the herman and george r. brown chair - governance studies @drmikehansen douglas n. harris , douglas n. harris nonresident senior fellow - governance studies , brown center on education policy , professor and chair, department of economics - tulane university @douglasharris99 brad olsen , brad olsen senior fellow - global economy and development , center for universal education @bradolsen_dc richard v. reeves , richard v. reeves president - american institute for boys and men @richardvreeves jon valant , and jon valant director - brown center on education policy , senior fellow - governance studies @jonvalant kenneth k. wong kenneth k. wong nonresident senior fellow - governance studies , brown center on education policy.

March 12, 2021

• 11 min read

One year ago, the World Health Organization declared the spread of COVID-19 a worldwide pandemic. Reacting to the virus, schools at every level were sent scrambling. Institutions across the world switched to virtual learning, with teachers, students, and local leaders quickly adapting to an entirely new way of life. A year later, schools are beginning to reopen, the $1.9 trillion stimulus bill has been passed, and a sense of normalcy seems to finally be in view; in President Joe Biden’s speech last night, he spoke of “finding light in the darkness.” But it’s safe to say that COVID-19 will end up changing education forever, casting a critical light on everything from equity issues to ed tech to school financing.

Below, Brookings experts examine how the pandemic upended the education landscape in the past year, what it’s taught us about schooling, and where we go from here.

In the United States, we tend to focus on the educating roles of public schools, largely ignoring the ways in which schools provide free and essential care for children while their parents work. When COVID-19 shuttered in-person schooling, it eliminated this subsidized child care for many families. It created intense stress for working parents, especially for mothers who left the workforce at a high rate.

The pandemic also highlighted the arbitrary distinction we make between the care and education of elementary school children and children aged 0 to 5 . Despite parents having the same need for care, and children learning more in those earliest years than at any other point, public investments in early care and education are woefully insufficient. The child-care sector was hit so incredibly hard by COVID-19. The recent passage of the American Rescue Plan is a meaningful but long-overdue investment, but much more than a one-time infusion of funds is needed. Hopefully, the pandemic represents a turning point in how we invest in the care and education of young children—and, in turn, in families and society.

Congressional reauthorization of Pandemic EBT for  this school year , its  extension  in the American Rescue Plan (including for summer months), and its place as a  central plank  in the Biden administration’s anti-hunger agenda is well-warranted and evidence based. But much more needs to be done to ramp up the program–even  today , six months after its reauthorization, about half of states do not have a USDA-approved implementation plan.

In contrast, enrollment is up in for-profit and online colleges. The research repeatedly finds weaker student outcomes for these types of institutions relative to community colleges, and many students who enroll in them will be left with more debt than they can reasonably repay. The pandemic and recession have created significant challenges for students, affecting college choices and enrollment decisions in the near future. Ultimately, these short-term choices can have long-term consequences for lifetime earnings and debt that could impact this generation of COVID-19-era college students for years to come.

Many U.S. educationalists are drawing on the “build back better” refrain and calling for the current crisis to be leveraged as a unique opportunity for educators, parents, and policymakers to fully reimagine education systems that are designed for the 21st rather than the 20th century, as we highlight in a recent Brookings report on education reform . An overwhelming body of evidence points to play as the best way to equip children with a broad set of flexible competencies and support their socioemotional development. A recent article in The Atlantic shared parent anecdotes of children playing games like “CoronaBall” and “Social-distance” tag, proving that play permeates children’s lives—even in a pandemic.

Tests play a critical role in our school system. Policymakers and the public rely on results to measure school performance and reveal whether all students are equally served. But testing has also attracted an inordinate share of criticism, alleging that test pressures undermine teacher autonomy and stress students. Much of this criticism will wither away with  different  formats. The current form of standardized testing—annual, paper-based, multiple-choice tests administered over the course of a week of school—is outdated. With widespread student access to computers (now possible due to the pandemic), states can test students more frequently, but in smaller time blocks that render the experience nearly invisible. Computer adaptive testing can match paper’s reliability and provides a shorter feedback loop to boot. No better time than the present to make this overdue change.

A third push for change will come from the outside in. COVID-19 has reminded us not only of how integral schools are, but how intertwined they are with the rest of society. This means that upcoming schooling changes will also be driven by the effects of COVID-19 on the world around us. In particular, parents will be working more from home, using the same online tools that students can use to learn remotely. This doesn’t mean a mass push for homeschooling, but it probably does mean that hybrid learning is here to stay.

I am hoping we will use this forced rupture in the fabric of schooling to jettison ineffective aspects of education, more fully embrace what we know works, and be bold enough to look for new solutions to the educational problems COVID-19 has illuminated.

There is already a large gender gap in education in the U.S., including in  high school graduation rates , and increasingly in college-going and college completion. While the pandemic appears to be hurting women more than men in the labor market, the opposite seems to be true in education.

Looking through a policy lens, though, I’m struck by the timing and what that timing might mean for the future of education. Before the pandemic, enthusiasm for the education reforms that had defined the last few decades—choice and accountability—had waned. It felt like a period between reform eras, with the era to come still very unclear. Then COVID-19 hit, and it coincided with a national reckoning on racial injustice and a wake-up call about the fragility of our democracy. I think it’s helped us all see how connected the work of schools is with so much else in American life.

We’re in a moment when our long-lasting challenges have been laid bare, new challenges have emerged, educators and parents are seeing and experimenting with things for the first time, and the political environment has changed (with, for example, a new administration and changing attitudes on federal spending). I still don’t know where K-12 education is headed, but there’s no doubt that a pivot is underway.

• First, state and local leaders must leverage commitment and shared goals on equitable learning opportunities to support student success for all.
• Second, align and use federal, state, and local resources to implement high-leverage strategies that have proven to accelerate learning for diverse learners and disrupt the correlation between zip code and academic outcomes.
• Third, student-centered priority will require transformative leadership to dismantle the one-size-fits-all delivery rule and institute incentive-based practices for strong performance at all levels.
• Fourth, the reconfigured system will need to activate public and parental engagement to strengthen its civic and social capacity.
• Finally, public education can no longer remain insulated from other policy sectors, especially public health, community development, and social work.

These efforts will strengthen the capacity and prepare our education system for the next crisis—whatever it may be.

Higher Education K-12 Education

Brookings Metro Economic Studies Global Economy and Development Governance Studies

Brown Center on Education Policy Center for Universal Education

Annelies Goger, Katherine Caves, Hollis Salway

May 16, 2024

Sofoklis Goulas, Isabelle Pula

Melissa Kay Diliberti, Elizabeth D. Steiner, Ashley Woo

This Is What It’s Like to Be a Teacher During the Coronavirus Pandemic

In 2018, as teacher protests were sweeping the country, TIME spoke with several teachers who described how wage stagnation and budget cuts were affecting their lives, forcing them to take on second jobs and spend hundreds of dollars of their own money on school supplies or preventing them from being able to afford children of their own. Two years later, as educators face an entirely new set of challenges caused by the coronavirus pandemic , we followed up with these teachers to see how they’re preparing for an unprecedented school year .

Read their stories below. Comments have been condensed and edited for clarity.

Kara Stoltenberg, 30

Language arts teacher at Norman High School in Norman, Oklahoma, which started the school year virtually on Aug. 24

As a teacher, I don’t feel like a lot has changed in the last few years. Oklahoma teachers did get a pay increase, which was awesome. My salary is now about $41,000. It had really felt paycheck-to-paycheck, and now I am able to save, and budgeting feels much less stressful. But the state of Oklahoma still has work to do. We still need a lot more funding for education. Class sizes are still large. I still buy a lot of my own supplies.

I am relieved that we started the school year virtually. It’s been a whirlwind and everyone is being asked to do more than they can do in a day, so I’m just trying to be patient and offer solutions when I can come up with them.

The first day of school — it’s so cheesy — but it can be really magical, and it’s just so fun seeing the kids excited to be around their friends and to be back together as a community. It does feel like we’re really missing that this year. I am teaching in an empty classroom, and it’s kind of sad. But it was so nice to actually interact with students, even virtually, because the school has felt so empty.

I am teaching in an empty classroom, and it's kind of sad.

My colleagues and I have been stressed since spring break because we care, and we’re worried and we know the ins and outs of our jobs, and we know that what the CDC is recommending for in-person learning just isn’t really feasible, considering the lack of funding that we’ve had for a decade.

I’m not an online teacher. I’ve not been trained to do any of this, and I don’t want my students to be at a loss because I am in uncharted territory. I just hope people know that we are trying our absolute best, and it’s hard to make a decision that pleases everyone. It just feels like an impossible situation.

J​essyca Mathews, 43

English teacher at Carman-Ainsworth High School in Flint, Michigan, which is planning to begin the school year remotely through the month of September

Michigan was one of the states that was heavily affected by COVID-19 first. My students have lost family members, and there’s a lot of trauma we are not addressing. When COVID hit, I had kids who were texting me in the middle of the night, and I answered them every single time. As the school year starts, care needs to come before content. We cannot just hop in and learn algebra.

This whole situation is a reflection of all the things that were wrong with education before COVID hit. Everyone knows equity is a huge problem. Everyone in education knew that the lack of technology was a problem. The large number of students who did not have the tools to do any kind of learning at home was already tremendous. You’re already leaving them behind. Some schools have everything they need to do everything, and they’re majority-white and they’re middle-class schools. Everyone else is sitting back, going, ‘We’ve never had what we needed. But now we’re supposed to just make it work in the middle of a pandemic?’ The pandemic exposed all of those things.

This whole situation is a reflection of all the things that were wrong with education before COVID hit.

Starting the school year virtually is the safest option. By no means is it the easiest. It will be incredibly hard for teachers to do their job. I’ve been thinking about what I can do to have a space of respect, love and liberty for all of us. That’s really hard in a virtual space. But safety and care are supposed to be at the forefront all the time in education. So if virtually doing education is the way for us to protect everyone during this time, that is what we should be doing. I want to be safe. People say, ‘Teachers aren’t working.’ We’re working harder than ever.

Shontèe Branton, 36

First-grade teacher at Eddie Bernice Johnson Elementary School in Wilmer, Texas, which will begin the school year with distance learning until at least Oct. 6

Teaching first graders virtually this spring was tough. It’s easier for bigger kids because they know how to navigate through the various programs, and most high school kids already do a lot of learning with technology. For our students, it was a challenge because they could not do the programs by themselves. They had to have help. I had a few parents who were working, and they couldn’t just stop and help their child. A lot of parents were overwhelmed, so I went through each assignment and videotaped myself doing it, showing them how to circle a noun in a sentence or count money. I had some grandparents who were raising their grandchildren, and the technology was just over their head, so I drove to their homes and gave them actual packets to work on.

Teaching virtually was a lot more work than actually teaching in class.

I feel most children learn better when they’re in the classroom, where we can do more exploring. I know the benefits of them socially interacting with their peers and learning from their peers. I just want leaders to do what’s best for the children. At the end of the day, I’m one person and there are millions of children out there who need to be educated.

Some people feel like teachers just don’t want to go to work, and that’s not true. A lot of teachers have underlying health conditions and concerns, and we’re fearful for our babies. We see different people hosting meetings virtually, and then they’re telling us, ‘Just send the kids to school.’ We want them to be safe. We’re going to have to work regardless, whether it’s virtually or at school. Teaching virtually was a lot more work than actually teaching in class. But we want what’s best for the kids.

Jacob Fertig, 33

Art teacher at Riverside High School in Belle, West Virginia, which is planning to begin in-person learning for some students in September

Part of my concern with school reopening is that nationwide, about a quarter of our teachers are in the age range where this is really dangerous. They’re playing Russian roulette with the most experienced educators. I just had a conversation with a group of teachers, and it’s so bad that I know a couple of them are leaving . They’re done.

School principals shouldn’t be the ones having to make life-or-death decisions for our communities. It’s not on our backs how the economy does. But every time there’s a crisis in our communities, in some ways, there’s the perception that we’re supposed to be the ones handling it.

They're playing Russian roulette with the most experienced educators.

Are we going to get the materials we need? Are there going to be enough masks? That’s going to cost more money that we don’t have. A significant percentage of our school-aged students are living with a grandparent, and even if you argue the virus doesn’t affect kids as severely, it does affect old people. If their grandparents die, they don’t have anybody else. I’ve got students who are working full-time. These kids are trying to keep their households afloat.

Those problems are so much bigger than what their grades are. To me, it’s ridiculous that going back to school is the hill to die on for some people. Why don’t you say, ‘Right now is not a good time. We’ll put it online.’ There are children that are having to live adult lives right now . Stop trying to force this thing. We’ll get there. But right now, you’re creating a whole lot of stress.

Grant Ruby, 42

Math teacher at Lincoln High School in Tacoma, Washington, which will begin the school year remotely

A lot of high school kids don’t like math. And one of the ways that I convince them just to show up to class is by being the goofy teacher who cares about them. It’s going to be a lot harder to be that person on a computer screen, when I don’t have that opportunity to have those one-on-one conversations or even stand at my classroom door and welcome every student into the classroom.

It's better than being in person and crossing our fingers, hoping no one dies.

It’s going to be really interesting to see how engagement online this year compares to engagement in my regular classroom when it’s not a pandemic, and I expect it to decrease significantly. During the spring, I only had about 10% of my students engaging each week in remote learning. I don’t expect as many students to pass classes this year as do normally, just because it’s going to be a lot easier to check out. If a kid is on a computer screen, how do I know that they’re engaged with what I’m talking about? How do I know they’re not on their phone?

It’s better than being in person and crossing our fingers, hoping no one dies. Certainly it’s not ideal. I would rather be in person with my kids, but I can’t be right now. I got into teaching because I wanted to spend time with kids all day. I want to mentor them. I am in a position to share my knowledge and experience and goofiness with young people and hopefully improve their lives and have fun. I don’t know if I’m really going to be doing that this year.

NaShonda Cooke, 45

Special education teacher at Millbrook Magnet High School in Raleigh, North Carolina, which began the school year virtually on Aug. 17

Meeting students for the first time virtually, I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it hasn’t been as difficult because they’re in the comfort of their home, and we’ve done different ice breakers that actually work at home — find an object in your house and show it to us and tell us what it means to you. I’m still building relationships with them, and this is an opportunity to do it on a different level.

We don't want our kids to get the short end of this pandemic.

But I’m absolutely hoping to go back in person eventually because my students need it and so do I. I’m an eighth-generation educator. It’s something that is a part of me, being able to give them a hug and have a conversation and look them in the eyes.

I’m able to do a lot of things online. But I can’t give them that boost of confidence. I can’t make eye contact when they need that, when that lightbulb moment is flickering and they need to see that safe space, even if just looking at me reminds them to have the courage to ask a question or give an answer. I can’t do that online.

I think teachers are doing what we’ve always done — we’ve taken what we’ve been handed and we are making sure that our students get the best educational experience possible. And we are continuing to stay up late at night, trying to figure out how to make that happen. We don’t want our kids to get the short end of this pandemic and lose out on things that they have a right to, things that they so desperately need.

Nathan Bowling, 40

Social studies and AP Government and Politics teacher at the American Community School of Abu Dhabi, an international private school that is welcoming students back for in-person instruction with alternating schedules

I left Lincoln High School in Tacoma, Washington last year to teach abroad. I’ve been told repeatedly that schools abroad want American teachers, in particular, because if you can teach and thrive in an American public school, you can teach and thrive anywhere. What’s different now is my day is more realistic. I have more planning time, I have smaller class sizes and my students are set up for success by having their basic life needs met in a way I haven’t experienced at other points in my career.

If I was teaching in the United States, I would have way more concerns given the way things are right now.

The job description of a teacher in a prototypical American public school, in particular a high-poverty school, is very long — teacher, counselor, social worker. Society does not care or does not acknowledge that for millions of low-income students, basic life needs are not being met, and the burden to fill those gaps often falls to teachers. At my current school, my students’ needs are being met, so my job is just to teach.

There are about 10 million people in the United Arab Emirates, a population slightly greater than Washington state or New York City. Throughout the pandemic, there have been about 370 COVID-19 deaths in the UAE — a fraction of the deaths in Washington state or New York City. Because of the way they handled the virus, demonstrating competent leadership, we’re going back to school face-to-face with a modified schedule this fall. If I was teaching in the United States, I would have way more concerns, given the way things are right now.

Binh Thai, 43

Humanities teacher at University Neighborhood Middle School in New York City, where school is slated to start with a mix of in-person and remote learning in September

The spring was really like emergency teaching. We had very little time to prepare for remote learning. Attendance was an issue. I had students performing in the 90th percentile who just disappeared. I contacted parents, just to check in on the social and emotional state of the students, as well as their family. I stressed over how to maintain their learning and get them to grow academically, when they weren’t coming to class consistently. A lot of the systems and the classroom routines that we had established from the beginning of the year fell apart.

I'm afraid of students just sitting there in silence.

I received a medical accommodation to teach remotely this fall. My biggest concern is that I’m teaching incoming sixth graders. I’ve never met them before. They’re brand new students. Building a relationship with them where they can trust me as a facilitator of their learning — I think that’s the biggest worry I have right now. We won’t get to play games and we don’t get to plant the garden that we normally do every year — things that I feel are central to my classroom community and what gets students to trust me enough to ask for help. I’m afraid of students just sitting there in silence for 30 school days and not knowing how to make it better. There’s nothing I can do to force them to participate. We’re preparing to revamp our curriculum, so that it’s a lot more responsive to the students.

Hope Brown, 54

U.S. history teacher at Woodford County High School in Versailles, Kentucky, which is beginning the school year virtually and planning to resume in-person instruction in September

The pandemic has changed everything about teaching. I’m worried about both the potential health risks of going back in person and also the loss of the learning environment we had. In classrooms, if possible, we’ll all have to do six feet of social distancing and wear masks. It’s almost like I have to go back to standing in front of the room and lecturing to kids who are sitting all in one direction — not working together, not analyzing together, not collaborating, not being creative. To me, it just feels so dry and institutionalized.

It's just an awful situation to be in.

There won’t be assemblies or pep rallies. The marching band season has already been cancelled. Everything that makes kids like coming to school is just gone. I think maybe kids and families have in their head that it’s going to be like before COVID. But it’s not going to be anything like that.

I understand the desire to reopen. I understand it as a person who had small children at one time. A lot of it is because there’s such a need for parents to get back to work, and they have to have some place for kids to go. So I feel like that’s how we are viewed — just some place for kids to go while parents are working.

I don’t know what the solutions are to this. There are no good solutions. I’m worried for my students, I’m worried for my own kids. The district is trying to do the best they can. It’s just an awful situation to be in. And if we had had clear direction from the beginning of this, and it had not become politicized , then maybe we would be in a position where things were back to normal by the time school started.

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Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Teacher Quality of Life: A Longitudinal Study from before and during the Health Crisis

Pablo a. lizana.

1 Laboratory of Morphological Sciences, Instituto de Biología, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Valparaíso 2373223, Chile; [email protected]

Gustavo Vega-Fernadez

Alejandro gomez-bruton.

2 GENUD ‘‘Growth, Exercise, Nutrition and Development’’ Research Group, Faculty of Sport and Health Sciences, Universidad de Zaragoza, 50009 Zaragoza, Spain; se.razinu@noturb

Bárbara Leyton

3 Public Nutrition Unit, Institute of Nutrition and Food Technology, University of Chile, Santiago 7830490, Chile; lc.elihcu.atni@notyelb (B.L.); lc.elihcu.atni@arell (L.L.)

4 Online Education, Keiser University, 1900 W Commercial Blvd, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33309, USA

Associated Data

The datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Background: Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, teachers were already reporting a low quality of life (QoL) perception, with a significant impact on mental and physical health due to various stress factors associated with work overload. The objective of this study was to evaluate the QoL impact on Chilean teachers before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis was performed following a longitudinal design on a sample of 63 Chilean teachers in pre-pandemic and COVID-19 pandemic timeframes. QoL perception, along with teachers’ sociodemographic data, was evaluated via the Short-Form 36 Health Survey (SF-36) questionnaire. Sociodemographic variables presented no significant variations in pre-pandemic and pandemic comparisons. QoL, however, showed a significant decrease during the pandemic compared to the pre-pandemic measurement ( p < 0.01). In each gender, there were significant differences between pre-pandemic and pandemic timeframes, with a greater impact among women in the mental and physical component summary variables and seven of the eight QoL scales ( p < 0.01). Between age categories, people under 45 presented significant differences ( p < 0.05) between pre-pandemic and pandemic timeframes in all summary dimensions and measurements. In conclusion, Chilean teachers’ QoL perception has been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. These findings could be related to work overload due to teleworking or feelings of uncertainty, loneliness, and fear that the pandemic and its associated confinements will worsen.

1. Introduction

Due to the rapid worldwide spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19), work organizations have had to adapt to public health measures regarding social distancing to reduce viral dissemination, forcing a massive shift towards teleworking [ 1 ]. In this context, teleworking is a factor that has been a major challenge for some professionals, with a lack of control over working hours and increased psychosocial risks associated with stress and work overload [ 2 , 3 ]. Furthermore, teleworking has had a significant impact on professional and personal life (work–life balance), producing physical and mental exhaustion and burnout [ 4 ]. Additionally, the increase in digital technologies at work has increased stress in workers (techno-stress), which is associated with significant psychosocial demands [ 5 ]. The concept of techno-stress includes the adverse effects caused by technology on people’s behaviors and physiology [ 6 ]. In this context, as psychosomatic consequences are recognized, over time, teachers may develop high levels of burnout [ 7 ]. Thus, in Chile, techno-stress (techno-anxiety, techno-fatigue, or both conditions) had already been reported in teachers who incorporated computer and communication technologies into their practices before the COVID-19 pandemic [ 8 ]. In this context, techno-stress in teachers may be caused by the introduction of technology to the classroom and a lack of adaptation to the technological environment [ 9 ]. Due to the global crisis caused by COVID-19, the change from face-to-face to an online format may affect teachers’ mental health due to the short adaptation period.

The COVID-19 pandemic created rapid global change that affected the teaching world. In many countries, the situation was approached with strict confinement by closing educational establishments [ 10 ] and obligating teachers to swiftly adapt to distance learning [ 11 ]. In Chile, 3 March 2020 saw the first case of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which can cause severe acute respiratory syndrome [ 12 ]. Throughout the Chilean territory, on 16 March, churches, schools, and gymnasiums were closed by decree, followed by the closure of international borders. From the beginning, plans for social isolation were implemented, with dynamic quarantines between Chilean regions that were eventually extended through various regional capitals and cities showing higher infection rates. Some cities reached 120 days of total quarantine. The health crisis outlook is a reflection of the critical scenario in many developed and developing countries, where the psychosocial impact has been reported as significantly high throughout the population [ 13 ]. This is a context in which differences in the quality-of-life (QoL) perception of the population could emerge, especially among the teacher labor pool, which, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, was already reporting diminished QoL perception associated with various factors [ 14 , 15 ].

Teachers have experienced an important change in their work format during the global health emergency [ 16 ]. Prior to the pandemic, these professionals were widely studied, and research showed a high work overload that led to work burnout [ 17 , 18 ]. Some reports indicate that stressors present among teachers include poor working conditions, difficulties with students and families, and work organizational factors [ 19 ]. In the educational workforce, teachers must organize their work and allot extra hours for tending to parents and guardians, preparing materials, and planning, which is mostly done at home [ 20 ]. On top of this, teachers have reported various epidemic problems, such as high rates of chronic non-transmissible diseases associated with QoL deterioration [ 15 ], high prevalence of obesity and low physical activity (associated with post-work fatigue and very late work hours) [ 18 ], high rates of musculoskeletal disorders, burnout syndrome, depression, and anxiety [ 21 , 22 ]. Additionally, these problems are exacerbated among females [ 23 ], a highly important sociodemographic factor given the high proportion of women in this profession [ 20 , 24 ]; age is also a significant factor associated with greater mental and physical deterioration [ 14 , 15 ]. All of this takes place within a context of work overload multiplied by teleworking and other factors that result in physical and mental QoL deterioration [ 19 , 25 ]. Therefore, the objective of this study was to compare health-related QoL in teachers before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

2. Materials and Methods

2.1. participants.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, 155 random teachers were contacted via e-mail, all of whom had participated in the Chilean National Fund for Scientific and Technological Research project (FONDECYT-ANID 11170716) before the pandemic. Ninety-two teachers were excluded due to incomplete data, leaving a sample of 63 teachers (from 13 schools; 46.15% from northern Chile, 23.08% from central Chile, and 30.77% from southern Chile), who participated in both evaluations and satisfied the longitudinal design of this study.

2.2. Instruments

All sociodemographic data on participants were gathered through surveys. To evaluate teachers’ QoL, the Short-Form 36 Health Survey (SF-36) instrument, which was developed in the USA to evaluate QoL perception related to health in adults, was applied [ 26 ]. This questionnaire was adapted syntactically and semantically to Chilean idiosyncrasy and applied to a representative sample of the Chilean adult population [ 27 ]. The instrument consists of 36 Likert-type personal appraisal questions grouped into eight scales: physical function, role limitations due to physical problems, bodily pain, general health perceptions, vitality, social functioning, role limitations due to emotional problems, and mental health. These scales are also grouped into two summary measurements: a physical component summary (PCS) and a mental component summary (MCS). Participants’ scores for each scale and component are transformed into a scale of 0–100, followed by calculating z-score and t-score values for each scale and summary measurements in the mental and physical component summaries with an internationally standardized method [ 28 ].

To calculate the scores for each scale and component, the method using standardized scores in the USA was applied. For the general population, the scores of each scale were obtained with the following transformation:

The values of each component were obtained with the following:

This transformation, with a mean of 50 and an SD of 10, allows the results to be directly interpretable. Thus, scores above 50 indicate a better QoL and scores below 50 indicate a worse QoL than the mean of the reference population. Regarding the reliability of the SF-36 scale, Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was high and homogeneous (α = 0.85) for each of the eight SF-36 scales. Factor analysis yielded two factors; the first and second factors accounted for 77% and 32% of the total variance and 90% and 38% of the reliable variance, respectively. The data met the Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin measure (0.85) with small values, meaning that, overall, the variables had too little in common to warrant a factor analysis. Pearson’s correlation coefficients of the eight scale scores with MCS indicated a high correlation for vitality, social functioning, role limitations due to emotional problems, and mental health, ranging from r = 0.92 (mental health) to r = 0.78 (social functioning). On the other hand, the medium and highest correlations for PCS were obtained for the scales of physical function, role limitations due to physical problems, bodily pain, and general health perceptions, ranging from r = 0.74 (body pain) to r = 0.58 (general health perceptions), as shown in Appendix A , Table A1 , Table A2 , Table A3 and Table A4 .

2.3. Procedure

Teachers’ QoL was evaluated in two stages: pre-pandemic and pandemic. The evaluation of pre-pandemic subjects included teachers from the FONDECYT-ANID 11170716 study who were interviewed in person between October 2018 and October 2019; during the pandemic, contact was reestablished with teachers via email between July and October 2020. The teachers who agreed to participate answered a Spanish survey via an online survey platform named SurveyMonkey (SurveyMonkey, San Mateo, CA, USA).

No monetary compensation was given for completing the questionnaire. The study met Helsinki Declaration guidelines [ 29 ]. Participating teachers signed informed voluntary consent forms prior to collecting their background information (sociodemographic data and SF-36 questionnaire), which explicitly said that all personal results are strictly confidential. All procedures for this study were approved by the bioethics committee of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso.

2.4. Statistical Analysis

Data were analyzed with STATA 16 software for Windows. Descriptive statistics were analyzed using measures with standard deviations (SDs) for continuous variables and frequencies with percentages for categorical variables ( n , %). Sociodemographic variables were compared between genders in the pre-pandemic and pandemic timeframes. QoL was also evaluated by comparing each scale and summary measure between the pre-pandemic and pandemic periods for each of the two teacher age groups (≤44 years old and ≥45 years old). Age categories were obtained from the Chilean National Health Survey 2009/2010 [ 30 ], and QoL (according to all scales) was compared between pre-pandemic and pandemic periods in males and females. Specific tests were used for comparing medians ( t -test for related samples or their non-parametric equivalent, Wilcoxon) according to results of the Shapiro–Wilk normality test, and the chi-squared and Fisher’s exact association tests were used to analyze categorical variables.

3.1. Participant Characteristics

Of the 63 study participants, 71% were women ( n = 45). In Table 1 , we present the sociodemographic characteristics analyzed between genders in pre-pandemic and pandemic periods, with all variables showing no significant differences between the two evaluation periods.

Sociodemographic characteristics of Chilean teachers analyzed by gender before and during the COVID-19 pandemic ( n = 63).

<15 h and >15 h, domestic work in hours; p < 0.05. a Wilcoxon test, b Fisher’s exact test, c chi-squared test. d Data are expressed as mean and standard deviation. e Data are expressed as frequency (percentage). f Performing household chores, either your own or someone else’s, without payment (e.g., cooking, cleaning, shopping, laundry, ironing, child care, etc.).

3.2. Quality of Life

In Table 2 , we can observe a comparison of scores on each of the eight scales and the two summary measurements on the SF-36 survey in the pre-pandemic and pandemic timeframes for the total sample of individuals. Participants in the pre-pandemic period presented higher scores on QoL perception in all dimensions in comparison with measurements taken during the pandemic. Comparisons of all QoL dimensions in pre-pandemic and pandemic timeframes were all significant ( p < 0.01). During the pandemic, the dimensions with the lowest scores were social functioning (35.251 ± 12.826), mental health (36.868 ± 10.783), and the mental component summary (34.959 ± 10.3).

Comparison of Short-Form 36 Health Survey (SF-36) measurements of 8 scales and quality of life (QoL) summary measurements evaluated in pre-pandemic and pandemic timeframes in the total sample and each gender.

p < 0.05 a t -test, b Wilcoxon’s text.

Table 2 also shows a comparison of the scores on each of the eight scales and the two summary measurements on the SF-36 survey in the pre-pandemic and pandemic timeframes by gender. The results show differences between the two periods for men and women. In men, there were statistically significant differences in the dimensions of role limitations due to physical problems, general health perceptions, social functioning, and mental health ( p < 0.05). However, among women, every dimension and summary measurement presented significant differences (all p < 0.05).

Table 3 shows the differences in pre-pandemic versus pandemic scores on all QoL dimensions for each teacher age category (≤44 and ≥45). Teachers aged ≤44 years showed a significant decrease ( p < 0.05) between pre-pandemic and pandemic timeframes in all the measured variables, except for role limitations due to emotional problems ( p = 0.190). The second age category (≥45 years) only showed a significant decrease in QoL for role limitations due to physical problems, vitality, role limitations due to emotional problems, mental health dimensions, and the mental component summary ( p < 0.05).

Comparison of 8 SF-36 QoL scales and two summary measurements between pre-pandemic and pandemic timeframes for each age group ≤44 and ≥45 years ( n = 63).

≤44 and ≥45, age categories (years) p < 0.05, a t -test, b Wilcoxon test.

4. Discussion

The purpose of the present study was to compare Chilean teachers’ QoL in a longitudinal study between pre-pandemic and pandemic timeframes. The principal results indicate that Chilean teachers presented decreased scores on their health-related QoL perception before the pandemic. This background has also been observed in other regions of the world [ 22 ], as well as among Chilean teachers, who reported a significant association between low QoL perception and the mental component summary dimension among younger teachers (≤44 years vs. ≥45 years) [ 15 ]. Additionally, during the pandemic, the scores dropped significantly; this may be due to the impact of teleworking on teachers’ health, as reported in other groups of workers, who indicated that it was a principal factor impacting psychosocial health and physical burnout due to stress and work exhaustion among employees [ 2 , 3 , 4 ]. However, more studies are required to evaluate the effect of telework on teachers during the COVID-19 pandemic, as these results could also be due to other factors not explored in the present study, such as a decrease in social relations, domestic confinement, and a reduction in physical activity levels [ 31 ].

Our results in the pandemic context indicate that QoL impact occurred specifically among women in the ≤44 age category. These findings coincide with recent studies in an Italian population, which showed a significantly lower psychological wellbeing among women, people under 50, and individuals with health risk factors [ 32 ]. Additionally, similar results were reported from Austria, where women and young adults (<35 years), along with the unemployed and poor, presented mental health problems all related to an increase in depression and decrease in QoL [ 33 ]. The same group of researchers saw similar problems emerge in the population of the United Kingdom: adults under 35, women, and unemployed people were the most affected by confinement in terms of mental health [ 34 ]. These results also align with those reported from Iran, where women and young adults had the most anxiety about COVID-19 [ 35 ]. In China, during the initial COVID-19 outbreak, women were also seen to have greater psychological impacts and higher levels of stress, anxiety, and depression [ 36 ]. In Greece, female teachers had greater feelings of fear and depression at the beginning of the pandemic [ 37 ], and in China, female teachers reported higher anxiety than male teachers [ 38 ]. In this regard, Riecher-Rössler (2020) stated that in spite of important evidence that shows differences in mental disorders by sex and gender, there is still little real comprehension of these differences’ causes [ 39 ]. One explanation for the greater QoL impact among women during the pandemic could be the heavy load of self-assumed or socially imposed home responsibilities, even among women professionals [ 40 ]. Recently, in Chile, it was reported that female teachers experienced significant work exhaustion and lower engagement compared to their male work peers, regardless of whether there were children in their home, results that can be complemented with other pre-pandemic studies in Chile, which reported that working-age women had a higher probability of suffering stress than men [ 41 ]. On top of these results, various researchers have reported that female Latin American teachers do more hours of housework than male teachers [ 15 , 20 ]. This study, because it is longitudinal, could indicate that the COVID-19 confinement phenomenon is what primarily impacts QoL perception, especially among female teachers in the physical and mental component summaries. There are similar reports from studies in other populations, such as Greek university students, where confinement caused QoL deterioration, tripled depression cases, and increased suicidal ideation eightfold [ 42 ]; studies in Russia maintained that fear and loneliness from confinement could have negative consequences for the mental and physical health of people [ 43 ], and results obtained in Spanish teachers during the pandemic revealed that they have experienced higher levels of distress due to the workload generated during the lockdown [ 44 ].

Longitudinal studies on COVID-19 among teachers are scarce. However, Sokal et al. (2020) conducted a study surveying Canadian teachers at two points at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Their results indicated increasing burnout and cynicism, along with teachers’ emotional and cognitive attitudes towards change becoming increasingly negative. Recently, in Chile, a survey on teacher burnout was conducted, which indicated decreased engagement and increased work exhaustion in individuals. These results can be complemented by the results of this study based on the impact on teachers’ mental and physical health [ 45 ]. One relevant aspect of the study on engagement and work burnout among Chilean teachers is that it compared its results with workers in various occupations and professions before and during the pandemic, revealing that Chilean teachers had less engagement and more work exhaustion than other labor groups [ 45 ]. The observation proposed by Foundation Chile (2020) about pre-pandemic work exhaustion among Chilean teachers can be confirmed through the present results, which show that physical function and role limitation (due to emotional problems) dimensions alone are over 50 points, corresponding to a welfare cutoff point. These results suggest that pre-pandemic teachers were already suffering from mental and physical wellbeing levels below those of other professionals, and that since the pandemic, these figures have dropped significantly. These results support those described in the present article: when asked about the possible worsening of the pandemic, teachers’ mental and physical deterioration is ever higher. Recent observations indicate that teachers show a high prevalence of anxiety, depression, and stress in places where face-to-face classes have returned [ 46 ].

The presented study results suggest a substantial impact on QoL due to working conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic, with a significant effect on women and the youngest age group. Furthermore, these results suggest that the mental and physical recovery of Chilean teachers will be challenging. Future strategies should be focused on reducing the physical and psychological impacts generated by COVID-19 confinement.

Limitations

Participants’ replies were self-reported, which is considered a limitation. However, by applying the same instrument on two widely separated occasions, comparisons were made in different contexts, strengthening the results. On the other hand, as a longitudinal study, this research also has the strength of understanding how the pandemic phenomenon impacts teachers. Some variables that could affect the main outcomes, such as physical activity levels or social relations, were not registered in the present study and could partially explain some of the findings. Finally, an important limitation is the sample size, so the results should be interpreted with caution, and further studies will be necessary with larger samples. However, the sample demographics are comparable to those in previous studies. The percentage of female teachers is very similar to other studies and the Chilean Ministry of Education’s national report (≥70%) [ 15 , 16 , 24 , 47 ]. Furthermore, age also maintains a similar proportion to that reported by the Chilean Ministry of Education. The majority of teachers (>60%) are 44 years of age or less [ 47 ]. Concerning the educational establishments where the teachers work, there was a representation from the northern, central, and southern regions of the country, representing Chile’s macro-zones.

5. Conclusions

In the sample of teachers studied, low QoL scores were observed before the COVID-19 pandemic, and they decreased significantly during the pandemic, especially among women and individuals under 45 years old. These findings confirm the deterioration of teachers’ QoL during the pandemic. This study reports some negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on teachers’ mental and physical health. The present results should serve as a resource for future interventions among teachers to help improve their QoL.

Acknowledgments

The authors thank the directors and teachers of all the rural schools for their willingness to participate in this study.

Factor analysis SF-36 for Chilean teachers. Rotated factor loadings and variance explained.

Results of a factor analysis (two factors retained) using the principal factor method with a varimax rotation. MCS and PCS: Mental and Physical health summaries. Bold values indicate variables included in the factors: MCS: loading > 0.52; PCS: loading > 0.34. b Reliable variance = total variance explained divided by the internal reliability (Cronbach’s a) of the scale.

Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measure of sampling adequacy.

Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) takes values between 0 and 1, with small values meaning that overall the variables have too little in common to warrant a factor analysis (0.00 to 0.49 unacceptable; 0.50 to 0.59 miserable; 0.60 to 0.69 mediocre; 0.70 to 0.79 middling; 0.80 to 0.89 meritorious; 0.90 to 1.00 marvelous).

The internal consistency for each of the eight SF-36 scales (Cronbach’s alpha).

Correlation between the summary measures of the SF-36 and each of the eight dimensions.

MCS and PCS: Mental and Physical health summaries. Bold values indicate the highest correlations for each factor.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, P.A.L.; methodology, P.A.L. and G.V.-F.; formal analysis, P.A.L., G.V.-F., L.L., B.L.; investigation, P.A.L. and G.V.-F.; resources, P.A.L.; data curation, P.A.L., G.V.-F.; writing—original draft preparation, P.A.L., G.V.-F., A.G.-B.; writing—review and editing, P.A.L., G.V.-F., A.G.-B.; visualization, P.A.L., G.V.-F., A.G.-B., L.L., B.L.; supervision, P.A.L., G.V.-F., A.G.-B., L.L., B.L.; project administration, P.A.L.; funding acquisition, P.A.L. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

This research was funded by FONDECYT-ANID, grant number 11170716.

Institutional Review Board Statement

The study was conducted according to the guidelines of the Declaration of Helsinki. All procedures for this study were approved by the bioethics committee of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso (BIOEPUCV-H160-2017).

Informed Consent Statement

Participating teachers signed informed voluntary consent prior to collecting their background information, which explicitly said that all personal results are strictly confidential.

Data Availability Statement

Conflicts of interest.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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Home > JOURNALS > Essays in Education > Vol. 28 > Iss. 1 (2021)

A Review of My Teaching Philosophy Through a COVID-19 Lens

Michelle L. Boettcher , Clemson University Follow

This essay focuses on how the pandemic has informed my teaching philosophy and centered the humanness of students rather than course content or my role, identity, and pedagogy as instructor. The article includes three examples from my teaching philosophy: Expertise, Mistakes, and Reflection. As a result of the pandemic, I have added caring as a part of course content, reframed the idea of “no excuse” for late work, and incorporated reflection as an element of academic rigor. As a result, a renewed focus on student learning has usurped my past inclination to focusing on my teaching in my philosophy statement.

Recommended Citation

Boettcher, Michelle L. (2022) "A Review of My Teaching Philosophy Through a COVID-19 Lens," Essays in Education : Vol. 28: Iss. 1, Article 4. Available at: https://openriver.winona.edu/eie/vol28/iss1/4

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The Pandemic Taught Teachers A Bunch Of Lessons. Now, They Want Their Schools To Listen

Jason Cianfrance has two words to describe the past school year.

“Chaotic …. challenging.”

But the 27-year veteran math teacher in the Adams 12 school district is quick to add the year was also filled with learning, “something that just challenged all of our paradigms of what we have gotten comfortable with in education.”

Cianfrance, many teachers across the state, and a group of education researchers, now want to use the lessons those teachers learned during the pandemic to better education into the future.

For many, the last school year was one of the hardest teachers have ever experienced. But the year forced many to reflect on how they normally do things in a classroom: What’s good to keep, but what could be improved? Cianfrance said the pandemic gave teachers a kick, that they just can’t be comfortable recycling lessons and doing things how they’ve always been done.

“I think the worst thing we could do next year is say ‘Whew, it's back to normal’ because back to normal means we didn't learn anything from the 18 months that we went through that was chaos,” he said. “There have to be things that we can take from that, that are going to make us be better … and make students learn better.”

Cianfrance was one of several teachers across Colorado interviewed by other educators — teacher policy fellows — from Teach Plus Colorado , an organization that trains teachers in education policy and advocacy. Their task: gather ideas for how the pandemic could help accelerate change to K-12 education. The fellows then compiled educator insights into a report . 

So, what did teachers learn from the pandemic and what may change?

Jason Cianfrance said the biggest challenge during the pandemic was preparing to teach a lesson from his kitchen and seeing 30 black rectangles on Zoom. He didn’t really know what was happening on the other side of the camera. Teachers saw how isolation ground down their students — and them.

It reminded him of how much students need each other. How much they need to interact and collaborate together in-person. Sometimes he’d put kids in virtual break out rooms. He'd pop in and see five black screens that were muted.

“They need each other (in-person), they need interaction,” he said.

Then Cianfrance learned about Pear Deck . The tool is  like an interactive slideshow. With the click of a button, he could see his students’ thought processes as they answered questions. The pandemic made teachers more comfortable and bolder about using new technology. Next year, he’ll project the program at the front of the class, so kids can learn from each other’s work.

“It’s a way to capture things that in the past were sort of fleeting,” he said.

Cianfrance will still have students do some math via pencil and paper. But he envisions saving reams of paper now. And he’s using other technology tools, too. One allows him to see which students have actually watched a lesson — as homework, of course — and to embed questions that students can’t skip. “Then we get to actually jump right into class tomorrow from a collaborative standpoint of ‘What did you think about that? What did you learn about it? Can you do some problems based on that?’” Cianfrance said.

Adrian Parker taught chemistry at DSST Conservatory Green in Denver last year. He said he took to recording all of his classes for a “virtual library” — lessons on demand online that students can refer back to. For Parker,  it’s mind boggling that he didn’t do it pre-COVID.

“It just provides access to knowledge right there at their fingertips,” he said.

Now, Parker thinks high school teachers should record all lessons. It could also help schools who typically have to scramble to find substitute teachers.

“I think that would relieve a lot of pressure from teachers who feel like ‘I need to go to school, even if I'm sick or can't go in,’” Parker said. ’ 

It’s not just flexibility for teachers that teachers want, in the report, teachers said allowing some students with other responsibilities outside school to get their school work done on a flexible schedule, opens up more doors. 

They also made other recommendations, like ensuring all students have access to high-speed, reliable internet.

 Without it, students become disengaged.

Elementary students: Is the “rush, rush, rush, cram it in” of the past several years really the way to go?

In rural Colorado, the pandemic had elementary teacher Nicole Melby pivoting between Kindergarteners, first, second and third graders. She was struck by the amount of time lost during hybrid and remote learning. It made her think about the pace of education. 

“Over the last several years education has been a ‘Rush rush, rush, cram it in, do more, achieve more, higher test scores,” Melby said.

She said teachers can push and try to go really fast and cram everything in – some students are capable and ready — but some just aren’t ready developmentally. She was reminded of what’s most important: Are kids growing academically? Are they gaining ground? The year pushed teachers to evaluate what’s most important.

“You have to narrow it down to top priorities, what is absolutely essential and what things are a bonus,” she said of the pandemic year.

Next year, of course, a school can’t unilaterally decide to teach fewer state standards. However, Melby said the pandemic led teachers to find ways to teach more efficiently, combining concepts in one lesson.

Melby said the pandemic made crystal clear what activities are critical to do in person with students, and what things can be left for outside of school. Focusing on interpersonal skills – like how to interact with others, wait your turn or solve a conflict – was critical in person because so many kids had lost those skills.  Second, Melby said it was critical to work on phonics, the building blocks of reading, in-person. Kids have to see teachers’ mouths to see how sounds are formed. That was hard with masks on. So…. they went outside.

“Our school developed a lot of outdoor classrooms and we spent a lot of time outside,” said Melby.

Parents donated logs that were cut up to become chairs and tables. Outdoor learning will become a permanent feature at her school.

One silver lining of the pandemic was that many teachers were able to build stronger relationships with students’ families. Why not all the time?

Because meetings could be set up virtually, communication between teachers and parents went up. Teachers said in the report that they’d like their schools to designate frequent and consistent time for teachers to connect virtually with parents. 

Nicole Melby’s school hosted virtual parent nights once a month on basic concepts for parents to help their child learn. With virtual parent-teacher conferences, Melby saw much higher attendance. Parents could jump on a call from a break room at work. The school hopes to use this option and make parent communication more frequent.

Being able to connect with families online was sometimes a better option for 10 th grade chemistry teacher Adrian Parker.  It helped in a case where a student’s mother had been hospitalized for COVID-19. The student wasn’t online much, burdened with child care responsibilities, and getting low grades. When the mother and student could finally connect with Parker from their home via Zoom, Parker said the less ‘official’ environment allowed everyone to be calmer and more comfortable and let their guard down a bit.

“ It was just more convenient,” he said, as they worked out a plan to get the student back on track.  “And I think that kind of allowed us to have a more authentic conversation, which I usually don't have that early in the year.”

Studies have consistently shown that family engagement is highly correlated to student success.

The 100 pound elephant in every classroom: Tests. Will they change?

Some teachers discovered one of the biggest areas that could stand to be improved in the upper grades was — testing.  Math teacher Jason Cianfrance caught on quickly that some students were using a phone app to scan and solve math problems, effectively cheating.  Teachers tried to outsmart them. That didn’t work.

“We sort of felt like the Olympic doping committee …  the dopers were half a step ahead of the tests that find the performance enhancing drugs,” he said.

But Cianfrance soon realized if a student could ace a test using an app, was he really testing if they knew the math? Maybe the test relied too heavily on memorizing content and skill-based procedures? Perhaps there should be more problem-solving questions – or asking students what they think about a question or playing teacher and finding what someone else did wrong in solving a question.

Parker agrees.

“Reanalyzing how we assess students is huge,” Parker said.

Yes, assessments are valuable, but not everything is about data, he said.

Some teachers are mulling if there are ways to assess all the so-called soft skills the pandemic forced upon kids, skills that will serve them their entire lives:  working independently, explaining and showing work in different ways, managing time, advocating for themselves.

The pandemic emphasized to Parker how few kids know how to take notes, a much higher-level skill than purely copying what a teacher says. He said the intense focus the system places on grades pushes some students to memorize or cheat. The singular drive to get an “A” affects their ability to learn and grow, said Parker.

They’re not all new problems, but the pandemic made some of them worse.

“It stunts them so quickly because … their focus isn’t on understanding the material,” Parker said.  “The focus is getting the grade.”

The pandemic reinforced to some teachers that maybe it’s better to teach and assess a set of key standards, leaving more time to focus on all the social and emotional skills teachers know are critical to work and life.

Will teachers have the freedom and space to implement changes and the insights they gained during the pandemic?

Teachers are part of a massive and daunting system of evaluations, standards, test scores and performance metrics for students. That system can make it hard for teachers to take risks. Parker said when it takes years to perfect a curriculum, it can take a lot to break the mold and try new things.  He hopes teachers remember the biggest lesson of the pandemic: how quickly they can pivot — and how flexible they can be.

“If we can do that in a pandemic or virtually within three weeks, we can teach a different lesson differently next year,” Parker said.

Finally, the pandemic made many teachers realize how much they need to collaborate with each other to be successful.

“It has made us push and fight for collaboration again, not only with parents but with each other because where the greatest change and what is absolutely best for students comes when you have many great minds at the table,” said Nicole Melby, the elementary teacher.

Teachers are in rest and recuperation mode now. But Melby, who hopes to be able to focus on a room full of first graders in person next year, is excited to reunite with her colleagues to reflect on the “unpredictable” year that was and generate more ideas. 

She said the pandemic left little golden nuggets for the practice of teaching.

“Sometimes it takes these things that jolt us to bring us back into a perspective of evaluating what we’re doing,” she said. “And not falling into a sense of complacency.”

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• Review Article
• Published: 27 September 2021

Why lockdown and distance learning during the COVID-19 pandemic are likely to increase the social class achievement gap

• Sébastien Goudeau   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-7293-0977 1 ,
• Camille Sanrey   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-3158-1306 1 ,
• Arnaud Stanczak   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-2596-1516 2 ,
• Antony Manstead   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-7540-2096 3 &
• Céline Darnon   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-2613-689X 2  

Nature Human Behaviour volume  5 ,  pages 1273–1281 ( 2021 ) Cite this article

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The COVID-19 pandemic has forced teachers and parents to quickly adapt to a new educational context: distance learning. Teachers developed online academic material while parents taught the exercises and lessons provided by teachers to their children at home. Considering that the use of digital tools in education has dramatically increased during this crisis, and it is set to continue, there is a pressing need to understand the impact of distance learning. Taking a multidisciplinary view, we argue that by making the learning process rely more than ever on families, rather than on teachers, and by getting students to work predominantly via digital resources, school closures exacerbate social class academic disparities. To address this burning issue, we propose an agenda for future research and outline recommendations to help parents, teachers and policymakers to limit the impact of the lockdown on social-class-based academic inequality.

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The widespread effects of the COVID-19 pandemic that emerged in 2019–2020 have drastically increased health, social and economic inequalities 1 , 2 . For more than 900 million learners around the world, the pandemic led to the closure of schools and universities 3 . This exceptional situation forced teachers, parents and students to quickly adapt to a new educational context: distance learning. Teachers had to develop online academic materials that could be used at home to ensure educational continuity while ensuring the necessary physical distancing. Primary and secondary school students suddenly had to work with various kinds of support, which were usually provided online by their teachers. For college students, lockdown often entailed returning to their hometowns while staying connected with their teachers and classmates via video conferences, email and other digital tools. Despite the best efforts of educational institutions, parents and teachers to keep all children and students engaged in learning activities, ensuring educational continuity during school closure—something that is difficult for everyone—may pose unique material and psychological challenges for working-class families and students.

Not only did the pandemic lead to the closure of schools in many countries, often for several weeks, it also accelerated the digitalization of education and amplified the role of parental involvement in supporting the schoolwork of their children. Thus, beyond the specific circumstances of the COVID-19 lockdown, we believe that studying the effects of the pandemic on academic inequalities provides a way to more broadly examine the consequences of school closure and related effects (for example, digitalization of education) on social class inequalities. Indeed, bearing in mind that (1) the risk of further pandemics is higher than ever (that is, we are in a ‘pandemic era’ 4 , 5 ) and (2) beyond pandemics, the use of digital tools in education (and therefore the influence of parental involvement) has dramatically increased during this crisis, and is set to continue, there is a pressing need for an integrative and comprehensive model that examines the consequences of distance learning. Here, we propose such an integrative model that helps us to understand the extent to which the school closures associated with the pandemic amplify economic, digital and cultural divides that in turn affect the psychological functioning of parents, students and teachers in a way that amplifies academic inequalities. Bringing together research in social sciences, ranging from economics and sociology to social, cultural, cognitive and educational psychology, we argue that by getting students to work predominantly via digital resources rather than direct interactions with their teachers, and by making the learning process rely more than ever on families rather than teachers, school closures exacerbate social class academic disparities.

First, we review research showing that social class is associated with unequal access to digital tools, unequal familiarity with digital skills and unequal uses of such tools for learning purposes 6 , 7 . We then review research documenting how unequal familiarity with school culture, knowledge and skills can also contribute to the accentuation of academic inequalities 8 , 9 . Next, we present the results of surveys conducted during the 2020 lockdown showing that the quality and quantity of pedagogical support received from schools varied according to the social class of families (for examples, see refs. 10 , 11 , 12 ). We then argue that these digital, cultural and structural divides represent barriers to the ability of parents to provide appropriate support for children during distance learning (Fig. 1 ). These divides also alter the levels of self-efficacy of parents and children, thereby affecting their engagement in learning activities 13 , 14 . In the final section, we review preliminary evidence for the hypothesis that distance learning widens the social class achievement gap and we propose an agenda for future research. In addition, we outline recommendations that should help parents, teachers and policymakers to use social science research to limit the impact of school closure and distance learning on the social class achievement gap.

Economic, structural, digital and cultural divides influence the psychological functioning of parents and students in a way that amplify inequalities.

The digital divide

Unequal access to digital resources.

Although the use of digital technologies is almost ubiquitous in developed nations, there is a digital divide such that some people are more likely than others to be numerically excluded 15 (Fig. 1 ). Social class is a strong predictor of digital disparities, including the quality of hardware, software and Internet access 16 , 17 , 18 . For example, in 2019, in France, around 1 in 5 working-class families did not have personal access to the Internet compared with less than 1 in 20 of the most privileged families 19 . Similarly, in 2020, in the United Kingdom, 20% of children who were eligible for free school meals did not have access to a computer at home compared with 7% of other children 20 . In 2021, in the United States, 41% of working-class families do not own a laptop or desktop computer and 43% do not have broadband compared with 8% and 7%, respectively, of upper/middle-class Americans 21 . A similar digital gap is also evident between lower-income and higher-income countries 22 .

Second, simply having access to a computer and an Internet connection does not ensure effective distance learning. For example, many of the educational resources sent by teachers need to be printed, thereby requiring access to printers. Moreover, distance learning is more difficult in households with only one shared computer compared with those where each family member has their own 23 . Furthermore, upper/middle-class families are more likely to be able to guarantee a suitable workspace for each child than their working-class counterparts 24 .

In the context of school closures, such disparities are likely to have important consequences for educational continuity. In line with this idea, a survey of approximately 4,000 parents in the United Kingdom confirmed that during lockdown, more than half of primary school children from the poorest families did not have access to their own study space and were less well equipped for distance learning than higher-income families 10 . Similarly, a survey of around 1,300 parents in the Netherlands found that during lockdown, children from working-class families had fewer computers at home and less room to study than upper/middle-class children 11 .

Data from non-Western countries highlight a more general digital divide, showing that developing countries have poorer access to digital equipment. For example, in India in 2018, only 10.7% of households possessed a digital device 25 , while in Pakistan in 2020, 31% of higher-education teachers did not have Internet access and 68.4% did not have a laptop 26 . In general, developing countries lack access to digital technologies 27 , 28 , and these difficulties of access are even greater in rural areas (for example, see ref. 29 ). Consequently, school closures have huge repercussions for the continuity of learning in these countries. For example, in India in 2018, only 11% of the rural and 40% of the urban population above 14 years old could use a computer and access the Internet 25 . Time spent on education during school closure decreased by 80% in Bangladesh 30 . A similar trend was observed in other countries 31 , with only 22% of children engaging in remote learning in Kenya 32 and 50% in Burkina Faso 33 . In Ghana, 26–32% of children spent no time at all on learning during the pandemic 34 . Beyond the overall digital divide, social class disparities are also evident in developing countries, with lower access to digital resources among households in which parental educational levels were low (versus households in which parental educational levels were high; for example, see ref. 35 for Nigeria and ref. 31 for Ecuador).

Unequal digital skills

In addition to unequal access to digital tools, there are also systematic variations in digital skills 36 , 37 (Fig. 1 ). Upper/middle-class families are more familiar with digital tools and resources and are therefore more likely to have the digital skills needed for distance learning 38 , 39 , 40 . These digital skills are particularly useful during school closures, both for students and for parents, for organizing, retrieving and correctly using the resources provided by the teachers (for example, sending or receiving documents by email, printing documents or using word processors).

Social class disparities in digital skills can be explained in part by the fact that children from upper/middle-class families have the opportunity to develop digital skills earlier than working-class families 41 . In member countries of the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), only 23% of working-class children had started using a computer at the age of 6 years or earlier compared with 43% of upper/middle-class children 42 . Moreover, because working-class people tend to persist less than upper/middle-class people when confronted with digital difficulties 23 , the use of digital tools and resources for distance learning may interfere with the ability of parents to help children with their schoolwork.

Unequal use of digital tools

A third level of digital divide concerns variations in digital tool use 18 , 43 (Fig. 1 ). Upper/middle-class families are more likely to use digital resources for work and education 6 , 41 , 44 , whereas working-class families are more likely to use these resources for entertainment, such as electronic games or social media 6 , 45 . This divide is also observed among students, whereby working-class students tend to use digital technologies for leisure activities, whereas their upper/middle-class peers are more likely to use them for academic activities 46 and to consider that computers and the Internet provide an opportunity for education and training 23 . Furthermore, working-class families appear to regulate the digital practices of their children less 47 and are more likely to allow screens in the bedrooms of children and teenagers without setting limits on times or practices 48 .

In sum, inequalities in terms of digital resources, skills and use have strong implications for distance learning. This is because they make working-class students and parents particularly vulnerable when learning relies on extensive use of digital devices rather than on face-to-face interaction with teachers.

The cultural divide

Even if all three levels of digital divide were closed, upper/middle-class families would still be better prepared than working-class families to ensure educational continuity for their children. Upper/middle-class families are more familiar with the academic knowledge and skills that are expected and valued in educational settings, as well as with the independent, autonomous way of learning that is valued in the school culture and becomes even more important during school closure (Fig. 1 ).

Unequal familiarity with academic knowledge and skills

According to classical social reproduction theory 8 , 49 , school is not a neutral place in which all forms of language and knowledge are equally valued. Academic contexts expect and value culture-specific and taken-for-granted forms of knowledge, skills and ways of being, thinking and speaking that are more in tune with those developed through upper/middle-class socialization (that is, ‘cultural capital’ 8 , 50 , 51 , 52 , 53 ). For instance, academic contexts value interest in the arts, museums and literature 54 , 55 , a type of interest that is more likely to develop through socialization in upper/middle-class families than in working-class socialization 54 , 56 . Indeed, upper/middle-class parents are more likely than working-class parents to engage in activities that develop this cultural capital. For example, they possess more books and cultural objects at home, read more stories to their children and visit museums and libraries more often (for examples, see refs. 51 , 54 , 55 ). Upper/middle-class children are also more involved in extra-curricular activities (for example, playing a musical instrument) than working-class children 55 , 56 , 57 .

Beyond this implicit familiarization with the school curriculum, upper/middle-class parents more often organize educational activities that are explicitly designed to develop academic skills of their children 57 , 58 , 59 . For example, they are more likely to monitor and re-explain lessons or use games and textbooks to develop and reinforce academic skills (for example, labelling numbers, letters or colours 57 , 60 ). Upper/middle-class parents also provide higher levels of support and spend more time helping children with homework than working-class parents (for examples, see refs. 61 , 62 ). Thus, even if all parents are committed to the academic success of their children, working-class parents have fewer chances to provide the help that children need to complete homework 63 , and homework is more beneficial for children from upper-middle class families than for children from working-class families 64 , 65 .

School closures amplify the impact of cultural inequalities

The trends described above have been observed in ‘normal’ times when schools are open. School closures, by making learning rely more strongly on practices implemented at home (rather than at school), are likely to amplify the impact of these disparities. Consistent with this idea, research has shown that the social class achievement gap usually greatly widens during school breaks—a phenomenon described as ‘summer learning loss’ or ‘summer setback’ 66 , 67 , 68 . During holidays, the learning by children tends to decline, and this is particularly pronounced in children from working-class families. Consequently, the social class achievement gap grows more rapidly during the summer months than it does in the rest of the year. This phenomenon is partly explained by the fact that during the break from school, social class disparities in investment in activities that are beneficial for academic achievement (for example, reading, travelling to a foreign country or museum visits) are more pronounced.

Therefore, when they are out of school, children from upper/middle-class backgrounds may continue to develop academic skills unlike their working-class counterparts, who may stagnate or even regress. Research also indicates that learning loss during school breaks tends to be cumulative 66 . Thus, repeated episodes of school closure are likely to have profound consequences for the social class achievement gap. Consistent with the idea that school closures could lead to similar processes as those identified during summer breaks, a recent survey indicated that during the COVID-19 lockdown in the United Kingdom, children from upper/middle-class families spent more time on educational activities (5.8 h per day) than those from working-class families (4.5 h per day) 7 , 69 .

Unequal dispositions for autonomy and self-regulation

School closures have encouraged autonomous work among students. This ‘independent’ way of studying is compatible with the family socialization of upper/middle-class students, but does not match the interdependent norms more commonly associated with working-class contexts 9 . Upper/middle-class contexts tend to promote cultural norms of independence whereby individuals perceive themselves as autonomous actors, independent of other individuals and of the social context, able to pursue their own goals 70 . For example, upper/middle-class parents tend to invite children to express their interests, preferences and opinions during the various activities of everyday life 54 , 55 . Conversely, in working-class contexts characterized by low economic resources and where life is more uncertain, individuals tend to perceive themselves as interdependent, connected to others and members of social groups 53 , 70 , 71 . This interdependent self-construal fits less well with the independent culture of academic contexts. This cultural mismatch between interdependent self-construal common in working-class students and the independent norms of the educational institution has negative consequences for academic performance 9 .

Once again, the impact of these differences is likely to be amplified during school closures, when being able to work alone and autonomously is especially useful. The requirement to work alone is more likely to match the independent self-construal of upper/middle-class students than the interdependent self-construal of working-class students. In the case of working-class students, this mismatch is likely to increase their difficulties in working alone at home. Supporting our argument, recent research has shown that working-class students tend to underachieve in contexts where students work individually compared with contexts where students work with others 72 . Similarly, during school closures, high self-regulation skills (for example, setting goals, selecting appropriate learning strategies and maintaining motivation 73 ) are required to maintain study activities and are likely to be especially useful for using digital resources efficiently. Research has shown that students from working-class backgrounds typically develop their self-regulation skills to a lesser extent than those from upper/middle-class backgrounds 74 , 75 , 76 .

Interestingly, some authors have suggested that independent (versus interdependent) self-construal may also affect communication with teachers 77 . Indeed, in the context of distance learning, working-class families are less likely to respond to the communication of teachers because their ‘interdependent’ self leads them to respect hierarchies, and thus perceive teachers as an expert who ‘can be trusted to make the right decisions for learning’. Upper/middle class families, relying on ‘independent’ self-construal, are more inclined to seek individualized feedback, and therefore tend to participate to a greater extent in exchanges with teachers. Such cultural differences are important because they can also contribute to the difficulties encountered by working-class families.

The structural divide: unequal support from schools

The issues reviewed thus far all increase the vulnerability of children and students from underprivileged backgrounds when schools are closed. To offset these disadvantages, it might be expected that the school should increase its support by providing additional resources for working-class students. However, recent data suggest that differences in the material and human resources invested in providing educational support for children during periods of school closure were—paradoxically—in favour of upper/middle-class students (Fig. 1 ). In England, for example, upper/middle-class parents reported benefiting from online classes and video-conferencing with teachers more often than working-class parents 10 . Furthermore, active help from school (for example, online teaching, private tutoring or chats with teachers) occurred more frequently in the richest households (64% of the richest households declared having received help from school) than in the poorest households (47%). Another survey found that in the United Kingdom, upper/middle-class children were more likely to take online lessons every day (30%) than working-class students (16%) 12 . This substantial difference might be due, at least in part, to the fact that private schools are better equipped in terms of online platforms (60% of schools have at least one online platform) than state schools (37%, and 23% in the most deprived schools) and were more likely to organize daily online lessons. Similarly, in the United Kingdom, in schools with a high proportion of students eligible for free school meals, teachers were less inclined to broadcast an online lesson for their pupils 78 . Interestingly, 58% of teachers in the wealthiest areas reported having messaged their students or their students’ parents during lockdown compared with 47% in the most deprived schools. In addition, the probability of children receiving technical support from the school (for example, by providing pupils with laptops or other devices) is, surprisingly, higher in the most advantaged schools than in the most deprived 78 .

In addition to social class disparities, there has been less support from schools for African-American and Latinx students. During school closures in the United States, 40% of African-American students and 30% of Latinx students received no online teaching compared with 10% of white students 79 . Another source of inequality is that the probability of school closure was correlated with social class and race. In the United States, for example, school closures from September to December 2020 were more common in schools with a high proportion of racial/ethnic minority students, who experience homelessness and are eligible for free/discounted school meals 80 .

Similarly, access to educational resources and support was lower in poorer (compared with richer) countries 81 . In sub-Saharan Africa, during lockdown, 45% of children had no exposure at all to any type of remote learning. Of those who did, the medium was mostly radio, television or paper rather than digital. In African countries, at most 10% of children received some material through the Internet. In Latin America, 90% of children received some remote learning, but less than half of that was through the internet—the remainder being via radio and television 81 . In Ecuador, high-school students from the lowest wealth quartile had fewer remote-learning opportunities, such as Google class/Zoom, than students from the highest wealth quartile 31 .

Thus, the achievement gap and its accentuation during lockdown are due not only to the cultural and digital disadvantages of working-class families but also to unequal support from schools. This inequality in school support is not due to teachers being indifferent to or even supportive of social stratification. Rather, we believe that these effects are fundamentally structural. In many countries, schools located in upper/middle-class neighbourhoods have more money than those in the poorest neighbourhoods. Moreover, upper/middle-class parents invest more in the schools of their children than working-class parents (for example, see ref. 82 ), and schools have an interest in catering more for upper/middle-class families than for working-class families 83 . Additionally, the expectation of teachers may be lower for working-class children 84 . For example, they tend to estimate that working-class students invest less effort in learning than their upper/middle-class counterparts 85 . These differences in perception may have influenced the behaviour of teachers during school closure, such that teachers in privileged neighbourhoods provided more information to students because they expected more from them in term of effort and achievement. The fact that upper/middle-class parents are better able than working-class parents to comply with the expectations of teachers (for examples, see refs. 55 , 86 ) may have reinforced this phenomenon. These discrepancies echo data showing that working-class students tend to request less help in their schoolwork than upper/middle-class ones 87 , and they may even avoid asking for help because they believe that such requests could lead to reprimands 88 . During school closures, these students (and their families) may in consequence have been less likely to ask for help and resources. Jointly, these phenomena have resulted in upper/middle-class families receiving more support from schools during lockdown than their working-class counterparts.

Psychological effects of digital, cultural and structural divides

Despite being strongly influenced by social class, differences in academic achievement are often interpreted by parents, teachers and students as reflecting differences in ability 89 . As a result, upper/middle-class students are usually perceived—and perceive themselves—as smarter than working-class students, who are perceived—and perceive themselves—as less intelligent 90 , 91 , 92 or less able to succeed 93 . Working-class students also worry more about the fact that they might perform more poorly than upper/middle-class students 94 , 95 . These fears influence academic learning in important ways. In particular, they can consume cognitive resources when children and students work on academic tasks 96 , 97 . Self-efficacy also plays a key role in engaging in learning and perseverance in the face of difficulties 13 , 98 . In addition, working-class students are those for whom the fear of being outperformed by others is the most negatively related to academic performance 99 .

The fact that working-class children and students are less familiar with the tasks set by teachers, and less well equipped and supported, makes them more likely to experience feelings of incompetence (Fig. 1 ). Working-class parents are also more likely than their upper/middle-class counterparts to feel unable to help their children with schoolwork. Consistent with this, research has shown that both working-class students and parents have lower feelings of academic self-efficacy than their upper/middle-class counterparts 100 , 101 . These differences have been documented under ‘normal’ conditions but are likely to be exacerbated during distance learning. Recent surveys conducted during the school closures have confirmed that upper/middle-class families felt better able to support their children in distance learning than did working-class families 10 and that upper/middle-class parents helped their children more and felt more capable to do so 11 , 12 .

Pandemic disparity, future directions and recommendations

The research reviewed thus far suggests that children and their families are highly unequal with respect to digital access, skills and use. It also shows that upper/middle-class students are more likely to be supported in their homework (by their parents and teachers) than working-class students, and that upper/middle-class students and parents will probably feel better able than working-class ones to adapt to the context of distance learning. For all these reasons, we anticipate that as a result of school closures, the COVID-19 pandemic will substantially increase the social class achievement gap. Because school closures are a recent occurrence, it is too early to measure with precision their effects on the widening of the achievement gap. However, some recent data are consistent with this idea.

Evidence for a widening gap during the pandemic

Comparing academic achievement in 2020 with previous years provides an early indication of the effects of school closures during the pandemic. In France, for example, first and second graders take national evaluations at the beginning of the school year. Initial comparisons of the results for 2020 with those from previous years revealed that the gap between schools classified as ‘priority schools’ (those in low-income urban areas) and schools in higher-income neighbourhoods—a gap observed every year—was particularly pronounced in 2020 in both French and mathematics 102 .

Similarly, in the Netherlands, national assessments take place twice a year. In 2020, they took place both before and after school closures. A recent analysis compared progress during this period in 2020 in mathematics/arithmetic, spelling and reading comprehension for 7–11-year-old students within the same period in the three previous years 103 . Results indicated a general learning loss in 2020. More importantly, for the 8% of working-class children, the losses were 40% greater than they were for upper/middle-class children.

Similar results were observed in Belgium among students attending the final year of primary school. Compared with students from previous cohorts, students affected by school closures experienced a substantial decrease in their mathematics and language scores, with children from more disadvantaged backgrounds experiencing greater learning losses 104 . Likewise, oral reading assessments in more than 100 school districts in the United States showed that the development of this skill among children in second and third grade significantly slowed between Spring and Autumn 2020, but this slowdown was more pronounced in schools from lower-achieving districts 105 .

It is likely that school closures have also amplified racial disparities in learning and achievement. For example, in the United States, after the first lockdown, students of colour lost the equivalent of 3–5 months of learning, whereas white students were about 1–3 months behind. Moreover, in the Autumn, when some students started to return to classrooms, African-American and Latinx students were more likely to continue distance learning, despite being less likely to have access to the digital tools, Internet access and live contact with teachers 106 .

In some African countries (for example, Ethiopia, Kenya, Liberia, Tanzania and Uganda), the COVID-19 crisis has resulted in learning loss ranging from 6 months to more 1 year 107 , and this learning loss appears to be greater for working-class children (that is, those attending no-fee schools) than for upper/middle-class children 108 .

These findings show that school closures have exacerbated achievement gaps linked to social class and ethnicity. However, more research is needed to address the question of whether school closures differentially affect the learning of students from working- and upper/middle-class families.

Future directions

First, to assess the specific and unique impact of school closures on student learning, longitudinal research should compare student achievement at different times of the year, before, during and after school closures, as has been done to document the summer learning loss 66 , 109 . In the coming months, alternating periods of school closure and opening may occur, thereby presenting opportunities to do such research. This would also make it possible to examine whether the gap diminishes a few weeks after children return to in-school learning or whether, conversely, it increases with time because the foundations have not been sufficiently acquired to facilitate further learning 110 .

Second, the mechanisms underlying the increase in social class disparities during school closures should be examined. As discussed above, school closures result in situations for which students are unevenly prepared and supported. It would be appropriate to seek to quantify the contribution of each of the factors that might be responsible for accentuating the social class achievement gap. In particular, distinguishing between factors that are relatively ‘controllable’ (for example, resources made available to pupils) and those that are more difficult to control (for example, the self-efficacy of parents in supporting the schoolwork of their children) is essential to inform public policy and teaching practices.

Third, existing studies are based on general comparisons and very few provide insights into the actual practices that took place in families during school closure and how these practices affected the achievement gap. For example, research has documented that parents from working-class backgrounds are likely to find it more difficult to help their children to complete homework and to provide constructive feedback 63 , 111 , something that could in turn have a negative impact on the continuity of learning of their children. In addition, it seems reasonable to assume that during lockdown, parents from upper/middle-class backgrounds encouraged their children to engage in practices that, even if not explicitly requested by teachers, would be beneficial to learning (for example, creative activities or reading). Identifying the practices that best predict the maintenance or decline of educational achievement during school closures would help identify levers for intervention.

Finally, it would be interesting to investigate teaching practices during school closures. The lockdown in the spring of 2020 was sudden and unexpected. Within a few days, teachers had to find a way to compensate for the school closure, which led to highly variable practices. Some teachers posted schoolwork on platforms, others sent it by email, some set work on a weekly basis while others set it day by day. Some teachers also set up live sessions in large or small groups, providing remote meetings for questions and support. There have also been variations in the type of feedback given to students, notably through the monitoring and correcting of work. Future studies should examine in more detail what practices schools and teachers used to compensate for the school closures and their effects on widening, maintaining or even reducing the gap, as has been done for certain specific literacy programmes 112 as well as specific instruction topics (for example, ecology and evolution 113 ).

Practical recommendations

We are aware of the debate about whether social science research on COVID-19 is suitable for making policy decisions 114 , and we draw attention to the fact that some of our recommendations (Table 1 ) are based on evidence from experiments or interventions carried out pre-COVID while others are more speculative. In any case, we emphasize that these suggestions should be viewed with caution and be tested in future research. Some of our recommendations could be implemented in the event of new school closures, others only when schools re-open. We also acknowledge that while these recommendations are intended for parents and teachers, their implementation largely depends on the adoption of structural policies. Importantly, given all the issues discussed above, we emphasize the importance of prioritizing, wherever possible, in-person learning over remote learning 115 and where this is not possible, of implementing strong policies to support distance learning, especially for disadvantaged families.

Where face-to face teaching is not possible and teachers are responsible for implementing distance learning, it will be important to make them aware of the factors that can exacerbate inequalities during lockdown and to provide them with guidance about practices that would reduce these inequalities. Thus, there is an urgent need for interventions aimed at making teachers aware of the impact of the social class of children and families on the following factors: (1) access to, familiarity with and use of digital devices; (2) familiarity with academic knowledge and skills; and (3) preparedness to work autonomously. Increasing awareness of the material, cultural and psychological barriers that working-class children and families face during lockdown should increase the quality and quantity of the support provided by teachers and thereby positively affect the achievements of working-class students.

In addition to increasing the awareness of teachers of these barriers, teachers should be encouraged to adjust the way they communicate with working-class families due to differences in self-construal compared with upper/middle-class families 77 . For example, questions about family (rather than personal) well-being would be congruent with interdependent self-construals. This should contribute to better communication and help keep a better track of the progress of students during distance learning.

It is also necessary to help teachers to engage in practices that have a chance of reducing inequalities 53 , 116 . Particularly important is that teachers and schools ensure that homework can be done by all children, for example, by setting up organizations that would help children whose parents are not in a position to monitor or assist with the homework of their children. Options include homework help groups and tutoring by teachers after class. When schools are open, the growing tendency to set homework through digital media should be resisted as far as possible given the evidence we have reviewed above. Moreover, previous research has underscored the importance of homework feedback provided by teachers, which is positively related to the amount of homework completed and predictive of academic performance 117 . Where homework is web-based, it has also been shown that feedback on web-based homework enhances the learning of students 118 . It therefore seems reasonable to predict that the social class achievement gap will increase more slowly (or even remain constant or be reversed) in schools that establish individualized monitoring of students, by means of regular calls and feedback on homework, compared with schools where the support provided to pupils is more generic.

Given that learning during lockdown has increasingly taken place in family settings, we believe that interventions involving the family are also likely to be effective 119 , 120 , 121 . Simply providing families with suitable material equipment may be insufficient. Families should be given training in the efficient use of digital technology and pedagogical support. This would increase the self-efficacy of parents and students, with positive consequences for achievement. Ideally, such training would be delivered in person to avoid problems arising from the digital divide. Where this is not possible, individualized online tutoring should be provided. For example, studies conducted during the lockdown in Botswana and Italy have shown that individual online tutoring directly targeting either parents or students in middle school has a positive impact on the achievement of students, particularly for working-class students 122 , 123 .

Interventions targeting families should also address the psychological barriers faced by working-class families and children. Some interventions have already been designed and been shown to be effective in reducing the social class achievement gap, particularly in mathematics and language 124 , 125 , 126 . For example, research showed that an intervention designed to train low-income parents in how to support the mathematical development of their pre-kindergarten children (including classes and access to a library of kits to use at home) increased the quality of support provided by the parents, with a corresponding impact on the development of mathematical knowledge of their children. Such interventions should be particularly beneficial in the context of school closure.

Beyond its impact on academic performance and inequalities, the COVID-19 crisis has shaken the economies of countries around the world, casting millions of families around the world into poverty 127 , 128 , 129 . As noted earlier, there has been a marked increase in economic inequalities, bringing with it all the psychological and social problems that such inequalities create 130 , 131 , especially for people who live in scarcity 132 . The increase in educational inequalities is just one facet of the many difficulties that working-class families will encounter in the coming years, but it is one that could seriously limit the chances of their children escaping from poverty by reducing their opportunities for upward mobility. In this context, it should be a priority to concentrate resources on the most deprived students. A large proportion of the poorest households do not own a computer and do not have personal access to the Internet, which has important consequences for distance learning. During school closures, it is therefore imperative to provide such families with adequate equipment and Internet service, as was done in some countries in spring 2020. Even if the provision of such equipment is not in itself sufficient, it is a necessary condition for ensuring pedagogical continuity during lockdown.

Finally, after prolonged periods of school closure, many students may not have acquired the skills needed to pursue their education. A possible consequence would be an increase in the number of students for whom teachers recommend class repetitions. Class repetitions are contentious. On the one hand, class repetition more frequently affects working-class children and is not efficient in terms of learning improvement 133 . On the other hand, accepting lower standards of academic achievement or even suspending the practice of repeating a class could lead to pupils pursuing their education without mastering the key abilities needed at higher grades. This could create difficulties in subsequent years and, in this sense, be counterproductive. We therefore believe that the most appropriate way to limit the damage of the pandemic would be to help children catch up rather than allowing them to continue without mastering the necessary skills. As is being done in some countries, systematic remedial courses (for example, summer learning programmes) should be organized and financially supported following periods of school closure, with priority given to pupils from working-class families. Such interventions have genuine potential in that research has shown that participation in remedial summer programmes is effective in reducing learning loss during the summer break 134 , 135 , 136 . For example, in one study 137 , 438 students from high-poverty schools were offered a multiyear summer school programme that included various pedagogical and enrichment activities (for example, science investigation and music) and were compared with a ‘no-treatment’ control group. Students who participated in the summer programme progressed more than students in the control group. A meta-analysis 138 of 41 summer learning programmes (that is, classroom- and home-based summer interventions) involving children from kindergarten to grade 8 showed that these programmes had significantly larger benefits for children from working-class families. Although such measures are costly, the cost is small compared to the price of failing to fulfil the academic potential of many students simply because they were not born into upper/middle-class families.

The unprecedented nature of the current pandemic means that we lack strong data on what the school closure period is likely to produce in terms of learning deficits and the reproduction of social inequalities. However, the research discussed in this article suggests that there are good reasons to predict that this period of school closures will accelerate the reproduction of social inequalities in educational achievement.

By making school learning less dependent on teachers and more dependent on families and digital tools and resources, school closures are likely to greatly amplify social class inequalities. At a time when many countries are experiencing second, third or fourth waves of the pandemic, resulting in fresh periods of local or general lockdowns, systematic efforts to test these predictions are urgently needed along with steps to reduce the impact of school closures on the social class achievement gap.

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We thank G. Reis for editing the figure. The writing of this manuscript was supported by grant ANR-19-CE28-0007–PRESCHOOL from the French National Research Agency (S.G.).

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Goudeau, S., Sanrey, C., Stanczak, A. et al. Why lockdown and distance learning during the COVID-19 pandemic are likely to increase the social class achievement gap. Nat Hum Behav 5 , 1273–1281 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-021-01212-7

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Teaching Through a Pandemic: A Mindset for This Moment

Hundreds of teachers, many of them operating in countries where teach-from-home has been in place for weeks, weigh in on the mental approach you need to stay grounded in this difficult time.

The thought ended almost before it started: “This is so overwhelming.” It was all one teacher managed to type before she stopped short, vexed into silence, perhaps, by the sheer size of the problem. In the pregnant pause that followed, undoubtedly, every teacher tracking the unspooling thread—about the dizzying, rapidly escalating viral crisis that was closing schools across the country—recognized the chasm they were all facing as well, and took a deep breath.

In the next few hours, over 500 teachers joined two Facebook conversations about teaching during the coronavirus pandemic, spilling out their concerns and anxieties: What will we do if the schools close for months? How can I shift to online learning if we’re closing tomorrow, or even in a few hours? How will special education students be cared for, and IEPs administered? What about children who have no internet access, or who will be required, as Keith Schoch thoughtfully noted, to “become de facto babysitters” for their brothers and sisters. “There is no digital divide, but there is a digital abyss, and America’s rural poor are living at the bottom of it,” said Anne Larsen, with devastating concision. What if, in the end, the school systems decide that online learning is working just fine, and never reopen?

The panic was all perfectly understandable.

But there were plenty of teachers in the mix who had weeks of crisis experience under their belts by that time—several in Hong Kong and Italy and the state of Washington, for example—and others who had long careers in online and distance learning. In the end, too, there were many fantastic, highly creative teachers providing strategies as fast as the obstacles appeared.

At the highest level, a shift in mindset would be required—even the most optimistic educators conceded the point. There are plenty of strategies and tactics we’re covering at Edutopia—and we’ll continue to—but here are the crucial emotional and psychological scaffolds that our audience agreed would be needed to teach in this new paradigm.

Expect Trial... and Plenty of Error

Start by being reasonable with yourself. It is, in fact, impossible to shift to distance learning overnight without lots of trial and error. Expect it, plan for it, and do your best to make peace with it.

“I can tell you, now that we’re in week 7 of online learning, that much of what you will do will be trial and error,” wrote Stacy Rausch Keevan, who was teaching in Hong Kong. “Don’t stress about that—it won’t do you any good. For my middle school English and humanities classes, I’m offering the same lessons I would normally do live, but in smaller doses.”

Acknowledge the Extraordinary

Reset your baseline. We're all operating in the shadow of a global pandemic, and it is disorienting and limiting. Business as usual is unrealistic.

The real “points to consider” are not “the strict adherence to ‘regular’ conditions and norms,” wrote Amy Rheault-Heafield in a reply to a question about how to structure distance learning like more typical learning experiences, “but how to provide a rich experience to all learners who are now without ‘traditional’ teachers standing beside them in classes.”

So while you should try to provide “meaningful activities,” cautioned elementary teacher John Thomas, “we should remember that on short notice—and because many of us have limited PD utilizing these tools—we can’t tackle everything immediately. In other words, we should give ourselves the time and the permission to figure this out.”

Reduce the Workload (for Yourself and Your Students)

If your district allows it, you should plan to do less. Students won’t be able to work as productively, anyway—so if you can’t scale back you’ll be sending them work they cannot do—and your own life and family need added care.

“Feedback from students and families over the last 10 days in Italy is ‘less is more,’” commented Jo Gillespie. “Consider that parents are trying to work from home, and siblings are vying for computer and Wi-Fi time. Try Google quizzes using Forms, a reading log, some short live sessions with teachers and classmates, maybe vocabulary extension, maths and geometry problems (but not too many). And that’s probably enough.”

And Keevan, the teacher in Hong Kong with weeks of experience, confirmed that time and distance play funny games during a crisis: “What would normally take you one class period to teach in the classroom will probably take you twice as long.”

No Person Is an Island

Humans are social animals. Working from home, or worse, from quarantine, is isolating and often depressing for both teachers and students.

Make a concerted effort to speak to other colleagues and trusted professionals to provide emotional and psychological context to your work. Teaching at this moment is extraordinarily hard, and you’ll need the virtual company of people who are experiencing what you are.

And don’t forget to “reach out to students as often as you can,” said Keevan, who still teaches classes live despite a (slightly inconvenient!) 13-hour time difference. Or you can facilitate peer-to-peer communication. John Thomas assigns pen pals in his first- and second-grade classes, so that kids with no internet can feel like they belong.

Everyone Thinks They Can’t—Before They Can

Some degree of pessimism and self-doubt comes with the territory. Teachers in the Facebook thread advised more perspective-taking and being more patient with yourself: You know how to teach, and you will figure this out in time.

“We are in week 7 and I have three children of my own at home,” wrote Salecia Host, a teacher in Tianjin, China, reflecting on the arc of her emotional response to the crisis. “Just take it day by day. It gets less overwhelming and more routine.”

Try to remain calm—though you’ll have a few moments where that goes out the window—and keep plugging away: “Being open-minded and flexible is key,” said Kaz Wilson, who also works in China. “Everyone thinks you can’t until you pause, talk it out with folks who are doing it, and know that you’ll get through it.”

Mind the Gap

Your work will be hard, but there are students facing more severe challenges. Students with no internet or no computer will need support, as will those with learning differences or other circumstances that make distance learning especially difficult. Supporting these students was on almost everyone’s mind—it came up dozens of times in the Facebook thread.

“I’m in Italy. Our schools closed a few weeks ago without any previous warning. We shifted to online immediately. It is hard and exhausting,” admitted Eleonora Borromeo, before providing a ray of hope. “Equity is an issue. Assessment is an issue. But the students are doing their best and giving us the strength to go on.”

Solutions from our audience of teachers focused on the old analog approaches: paper-and-pencil tasks, workbooks and activity packets that can be mailed home, and updating parents and students via phone calls daily.

Teachers’ Mental Health Has Suffered in the Pandemic. Here’s How Districts Can Help

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Teachers’ stress and anxiety have soared and their morale has plummeted during the pandemic, a flammable combination that could burn them out and lead them to leave their jobs. It’s more important than ever, experts say, for districts to support their teachers by looking after their mental health.

Even before the pandemic, districts were paying more attention to teachers’ mental and emotional wellness, offering sessions on mindfulness, yoga, exercise, and healthy eating. But COVID-19 has created wildfires of mental and emotional suffering across all job sectors, including teaching.

The consulting group McKinsey & Co. surveyed 1,000 employers , and 90 percent reported that the pandemic was affecting the behavioral health of their employees. The Kaiser Family Foundation found that rates of anxiety and depression have quadrupled during COVID-19.

The toll on K-12 teachers appears to be particularly acute. One study found that during the pandemic, teachers were more likely to report feeling stressed and burned out than other state and local government-sector employees. Eighty-four percent of teachers surveyed by the EdWeek Research Center in March said that teaching is more stressful than it was before the pandemic.

RAND Corporation researchers found that between May and October 2020, the proportion of K-12 educators seriously worried about burnout rose from one quarter to 57 percent . In another study, those researchers found that one-quarter of teachers said they were likely to leave the profession when they finish the 2020-21 school year, a rate that—if it were to materialize—would be more than triple the normal rate of attrition.

Teachers’ jobs—stressful even before the pandemic—have become even tougher , with longer work hours, struggles to engage students remotely, repeated pivots from hybrid to remote to in-person instruction, not to mention fears that they—or their loved ones—could get COVID-19.

Those dynamics make it “particularly important right now” to tend to teachers’ mental health, said Jill Cook, the president of the American School Counselor Association. “Districts need to understand that and take action,” she said.

In a joint report last summer, ASCA and the National Association of School Psychologists urged districts to provide “psychological triage” not just for students, but for staff, to address trauma and intense stress caused by the pandemic. A new guidebook from the U.S. Department of Education urged districts to step up emotional support for their staff members, even as they focused intensely on supporting students traumatized by the events of the last year.

So how can districts make their teachers’ mental health a priority? EdWeek sought out the advice of workplace mental health experts, researchers, and school districts that are prioritizing the issue. Here’s what they said.

1) Talk openly about mental health issues, including your own

“Making mental health visible is key,” said Darcy Gruttadaro, the director of the Center for Workplace Mental Health at the American Psychiatric Association Foundation. “We need leaders to talk about it. It’s the 800-pound gorilla in the room.”

District and school leaders should look for every opportunity to talk about how difficult the pandemic, and discussions on racial injustice, have been, and how “we all have mental health struggles,” and need support, she said.

Administrators should take care not to overuse email in conveying their support for psychological wellness; there is no substitute for eye contact on such a sensitive, important topic, Gruttadaro said. District officials and principals should use Zoom and face-to-face meetings—schoolwide, or in smaller groups or one-on-one—to express concern, support, and commitment to providing care, she said.

It’s also important for leaders to show their own vulnerability, experts say. Sharing their own struggles and self-care practices sends a powerful message that mental health struggles are normal and accepted, experts say.

As a leader, you can include your therapy appointments in your public Outlook calendar, or mention that you see a therapist. Create a storytelling event where colleagues share their experiences with mental illness. Take a few days off and set your out-of-office message to say you won’t be answering email so you can fully recharge.

All these things—embedded in a culture of support for a “mentally healthy workplace”—can encourage people to share their difficulties and seek help, said Natasha Krol, head of client services and a principal at Mind Share Partners, a nonprofit that advises organizations on workplace mental health.

Avoid burying your colleagues’ emotional difficulties under a blanket of cheerful pep talk, says Carrie Kamm, the senior director of equity in the Oak Park Elementary School District 97 in Illinois.

“What doesn’t work is toxic positivity,” she said. “You have to respond to the temperature in the room. When you try to push past the energy in the room and just stick with the agenda, that’s a problem for people.”

2) Train your team to spot early signs of mental health struggles

Experts increasingly suggest mental health training for leadership teams. Kristi Wilson, the superintendent of the Buckeye Elementary school district in Arizona, has engaged a consultant to train district leaders, principals, and counselors in seeing that a work performance issue might be a mental health struggle in disguise. “It’s about recognizing when you, or someone else, needs help,” she said.

District and school leaders might also consider training a group of willing employees to serve as mental health ambassadors who build awareness and connect colleagues to resources. It’s an increasingly popular strategy in the business world, and would translate well to K-12, Krol said.

Conducting regular surveys or using pulse checks such as this burnout self-test , as the Tulsa, Okla., district does, can help leaders track their teachers’ wellness.

3) Ask yourself whether you fully recognize your teachers’ needs

In a March survey by the EdWeek Research Center, 7 in 10 district leaders said teachers’ emotional and physical well-being rank high on their priority list, but fewer than one-quarter of teachers said those things were a high priority in their districts. Asked what their schools or districts had done to support teachers’ well-being, only 29 percent of district leaders—and 16 percent of teachers—said their school or district had provided adequate mental health benefits.

Mental health issues often hide in plain sight. Studies show employees are reluctant to share their struggles or ask for help. A 2019 study by Mind Share Partners found that even before the pandemic, 6 in 10 employees had experienced symptoms of mental illness in the past year, but most never told anyone at work about it.

4) Create ongoing systems of support, like virtual groups and call lines

Like most of the district leaders EdWeek interviewed for this story, Chicago’s work to support its staff is part of a larger, ongoing program to build strong social-emotional support for students. As a part of that work, Chicago created virtual support groups for teachers, principals, and assistant principals, facilitated by staff from a community mental health partner and the district’s office of social emotional learning.

Only a few teachers signed up for the “circles of support” group early in the year, but as more schools have reopened in the district, participation has picked up, said Hellen Antonopoulos, the district’s executive director of social emotional learning. Increasingly, teachers are requesting sessions for their own schools, rather than connecting with their colleagues districtwide, Antonopoulos said.

When the district runs its “healing circles” for school administrators, it’s careful to allow principals and assistant principals from the same school to sign up for separate groups, and it also has its outside partner conduct the sessions.

“We wanted it to be an opportunity to exhale, to meet with people who get it, and not to worry about something they share in confidence,” Antonopoulos said.

The Tulsa district created teacher and principal call lines. District social workers and counselors, and staff from the office of student and family support services, help callers connect with support resources, or pay a visit to help, said Stephanie Andrews, the interim executive director of Tulsa’s student-and-family office.

In one recent example, a school leader used the line to report that his teachers, who’d returned to on-campus teaching two weeks earlier, were miserable. Staffers from Andrews’ office visited and saw that the teachers were grieving for all they’d lost during the pandemic.

“The trauma they experienced, but also the time they’d lost with their students, and the progress” were taking a toll, Andrews said. “Here they had worked really hard, and their students aren’t where they thought they’d be academically.”

Andrews’ office called in grief therapists from a community partner group, who agreed to provide free weekly sessions to help teachers process their feelings.

5) Build a culture of check-ins

Many employees dread the time-suck of meetings. But they can be a key lever in building a mentally healthy workplace, experts said. For district and school leaders, those gatherings can be an opportunity to engender a culture in which genuine inquiries about colleagues’ well-being—and supportive responses—are woven into daily practice.

In the Oak Park district, four “culture and climate coaches” have helped district and school leaders build emotional check-ins into nearly every meeting and professional learning day during the pandemic.

“I’ve changed how I hold meetings,” said Kamm, of the Oak Park district. “I started telling people more often, ‘If you’re not able to do this today, that’s OK,’ and asking, ‘Do you need a 15-minute coffee with me today?’ I also increased my one-on-one check-ins with people from monthly to a few times a week.”

6) Recognize that some employee groups may need more support than others

Black and Latinx employees, as well as those in the LGBTQ community, were far more likely to experience symptoms of mental illness, from anxiety and sadness to nightmares or paranoia, according to the Mind Share Partners study. And Black and Latinx employees are also much more likely than their white peers to have lost loved ones to COVID-19, or to have been sick themselves.

Don’t assume all employees need the same supports or services, experts say. Through conversations, surveys, and other methods, inquire.

7) Reduce barriers to getting services within your employee assistance and health insurance programs

Leaders should find out how widely these services are used, and investigate what might be standing in the way, experts say. Teachers might have a tough time getting counseling through their health insurance plans, for instance, because in-network counselors are often booked months in advance or not taking new clients.

Gruttadaro advises district leaders to press their health insurers to beef up those networks. “Leverage your buying power,” she said.

The Hamilton County school district, which serves Chattanooga, Tenn., tried to reduce barriers a different way. It waived the typical 60-day waiting period for full-time employees to use their health benefits, which include mental health care.

“We could see the stressors on our employees, the weight of the pandemic,” said Penny Murray, the district’s chief talent officer.

The district also made free, same-day virtual counseling available to all 6,000 employees, including its 1,000 part-timers, through the community partner that runs its school-based clinics.

The Importance of Therapy and Mental Health | Roadtrip Nation

Rodney Robinson, a social studies teacher at a juvenile detention center and the 2019 National Teacher of the Year, spoke with Roadtrip Nation about the importance of therapy, especially for teachers who work with students who've experienced trauma.

Video courtesy of Roadtrip Nation

EdWeek Librarian Maya Riser-Kositsky provided support for this article.

Coverage of teacher retention and recruitment is supported by a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York, at carnegie.org . Education Week retains sole editorial control over the content of this coverage. A version of this article appeared in the May 05, 2021 edition of Education Week as Teachers’ Mental Health Has Suffered in the Pandemic. 7 Ways Districts Can Help

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Teachers: leading in crisis, reimagining the future, joint statement from david edwards, general secretary, education international, guy ryder, director-general, international labour organization, audrey azoulay, director-general of unesco and henrietta fore, executive director, unicef.

NEW YORK, 5 October 2020 - On World Teachers' Day 2020, David Edwards, General Secretary, Education International, Guy Ryder, Director-General, International Labour Organization, Audrey Azoulay, Director-General of UNESCO and Henrietta Fore, Executive Director, UNICEF issue a joint statement. 

"Every year, World Teachers’ Day reminds us of the critical role teachers play in achieving inclusive, quality education for all.

"This year’s World Teachers’ Day has an even greater significance in light of the challenges that teachers have faced during the COVID-19 crisis. As the pandemic has shown, they make a crucial contribution to ensuring continuity of learning and supporting the mental health and wellbeing of their students.

"Because of COVID-19, nearly 1.6 billion learners – more than 90% of the world’s total enrolled student population – have been affected by school closures. The COVID-19 crisis has also affected over 63 million teachers, highlighted persistent weaknesses in many education systems and exacerbated inequalities, with devastating consequences for the most marginalized.

"In this crisis, teachers have shown, as they have done so often, great leadership and innovation in ensuring that #LearningNeverStops, that no learner is left behind. Around the world, they have worked individually and collectively to find solutions and create new learning environments for their students to allow education to continue. Their role advising on school reopening plans and supporting students with the return to school is just as important.

"We now need to think beyond COVID-19 and work to build greater resilience in our education systems, so we can respond quickly and effectively to these and other such crises. This means protecting education financing, investing in high-quality initial teacher education, as well as continuing the professional development of the existing teacher workforce.

"Without urgent action and increased investment, a learning crisis could turn into a learning catastrophe. Even before COVID-19, more than half of all ten-year-olds in low- to middle-income countries could not understand a simple written story.

"To build a more resilient teacher workforce in times of crisis, all teachers should be equipped with digital and pedagogical skills to teach remotely, online, and through blended or hybrid learning, whether in high-, low- or no-tech environments. Governments should ensure the availability of digital infrastructure and connectivity everywhere, including in rural and remote areas.

"In the context of COVID-19, governments, social partners and other key actors have an even greater responsibility regarding teachers. We call on governments to protect teachers’ safety, health, and wellbeing, as well as their employment, to continue improving teachers’ working conditions, and to involve teachers and their representative organizations in the COVID-19 educational response and recovery.

"Today, we collectively celebrate teachers for their continued commitment to their students and for contributing to the achievement of the 2030 targets under Sustainable Development Goal 4. We commend educators for the central role they have played, and continue to play, in responding to and recovering from this pandemic.

"Now is the time to recognize the role of teachers in helping to ensure a generation of students can reach their full potential, and the importance of education for short-term stimulus, economic growth and social cohesion, during and after COVID-19.

"Now is the time to reimagine education and achieve our vision of equal access to quality learning for every child and young person."

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Conceptual analysis article, teachers' emotion and identity work during a pandemic.

• 1 Department of Teaching, Learning, and Foundations, Eastern Illinois University, Charleston, IL, United States
• 2 Department of Teacher Education, University of Illinois at Springfield, Springfield, IL, United States

This piece is a conceptual analysis of the care involved on the part of teachers during the COVID-19 era and the relationship it has to teachers' identities. Using the authors' stories, we address how fatiguing care is on a normal day, not to mention what is involved during the COVID era. This care, and the emotions involved, is closely tied to teachers' identities, calling into question how teachers conceptualize their teacherhood during a pandemic. Our hope is that others will consider where they may have misunderstood teachers' work. We aim to raise awareness of the complexity of teaching and suggest how teacher education can address and support teachers' needs.

“March 2020 will forever be known in the education community as the month when almost all the world's schools shut their doors” ( Winthrop, 2020 , para. 1). In response to the COVID-19 school closings, teachers all over were required to shift gears immediately to respond to students' and families' needs with synchronous and asynchronous virtual instruction. Teachers literally responded overnight to teach in new modalities. They have filmed themselves conducting experiments, hosted Zoom show-and-tell with Kindergarteners, prepared materials for students with variable Internet access, and even demonstrated concepts outside students' screen doors. There is no question that teachers of all grade levels, content areas, and in all sectors of education (i.e., public or private) are capable of incredible things. They have truly risen to this occasion.

Some teachers reported being busier than they were before the school buildings closed, as they were expected to be present and available, with office hours during lunch, and student groups arriving and leaving throughout the day. All of this took place while trying to simultaneously instruct their own children who were home ( Strauss, 2020 ). Still others described attempts to track down the students they stopped hearing from ( Sawchuck and Samuels, 2020 ). Understandably, teachers had significant concerns about these students. Schools can provide a predictable routine and a safe space for students, and when that goes away, “I'm calling and emailing them constantly,” said a teacher in New York. “Maybe their parents are sick, undocumented or out of work. Some might not have a Chromebook or internet. They are literally MIA and may never come back” ( Willen, 2020 , para. 2).

Over the last several months, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused the nation's teachers to enter into a shocking, and at many times painful, natural experiment. Despite a slow march of policies and cultural practices that have chipped away at the professional status of teachers ( Milner, 2013 ) and the resources they need to do their jobs, the sudden closure of the nation's schools has brought into sharp focus the true importance of teachers and the work most do every day on behalf of other people's children. However, this is not the first time many of the nation's teachers have found the capacity to do great things for and with students, families, and communities despite sparse resources and a pervasive lack of respect. In fact, as a result of COVID-19, we may be seeing the intensification of the professional marginalization that teachers have faced for decades.

Teacher education is at a crossroads. Rather than “doubling down” on the traditional pressures imposed on teachers and the profession, this could be an opportunity to consider a new path. It is time now to take a step back and reassess how mounting pressures have not attended to teachers' humanity. As teacher educators ourselves and with a nod to Nel Noddings, we would like to raise a critical question in this time: Who will care about and for the teachers?

This piece is a conceptual analysis of the care involved on the part of teachers during the COVID-19 era and the relationship it has to teachers' identities. The authors tell personal and composite stories of their COVID-19 professional and personal experiences, hoping that these narrative snippets will highlight the current clash between teachers' “out-of-classroom” and “in-classroom” experiences ( Clandinin and Connelly, 1996 ). We address how care, while at the heart of all teaching, can be truly exhausting on a normal day. Added to this fatigue, teachers now work from home in front of their laptops, chart paper taped to the refrigerator behind them, their own families needing their time and attention. The point of this piece is to help others understand where legislators, community members, and even families may have misunderstood teachers' work. Our ultimate goal is to raise awareness of the complexity of teaching and to suggest how teacher education can address and support teachers' needs.

Emotions and Care Ethics

Nias (1996) , a prolific author in the areas of the moral nature of teaching, teacher identities and relationships, and care in schools, wrote about “intrusions” into their professional territories:

Far more intense was teachers' and headteachers' reaction to what they saw as “intrusions” into their physical or professional territories… Golby [Michael Golby, as in “Teachers Emotions, An Illustrated Discussion” (1996)] asked two experienced, committed women teachers in English schools, one primary, one secondary, direct questions about their emotional reactions to school life. The major source of their affective satisfaction and emotional security was what Golby describes as “the intimacy of teaching children.” Problems arose when other people–colleagues, parents, OFSTED inspectors–breached, or threatened, the tight boundaries that they had drawn around this central area of their work. Then they felt anxious, impatient, distressed, depressed and angry ( Nias, 1996 , para. 26).

With the above quote in mind, we can begin to talk about the intense emotions felt by many teachers when it comes to the care they have for their students. Emotion , described by Koestler (1967) as, “mental states accompanied by intense feeling and (which involve) bodily changes of a widespread character” (p. 835) is a strong facet of teacher education literature. Keck (2019) described a reflective teacher as one who is “vulnerable and motivated by forces not entirely conscious or rational” (p. 1). Teaching on any day can be difficult and involves all of the teacher—their physical body, mind, and heart ( Nias, 1996 ).

The global pandemic we face in 2020 has caused a huge intrusion into the special relationship between teachers and their students. Clandinin and Connelly (1996) described the “out-of-classroom” (e.g., policies, research, senior administration) and “in-classroom” (e.g., interactions with students, collaborative relationships) spaces in education. It is difficult to remember a time when the out-of-classroom space has ever intruded more on the in-classroom space. Teaching is an interaction ( Jones, 2017 ), and COVID-19 has severely diminished this interaction; for example, students with limited internet access were not able to see one another on Zoom like many others, depersonalizing the “classroom” environment. While teaching was already a difficult, complex profession, COVID-19 has pushed aside some of the heartwarming, relational positives for teaching and replaced them with stress, increased demands, and worry about student safety.

What Does it Mean to Care?

Caring, kindness, and emotionality are necessary parts of teachers' work. This is both a choice and also part of a teacher's professional identity:

Whilst this choice led them to sometimes “get exhausted and think about certain kids all night”. or be perceived in a disempowering way.all teachers in this study saw the caring work they were engaged in as being an integral part of their professional identity ( O'Connor, 2008 , p. 121).

O'Connor described caring as the emotions, actions, and reflection involved as teachers help their students in a variety of ways. While caring appears to O'Connor to be an action–we care for and about one another by completing caring actions–possibly the most prolific author on the ethic of care ( Noddings, 1984 , 2013 ) describes care as a relation. Caring is not to be considered a set of rules or actions, it is “a response to individuals with whom one is in relation” (1984, p. 497). We do not care because of our duty, we care through our attempts to institute and maintain a caring relationship. Though there is a “carer” and a “cared for,” these categories are not fixed. Caine et al. (2020) move even beyond this ethic of care, and “note this shift from an ethics of care to include a relational ethics [italics added] in the shift to a ‘becoming together' with responsibility to and for each other” (p. 272). The ethic of care is the solid foundation, but the relational ethic is how pairings consider less who is in the role of carer or cared for, and more about entering a transitional space where both parties attend to one another and their co-created space.

Noddings (2013) shared a story of a fictional young man responsible for the care of his mother. If this young man transfers his mother's care to a nursing facility, does he still care for her? What if he does not visit or call, but he pays the bills? What if he worries about her frequently? What if his mother experiences his acts as caring? Noddings stated that as opposed to depending on rules, as the ones who care for others, we can only decide what is and is not care if we receive confirmation from the cared-for. “Although I can never accomplish it entirely, I try to apprehend the reality of the other” (p. 14): We notice another person's need or their pain and are called upon to do something. We try to consider the reality of the other person and eliminate what is intolerable. When an individual has noticed, considered, reflected, and kept the relationship at the forefront of their thoughts and feelings, they can be said to be in a caring relationship.

An example of Noddings's (2013) ethical and relational caring might look like this: A teacher education student is struggling with coursework as well as personal issues with her job and her boyfriend. She is up late either working or on the phone with him, which means she has little time left for the class readings and comes to class exhausted. She has begun falling asleep in class and her assignments are consistently late. Because the energy of the teacher in an ethical and caring relationship moves toward the student, the teacher in this case begins with the understanding that this student has the best of intentions; she wants to do well in class, but things are getting in her way. When preparing to have a conversation with this student, the teacher thinks less of the course content not being addressed in this student's life and more about the student and the student-teacher relationship. The conversation during office hours may begin with a general, “How are things going?” and move toward the more specific issue of missing work and mini-naps during class. “I know you want to do well in this class,” “You have enormous potential as a teacher,” and “How can I help you during this time?” are all parts of this caring conversation, designed to maintain the teacher-student relationship as well as move the student toward the best version of herself. The student must respond in some way that lets the teacher know that care has been received in some way; this may be a nod, a smile, or follow-up questions. “Teachers sometimes forget how dependent they are on the response of our students” ( Noddings, 2012 , pp. 772–3). The response of students (e.g., a smile, a nod, a furrowed brow, a laugh) is notably minimized or absent during remote instruction; if students make it to their virtual class meeting, attention and responses can be unfocused and diffuse. Alexis's son, for instance, has preferred to keep his Zoom camera off, so his teachers cannot see any of his non-verbal responses to instruction.

O'Connor (2008) described how exhausting teaching can be for those who make the choice to teach in a caring manner:

Being able to act as a professional and still sustain a sense of self within the [teaching] role has emotional implications for teachers, and [her research participant] made frequent comments about the level of “emotional energy and sheer adrenalin” which she felt she needed to maintain whilst teaching (p. 122).

Because good teachers naturally invest pieces of themselves in their work, their personal and professional identities are interrelated. The teacher quoted in the O'Connor snippet above described the need to separate her work from her personal life, something that in the COVID-19 era teachers have been increasingly unable to do.

Caring During COVID-19

Our news and social media feeds are filled with stories of the lengths some U.S. teachers will go to care for their students. When a student did not understand her mathematics, one teacher visited the student's house and explained it with a glass door in between them for safety. More than one teacher parade has gone through student neighborhoods, teachers honking their horns, signs draped on their cars, letting students know they were still with them in spirit though the school doors were closed ( Krasinski, 2020 ). These are quite obviously the caring behaviors of teachers who want their students to understand the content and feel secure in their relationship.

However, it is difficult to have the conversation about emotions and care when students are missing from synchronous online classes, email exchanges, or physically distanced home visits. O'Connor (2008) is correct that these behaviors are ones teachers would do for children they care about , but whether or not the teachers are able to care for their students at this time is up for discussion. After all, Noddings (1984 , 2013) conception of care is dependent on the relationship, and what relationship do students and teachers have when communication is minimized or even absent? Teaching turns into less of a negotiated partnership and becomes more of an “assignment,” quite literally in low-internet areas that require packets of printed work for students because synchronous online instruction is not feasible.

As well, while some teachers are demonstrating these caring actions for students in unique and superhuman ways, many of them also have caring relationships in their own households. Consider those teachers with children: If I displace my motivation toward my assigned students as Noddings (1984 , 2013) would suggest, how am I able to also care for my own children in this manner? In Alexis's own experience as a teacher educator, she had this exact tension in play at her house between March and May 2020. At the same time her 5th grader came home with a variety of virtual learning experiences from which to choose, she was switching her face-to-face course to become virtual only, no small feat when she was previously preparing to send students into the K-5 schools for field experiences as opposed to continuing with direct instruction. Alexis, her son, and her husband made a family workplace at the dining room table so the adults could work while encouraging their son to complete reading, math, science, and social studies work online. Alexis's privilege at this time cannot be ignored; as difficult as it was to get research, writing, and teaching done while directing the learning of an 11 year old, she admits that in a two-parent household, she was able to “escape” to a room alone when thoughtful, quiet work was required. Their son received good grades and required no special services. Alexis's position was easier to transition to remote learning than a plumber, nurse, or Kindergarten teacher's job, so her salary was not affected.

However, who can Alexis and her husband be said to have cared for at this time? Both their son and their respective students? Our motivation can only be displaced toward the cared-for so much; at some point, someone we care for becomes ignored or temporarily put to the side. At times, this was Alexis's son; at other times, Alexis's students may not have received her full attention. She worried constantly about both. She received Noddings' confirming response from her son because they were constantly together; a few of her students kept in touch via email and she could see their faces during class instruction, but if students were not able to make it to synchronous classes or were not comfortable with technology, she rarely heard from them.

Mentioned above, Noddings (1984 , 2013) concept of confirmation is especially important to consider in the COVID-19 era. How well are teachers able to apprehend their students' reality when they do not see them in person every day? In the horrible but very real instances of child abuse, can I as a child's teacher see what they are going through if I do not see their face or bruises on their arms? The authors of this article are not the first individuals to worry about instances of child abuse ( Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Administration., 2020 ) increasing when mandated reporters and children are physically separated.

What if students' internet access is limited, and they never make it to my Zoom classroom? How can I receive that confirmation of care that completes Noddings' cycle of the caring relation? I cannot see them, I may not hear from them, and their instruction, packets of worksheets due to the area's limited internet, is essentially a shot in the dark toward addressing their instructional needs. The teacher's actions are truly caring: She is attempting to keep students engaged and learning something during a crisis, she is making concerted efforts to see students' faces on Zoom, Blackboard Collaborate, or Google Meet, she is sending notes home, driving by homes, etc. While O'Connor (2008) would certainly consider these actions caring ones, Noddings (1984 , 2013) could disagree that this arrangement is an example of relational caring . Noddings' conception of care is not based in action, it is based on the negotiation of the relationship. It is based on a cycle of caring action, confirmation, negotiation, and reflection. It is more about the relationship than the intention or action.

Summary: Teachers' Ability to Care

In summary, teachers' tendencies to care have not changed during the sharp transition from traditional schooling to pandemic schooling. Teachers still felt worry, frustration, overwhelm, and many other emotions during their planning and instructional efforts. However, if we consider care as a relation, where a caring teacher requires confirmation the care has been received and interpreted as such, COVID-19 has been a massive interruption. Since being a caring individual is a basic expectation of teachers, their identities are shaped by how well they see themselves caring for their students. What must be considered is whether the changes in teaching required by COVID-19 have made it more or less possible for teachers to care for their students; as a result, how has this impacted teachers' identities? If teachers are struggling with maintaining caring relations with students, how will this influence how they feel about themselves as teachers?

Teacher Identity in the Pandemic

Teachers' personal and professional lives have now been fully integrated in response to COVID-19 and the emergency transition to virtual learning. Teachers are now attempting to teach Common Core math over Zoom to a group of students and parents while simultaneously parenting their own children and caring for their homes and other loved ones. This mash-up of lives brings to light a reality that has always been present for teachers: the separation between the personal and professional self is somewhat of a fallacy. This is a lovely but messy and challenging reality for teachers, especially in the current context. The emotional challenges associated with this drastic change also relate to teacher identity. The following section will discuss the theoretical and empirical definitions of teacher identity that are relevant here and interrogate this research through composite examples from one of the authors.

What Makes Up a Teacher's Identity?

The literature and theories of teacher identity are vast. However, the authors of this paper understand teacher identity as socially constructed and in interaction with varied discursive elements. Scholars have asserted that teacher identity is fluid and socially constructed and remains loosely defined due to the myriad of facets embedded within ( Beijaard et al., 2004 ; Alsup, 2006 ; Rodgers and Scott, 2008 ; Beauchamp and Thomas, 2009 ; Akkerman and Meijer, 2011 ; Izadinia, 2013 ). Other research has found that teachers' identity work is implicated by perceived future events. New teachers, in particular, consider their possible selves when forming their identities within the domains of relationships, management, instruction, and professionalism ( Hamman et al., 2010 ). These future selves are also imagined during conversations with mentors ( Urzúa and Vásquez, 2008 ) and when new teachers reflect on past practice and plan for the future ( Lutovac, 2020 ). Similarly, new teachers' reflections on past imaginations of what it may be like to become a teacher influence the shaping of contemporary teaching selves ( Lortie, 1975 ).

Zembylas (2003) , in particular, advocates for a post-structuralist conceptualization of identity that accounts for the ways in which identity work is felt, embodied, and discursively constructed . From this perspective, emotion is “inextricably” linked to identity, and emotional experiences are an important component of self-knowledge. Citing Haviland and Kahlbaugh (1993) , who call emotions the “glue” of identity, Zembylas points out the role of emotion in helping individuals assert meaning to experience and identity. If one takes this discussion a bit further, a post-structuralist perspective would also explain the role of emotion in identity formation as something that is influenced by the discourses of power and knowledge that surround teachers.

In particular, Foucault (1979) argues that selves do not develop within a vacuum; they are implicated by exterior structures and regulatory forces. For teachers, these discourses include beliefs about what teachers are or are not, relations between teachers and students, and the function of schools in society. Indeed, teachers are situated within layered interpretations and demands about their work, which puts them in a position of constant negotiation and enactment. From this perspective, “identity formation is a by-product of power/knowledge within a context of normalized institutional codes” ( Zembylas, 2003 , p. 224), and teachers are compelled to construct their identities from the discursive materials that are made available to them. Teachers also construct identities through discursive acts , and their agency to do so is constituted of the knowledge and power that acts upon teachers ( Foucault, 1979 ). To extend this point, Butler's (1999) discussion of performativity in the creation of gender identity can be applied to further elucidate the role of power in the construction of self. Butler asserts that gender is an element of identity that is stylized and performed; individuals are only able to work with the tools that are laid out for them by the regulatory influences present in their lives. In similar ways, the teacher self may be stylized and performed according to or in defiance of the normative definitions of the profession Therefore, teachers' identity work is done within a specific frame of possibility; “authority is attributed and installed … the very expectation [of being] ends up producing the very phenomenon that it anticipates” (pp. xiv–xv). Although these are dense concepts to consider, they are helpful for interrogating the complexity of teachers' selves and realities during the COVID-19 pandemic.

To summarize, teacher identity is socially constructed (involving institutions, discourses, relationships), impacted by discourses of power and knowledge (communicating what teachers should be and should do), connected to and enacted via emotions (which communicate import), dynamic (in constant negotiation with aforementioned factors), and reflective yet forward-thinking. These elements of teacher identity are heavily implicated by the shifting sands of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Remaking Teacher Identity During a Pandemic

Long before COVID-19 and widespread school closures, one could argue that there has existed a prevalent discourse about the key role of teachers to support the academic, social, and emotional well-being of students. Images and stories of well-loved, inspiring teachers permeate popular media, and school-wide intervention programs ask teachers to demonstrate evidence that they can construct learning environments and lessons that address the needs of the whole child. These messages become the stuff from which teachers construct their concepts of self, facilitating in many teachers an identity deeply rooted in providing the very care that was discussed in the previous sections of this paper.

As teachers work to construct their identities, they have no choice but to pick up the discursive tools that are available to them. Therefore, many teachers define their core motivation for becoming or remaining in the profession as the capacity to make a difference in the lives of children and help individuals achieve lifelong success. Teacher organizations like the National Education Association amplify such discourses in their mission statements, including ideas such as the role of schools to further democracy, equity, and justice ( National Education Association (NEA), 2019 ). Even Meghan, one of the authors of this paper, wrote in her undergraduate teaching philosophy statement about the importance of attending to the “academic and personal needs of all students in and outside of the classroom.” Although Meghan now understands the many political and social factors that complicate such work, it is still something she believes (to a certain extent) to be possible and discusses it with her preservice teachers. In this way this kind of commitment often results in teachers leveraging agency toward enactment of their commitments as a means of performing their identity daily. Yet, this agency can be complex.

Zembylas (2003) describes agency as the connection between identity and emotion. The enactment of emotions in the construction of teacher identity constitutes agency; yet Zembylas asserts that this connection is dependent on the “viability of teacher agency” (p. 224). Taken from a post-structuralist perspective, teacher agency is contingent upon the cultural, historical, and policy dynamics in which a teacher is situated. The viability of teacher agency impacts teachers' capacity to enact their commitments and, therefore, feel that their identities are being realized. This has certainly been severely impacted by COVID-19.

To illustrate, one may consider the tensions produced for a teacher when teacher agency compromised. In Meghan's teaching of preservice teachers after the outbreak of COVID-19, she experienced tension between her desire to attend to both the personal and professional needs of her preservice teachers. She instituted several new Zoom sessions and assignments, but these soon became difficult for her students to complete. It seemed that these two commitments were more at odds with each other than they had previously been due to the constraints of technology and the new personal challenges her students were facing. These tensions soon left Meghan feeling that she had less agency in enacting the kind of truly responsive instruction she had prior to the pandemic. Her colleagues in PK-12 settings likewise felt frustration and fear over the lack of face-to-face connection they were able to maintain with their students, which removed a core opportunity to realize their commitment to their students' academic and holistic needs. In the sudden need to adapt their view of work and self during the pandemic, Meghan and many of her PK-12 colleagues were left feeling uncertain and inadequate.

Although the influence of a global pandemic on teacher identity and agency has not yet been studied in its current iteration, prior research can provide some clues into the experiences that may be realized by many teachers. For instance, Connelly and Clandinin's (1999) collection of narrative explorations of teachers and schools offers particular insight into current tensions. They assert that teacher identity and practice is interwoven. So much so, that major reforms or changes in teaching expectations can cause a feeling of loss for teachers, necessitating changes in their “stories to live by,” and resistance when changes are at odds with a teacher's efforts to maintain their constructed stories of teacher self. Further, Clandinin and Connelly conceptualize a teacher self can be conceptualized as a storied landscape ( Clandinin and Connelly, 1996 , 1998 ), something dynamic, interconnected, and influenced by the native and the foreign. The storied professional landscapes of teachers have often long been considered by scholars in relation to policy change or reform (e.g., Tyack and Cuban, 1995 ; Fullan, 2007 ). Taking a beautifully metaphorical approach, Craig (2002) conceptualizes the knowledge and powers that influence and shape on teachers' selves and work as conduits , pointing out that these represent “school districts, pouring twice and thrice-removed imperatives originating in the academy into schools, greatly shaping practitioners' work and attempting to impact student learning,” or the “multiplicity of competing and conflicting forces trying to define educational reality through filtering information” (p. 199).

Clandinin and Connelly (1996) point out that while others may see teachers as simply resisting or subverting new knowledge or reform, teachers are instead reacting according to their narrative understandings of selves, schools, and students. To engage in true change means to shift how one knows their classrooms and professional selves. To take this apply this point to the changes being wrought by COVID-19, teachers are now dealing with a complete disruption of their storied professional landscape and, therefore, their sense of how they know themselves and their students. Formerly, “changes ripple[d] through the school and influence the whole web of stories” (p. 160), now the changes have come as something akin to a forest fire, requiring a full remaking of the landscape and teachers' stories of self.

More recently, researchers have found that reform and policy shifts create identity tensions for teachers, especially when high-stakes accountability or testing is involved ( Cross Francis et al., 2018 ), which can have implications on teachers' feelings of efficacy and commitment within the profession ( Day et al., 2005 ). Take, for example, Ball's (2003) discussion of teacher performativity within the context of neoliberal education reform in England. Ball argued that teachers experienced contradictory values during the advent of high-stakes accountability policy. Testing and evaluation measures caused many teachers to set aside their personal values and investments (and therefore the cornerstones of their teaching identities) for the new accountability measures. Others remade themselves and their teaching according to the discourses of teacherhood and quality that were being enforced, either cynically or with resignation. Tensions were experienced by many teachers, and some engaged in resistance against those accountability requirements they felt were most at odds with their individual teaching values. In every case, the influence of power as a regulatory force was at work on many teachers, and as Ball put it, “New roles and subjectivities [were] produced as teachers [were] re-worked as producers/providers, educational entrepreneurs and managers [.] subject to regular appraisal and review and performance comparisons” (p. 218). Taking a more narrative approach, Craig (2001) illuminates the ways in which top-down school reforms can impact teachers' understanding of self, school, students, and statute. Teachers articulated the ways in which “state-interpreted, national reform movement did not resonate with the current version of the story of school [they] had come to know. [and a] lack of fit between and among stories of school and stories of teachers” (p. 324). The language of reform carried implications for how teachers interacted with colleagues, how or whether they had assimilated the appropriate knowledge (as defined by the state-directed reform agency), and practices; all of which “bore consequences for their identities” (p. 325).

This remaking of teacher selves is similar to that which is taking place in the COVID-19 era. As this paper is being written, a tense and politicized debate over the reopening of schools is taking place. Teachers are therefore being put in a complicated position: to weigh the commitments associated with their identities as carers of other people's children against their commitments to care for themselves and their loved ones. For some teachers, this is an impossible decision. Local, state, and national policies or recommendations are in constant flux, creating uncertainty and instability for teachers who are attempting to negotiate the relative weight and import of each component of their identities.

Ruohotie-Lyhty's (2018) model of identity-agency further examines this process of negotiation. When teachers' identity-agency work is characterized by tensions, a teacher may engage in defensiveness (protecting their identity through action) or renegotiation (reconsidering their identity in light of new demands). Depending on the contextual changes at hand, teachers may find themselves resisting or readjusting their identities. In either case, this work is emotionally taxing.

The tensions associated with this can also be discussed within the theoretical constructs of the aforementioned post-structuralist theory of teacher agency. If cultural and political discourses set the boundaries for what is possible, “teachers learn to internalize and enact roles and norms assigned to them by the school culture through what are considered ‘appropriate' expressions and silences” ( Zembylas, 2003 , p. 225). Teachers' identities, and their agency to act within existing frames of possibility or appropriateness, are determined by the “discursive environments [that]. set the conditions of possibility” for those actions and identity work ( Zembylas, 2003 , p. 226). Furthermore, a teacher's identity is more than just the sum of their practices, interactions, and institutional expectations; identity—and the emotions therein embedded—is the enactment of a teacher's investments or feelings ( Britzman, 1993 ).

Similarly, during the pandemic, the entire landscape of teachers' realities has shifted. Initially, this took place overnight, while public discourse continued to demand their accountability. While attempting to adapt her practices and materials for virtual teaching in March of 2020, a teacher's identity may have undergone one round of renegotiation, reconceptualizing her teaching values or commitments for a new modality. Take for example, an advanced placement teacher who leveraged strong relationships with students during history lessons. This teacher likely maintained a figurative (if not literal) map of each student's needs, and worked hard to address these needs through relational knowing and a caring environment ( Noddings, 1984 ). This responsiveness was not only a means-to-an-end for getting through to students, but likely a core piece of how the teacher saw herself. Furthermore, the teacher balanced these concerns with an appreciation for the expectations of administrators and other stakeholders. Therefore, the teacher also took deliberate steps to become informed about trends in curriculum and practices in order to be an accountable steward of the community's most precious assets.

This teacher's conception of self would be challenged as she struggled to maintain relationships virtually during the school closures, even when only 30 percent of students were consistently engaging with online material. Meanwhile, this teacher was still under external pressure from administrators or family members to maintain “rigorous” instruction in line with the AP test. This teacher may be renegotiating whether relationships are indeed as integral to working with students. Or, to take the emotional element of identity into perspective, the teacher may be experiencing shame, feeling that they are powerless, personally inadequate ( Batarky, 1990 ), or “lack these abilities or that their aims are not worthy” ( Zembylas, 2003 , p. 228) according to the dominant discourses of power influencing that teacher's context. Feelings of shame and doubt are documented in the literature as common in teachers' experiences and enactment of identity. In particular, teachers can feel shame when their own socioeconomic class and obligation to carry out hierarchical policies is at odds with the classed identities of their students ( Van Galen, 2017 ). If not able to produce the academic gains some reformers associated with educational equity, teachers may feel that they have fallen short. Further, the work of conforming to social constructions of teacher “effectiveness” can breed shame or a sense of doubt in teachers ( Edgington, 2016 ). Therefore, the tensions associated with reassessing and renegotiating elements of her teacher identity would be understandably taxing.

Summary: Identities Facing Continuous Change

Tensions like those described above are likely to continue to mount as the 2020–2021 school year is underway. While the lives of some teachers are literally on the line, economic and political arguments seem to barely acknowledge, if not completely ignore, this reality. Consider the likely impacts of a teacher's attempts to predict or prepare for the 2020–2021 school year with so much fear, uncertainty, and threat of shame hanging in the balance. The aforementioned domains embedded within teacher identity (relationships, management, pedagogy, and professionalism) are all impacted by the pandemic.

With the above theories and research in mind, consider the additional discursive (and emotionally relevant) elements that may influence a teacher's re-construction of identity in the era of COVID-19. It is not uncommon for teachers to center their sense of self and value within relationships with students ( O'Connor, 2008 ). Safe interactions are only available by internet, and in many areas this internet access is unreliable; consequently, this identity may undergo a shift. Additionally, teachers' senses of self are also constructed within somewhat rigid policy and reform discourses that enforce technical-rational definitions of quality, enforcing the idea that a teacher's work and worth are tied to the outcomes they produce in student learning ( Mockler, 2011 ). Therefore, a teacher's self post-pandemic will be a complex quilt, patching together concern for self, concern for one's teaching values or commitments, and concerns for one's community with little information about how things may look in the future.

Regardless of the time spent in the classroom prior to the pandemic, the foundational pieces of teachers' identities have been significantly altered, if not removed entirely, due to COVID-19. Relationally centered instruction was moved online, hampering many teachers' capacities to each day realize their sense of self as mentor, helper, and nurturer of students. Yet, the parts of the teacher's identity that were attuned to accountability and stakeholder interests were still present, intensifying the pressure to uphold academic success.

Significance

Many readers are aware of the time it takes to write and have an article accepted for publication. In the best of worlds, several months are involved (It can take over a year at times). While this piece can be considered the former as opposed to the latter example, the COVID-19 era has already changed so much for teachers that an additional article on this topic is needed. In March and April of 2020, much of the country appreciated the work of teachers because it had been outsourced to the home, and families who were unaware of the hard work involved in teaching playfully and desperately offered teachers increased salaries. By July 2020, however, the tone had changed. Repeated calls for children to go back to school came from the federal government and several state and local governments ( Goldstein and Shapiro, 2020 ), with teachers' questions about their own safety and that of their students falling on deaf governmental ears.

So what? Why is it important to consider the emotions and caring involved in teachers' identities during a time like this? We would argue that calls for considering teaching a complex and difficult profession have never been needed more than they are during the COVID-19 era. The fact that families are finding it necessary to go back to work does not mean that teachers should provide the necessary childcare ( Chiu, 2020 ; Meckler, 2020 ). Teachers are not the nation's babysitters. It is not incumbent upon them to care enough to provide not only childcare, but thorough, challenging instruction to EC-12th graders at a time when they are quite literally putting their lives on the line. We would ask governmental bodies making these decisions, especially our Secretary of Education, how many teachers were involved in the decision to go back to school? Or are teachers (again) being asked to follow the decisions others have made without being included in the conversation?

It is also important to the authors to consider the implications of what this country has asked of teachers between March 2020 and August 2020. From March to May 2020, the nation's teachers immediately switched gears between in-person and remote instruction. Because of the urgency of the situation, the plans and types of instruction varied widely around the country, but it cannot go unnoticed that teachers remained responsible for student learning. In June and July of 2020, just as U.S. cases began to steadily increase ( Centers for Disease Control, 2020 ), conversations began about reopening began: How could it be done, how many children might become ill or die, how many school days are required for in-person instruction, etc.? Teachers seemed missing from the conversation, but they were still tentatively hoping to interact with students again ( Goldstein and Shapiro, 2020 ). Teachers' care for and about students remains; governmental assurances of teachers' safety does not.

COVID-19 has laid bare issues that have been present in teaching and teacher education for decades: the need to care, the emotions wrapped up in teachers' identities, and the frustration with small or significant interruptions to their important work. It is important to remember that it is nurturing, face-to-face interactions with the students that are so central to teachers' work, yet so risky during this pandemic. Danielewicz (2001) notes that teachers' sense of self is implicated by their enactment of reciprocal care ( Noddings, 1992 ). For teachers, the “self is fully invested in teaching and caring” ( Danielewicz, 2001 , p. 165), and as teachers extend care to students, the students' acceptance of or response to that care matters greatly. Pre-COVID-19, engaging in reciprocal care-based interactions with dozens to tens of dozens of students each day was incredibly demanding work that required teachers to maintain a sharp focus on students' reactions in order to interpret their concerns, needs, and engagement throughout the day. In turn, students' sense of being known impacts their own senses of self and efficacy. This is precisely why teachers dedicate the first several weeks of the year to establishing relationships, positive procedures, and methods of communication. Yet, when this intensive, responsive interaction is inhibited through virtual teaching or complicated by physical distancing and personal protective equipment (all while being hotly debated by community members and politicians), teachers' work and sense of self-worth are going to be challenged.

The point of this piece was to help readers understand the emotional complexity and issues of identity involved in truly relational teaching. The work great teachers do with students involves caring for and about them; responding to all sorts of academic, physical, and emotional needs; and designing instruction to meet frequently changing legislation and high-stakes assessments. The COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting conversations about education, both how teachers' work is incredibly hard (e.g., the March national narrative) and how dare they not get back to the classrooms so we can stimulate our economy (e.g., the June national narrative), have highlighted some of the public's misunderstandings about the work teachers actually do. Being asked to teach without Noddings (1984) confirming response and without the facets of the profession teachers align themselves with has created something of a crisis of identity.

These are difficult times for everyone. There are a number of notable authors and speakers who might suggest that every difficult situation is an opportunity for growth. An especially poignant quote:

Do you become discouraged easily, or do you bend to your advantage even the apparent ills of life? It is the difference between the pessimist and optimist: “The pessimist chews his quinine pills; the optimist, when chased up a tree by a bear, sits calmly and admires the view.” Be an optimist; make reverses and rejections redound to your advantage ( Holmes, 1915 , p. 194).

The authors confess more than a bit of a discouraging attitude. While in March or April of 2020, we might have considered the immediate homeschooling taking place as a wake-up call to communities, “Oh, teaching is hard !” we are afraid we have returned to a place with which teachers are quite familiar: being asked to enact plans made by those with less experience and definitely fewer consequences, and to fix societal issues (e.g., the economy) they had nothing to do with breaking. As a PK-12 colleague said to one of the authors, it seems that the “Weight of all of this will fall on the shoulders of teachers, just like everything has up to this point.”

Therefore, it is imperative that teachers, teacher educators, policymakers, and others advocate on behalf of teachers. Guidelines for reopening schools, for example, should weigh equally the concerns of teachers and community members. This work is hard but impactful on every level of society. Now, more than ever, we must be mindful of the outsized expectations that may be placed on teachers, and the resourcing necessary to support them. Anything less would undermine teacher emotions, agency, and identity, and their capacity to take action on behalf of their most beloved commitments. The professional knowledge, practical experience, and voices of teachers should not be discounted, lest teachers be left disregarded and disposable.

Author Contributions

AJ and MK wrote the piece together. There were equal contributions with the theoretical framework and personal examples included. AJ developed most of the work on emotions and care, while MK developed and wrote most of the teacher identity sections. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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Keywords: relationships, care, identity, teacher education, emotion

Citation: Jones AL and Kessler MA (2020) Teachers' Emotion and Identity Work During a Pandemic. Front. Educ. 5:583775. doi: 10.3389/feduc.2020.583775

Received: 15 July 2020; Accepted: 17 September 2020; Published: 09 November 2020.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2020 Jones and Kessler. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Alexis L. Jones, aljones16@eiu.edu

This article is part of the Research Topic

COVID-19 and the Educational Response: New Educational and Social Realities

Michigan's teacher shortage is about to get more financially complicated

Michigan teachers were more likely to leave the classroom — and Michigan public schools altogether — during the pandemic than before, according to a new study .

But school finance experts also say districts are heading for a perfect storm financially and schools could lose more staff members as federal pandemic relief aid is fully spent.

Teacher turnover in Michigan schools continued through the pandemic, and Michigan teachers were 28% more likely to leave the public school system following the 2021-22 school year than in the last full pre-pandemic school year, according to new research from the National Center for Research on Education Access and Choice in collaboration with the Education Policy Innovation Collaborative at Michigan State University. Researchers say the loss creates a long-term problem for the state in retaining and hiring qualified teachers in public school classrooms, particularly in crucial subject areas such as special education and science.

"The teachers who were most likely to leave were the novice teachers in their first three years," said Katharine Strunk, one of the researchers formerly with MSU, now dean of the graduate school of education at the University of Pennsylvania. "So those are the teachers that we know we will need to keep on rejuvenating our workforce. We saw them leave at large and higher rates in Michigan."

But staffing levels in schools may be further complicated in the coming months as school districts and boards begin setting next year's budget as federal pandemic relief funds dry up. The third and largest bucket of relief funds sent to schools through the American Rescue Plan Act must be committed by schools by September 2024.

The funds' expiration, coupled with declining enrollment, might mean fewer schools will be on the hunt for teachers and other staff members this year, forecasts Marguerite Roza, director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University.

Districts this year might be "crossing their fingers and hoping this will be a big year for attrition, because they can't afford all the staff they just hired," Roza said. "There will be a lot of people who moved or ... quit and are now looking for a job going, 'Wait a minute, I thought we were in a teacher shortage. I can't find a job because no one's hiring.' "

A complex financial picture

Possible financial calamity has been foreshadowed by some layoffs and layoff notices at districts across the state in the past year. Detroit Public Schools Community District approved a budget in June 2023, eliminating 300 positions from the district, Chalkbeat Detroit reported . Planned layoffs in the Wayne-Westland Community School District were put on hold in December , but the district is still grappling with budget issues.

Many school leaders have lamented that declining enrollment across the state is partly to blame for cuts, and it has put some districts under considerable financial stress. The number of students enrolled statewide at public schools from pre-K-12 has declined 5% between this school year and 2018-19, according to state data . Some districts have been hit harder: Enrollment at Wayne-Westland, for example, has declined by 12% in those years. Detroit public schools has lost a significant number of students — a 63% decline — in a longer stretch of time, from 131,568 students in the 2005-06 school year to 48,476 students this year.

Michigan's schools are funded on a per-student basis — currently at $9,608 for the 2023-24 school year — so fewer students means less funding. And even though losses like Detroit's have been over many years, managing sustained funding losses is difficult for school finance offices.

And the decline in enrollment creates a complicated dynamic with staffing.

"In urban districts across the country, we've seen declining enrollment for a decade, and you don't see a commensurate decline in number of teachers," Strunk said.

An Edunomics analysis of state data shows that while enrollment has declined in Michigan, the number of full-time equivalent employees in the state's schools have increased, from 195,501 employees in the 2013-14 school year to 213,990 employees in the 2022-23 school year. But those numbers largely show growth in noninstructional staff members: The number of full-time equivalent teachers in the state's schools has hovered around 100,000 in recent years, according to state data.

While some teacher attrition is expected with declining public school enrollment, the departures aren't even and research has shown shortages of educators in critical subject areas . Rural areas of Michigan, in particular, have long struggled to hire.

"The problem is when, even if you have attrition, it's not the right people, right?" Roza said. "You end up losing all your math and science teachers, and you don't have anyone to teach math and science and you've got too many ceramics teachers."

An impending financial cliff

Across all three rounds of COVID-19 relief funding, public schools received $6 billion. Schools have about $1.2 billion more to spend, according to the Michigan Department of Education's COVID spend dashboard , nearly all of it from the third and final round of aid. About 48% of the money that has already been budgeted went to what was categorized as salaries and benefits. Some districts hired additional tutoring or aids to help stem learning loss. Other districts awarded bonus payments to staff members. Flint, for example, awarded $22,500 payments to staff members .

But relief money was always one-time, and once it's gone, it's gone. Which means schools will soon — if they haven't already — have fewer financial levers to pull to try to incentivize key staff members to stay or hire in concentrated high-need areas.

"We saw a lot of districts actually put that money toward maintaining teachers jobs," Strunk said.

School districts with the highest levels of students living in poverty received the most funding. And that could present a major problem for those districts as the money dries up, said Jen DeNeal, director of policy and research at The Education Trust-Midwest. EdTrust is a nonprofit advocacy organization that promotes advancement in education.

"These districts with high concentrations of poverty, they got the most money, meaning that they have had the greatest ability to shore up their staffing and shore up their programs and resources," she said. "Now they're the ones facing the biggest cliff."

The solution to saving districts from financial chaos is complicated, DeNeal said. Long term, the state should direct more funding to districts through an opportunity index, which would concentrate funding to districts with higher numbers of vulnerable students, such as English learners and those in poverty.

The money going away is "creating some havoc for school districts," Roza said. And conditions have long been complicated, particularly in hiring during the pandemic as schools flush with relief funding competed with other schools to hire the best to stem learning loss and help students academically rebound. The growing "financial headache" is not good for kids, she said.

"I'm sympathetic with how we got here," she said. "And I do think it's going to be pretty messy."

Contact Lily Altavena: [email protected].

Crisis in the Classroom: Final Exam 2024 reviews successes, challenges of school year

by NBC 10 NEWS

As the school year comes to a close, NBC 10's Liz Bateson takes an in-depth look at attendance rates, school safety, graduation requirements and construction projects.

She also sits down with Rhode Island Education Commissioner Angélica Infante-Green to take a look back at the challenges local school districts have faced this year, including teacher layoffs.

Liz also shares what's ahead for next year.

AI is tutoring and teaching some students, reshaping the classroom landscape

When you hear “AI” and “schools” in the same sentence, you might think ‘Wait a minute, isn’t that how kids cheat these days?’ Not exactly, say some of the nation's hardest working educators, now using new AI “ edtech ” tools to help overhaul a long-suffering public education system. 

“AI and adaptive software have completely changed how our classrooms look, our school climate, and culture. The student engagement is absolutely magnificent,” Pease Elementary School Principal Micah Arrott said over video call from her office in Odessa, Texas.

Since taking the helm in 2021, Arrott’s one of a few thousand school leaders nationwide to go all-in on “ blended learning .” Teachers now use tablets with programs like Age of Learning’s My Math Academy and My Reading Academy to provide tech-assisted one-on-one instruction tailored to every student. 

“It has really changed everything, and it’s really magical when you experience our campus now compared to three years ago,” Arrott explains. 

“This (My Math Academy) provides us a way to reach every single one of our kiddos where they are and how they learn best,” Pease Kindergarten teacher Shadiana Saenz adds. “They don't necessarily come from a background where they get what they need all the time.” 

Can AI help students recover from pandemic learning loss?

Three years ago, students were just returning to classrooms in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Arrott was still relatively new to the principal role at the pre-K through 2nd grade school, with a student body of around 550 kids. And she faced even more challenges. 

Odessa is on the westernmost borders of America’s heartland, the location of one of the most productive oil fields in the world. It’s also home to the football team that inspired the book, then movie, then TV series, " Friday Night Lights ." 

It’s also a region that knows the high highs of oil booms and winning streaks, and the low lows of busts and losses. The year 2021 was a low. 

Between a series of oil industry bankruptcies and the pandemic’s impact on the already economically challenged area, Arrott had to fight to keep the majority of her student body – primarily Hispanic and financially disadvantaged – from falling even further behind. 

The Texas Education Agency (TEA), which oversees public schools in Texas, gave Pease an “F” grade based on student achievement and test scores. Ironically, a poor grade can make it harder for schools to get desperately needed funding and support. 

At a time when everyone was struggling – not just at Pease, but in similar public schools and communities throughout the country – educators needed a Hail Mary. And new AI tech tools delivered.

What are the benefits of AI in classrooms? 

“There are no classrooms where all of the students learn the exact same way and are at the same level,” Diana Hughes , Vice President of Product Innovation and AI at Age of Learning, said over a video call. “What we see in the more than 600,000 classrooms we’re in is that kids are all over the place, and few are where they’re supposed to be when we start.” 

Hughes says there are several reasons for this, and she’s been working to solve it since first starting with the company’s flagship ABCmouse platform more than a decade ago. 

“What we know from extensive research actually works, is to assess every single child to find out what they know, don't know and are ready to learn,'' she says. "Then, you go back and reteach anything that they don't understand – and then go forward. You don't move on unless every single kid in the class has mastered it. And then you do that all day, every day, for the rest of their education. And that's a bonkers thing to ask an individual teacher to do for all 30 kids in their classrooms.”

This, Hughes says, is where AI can change their futures. 

“We introduce a new concept, give them some experience with it, and then we have games that are designed to assess what they understand,” Hughes explains. “So, they're playing a game, we're getting a lot of data about whether they've understood (what they’ve been taught) or not. And if we get a sense that they don't understand, for example, by getting wrong answers, then we can apply extra feedback.” 

What sets this approach apart from “standard” classroom learning is that it only moves on to the next topic or idea when the student is ready. “The system is sort of going through this loop of teaching, assessing, assisting if needed, and then making a choice about what (the student) is ready for,'' Hughes says. "It’s completely different from the ‘one-size-fits-all approach of traditional models. This way, no one else gets left behind, and advanced students don’t get held back either.”

The results speak for themselves. Age of Learning has a track record of success in some of the country's most at-risk and low-performing schools, including Jefferson County in Tallahassee, Florida. After 15 years of “failure,” with students often five years behind their grade level, assessment scores increased after as little as 12 hours of AI-assisted learning. 

Will AI replace teachers? 

At a very different sort of school, Austin’s $40,000 per year private Alpha High School is filled with students using app-based “AI Tutors” to score an average of 1545 (out of 1600) on their SATs. The national average is 1030 . 

“AI is a great equalizer,” MacKenzie Price, co-founder of 2hr Learning and Alpha School , says over the phone. “AI is infinitely patient; it doesn't care how fast or slow it takes you to learn a concept, which is impossible in a traditional classroom. It doesn't care if the student is Black or white or brown. It doesn't care if the student is rich or poor. And it also doesn't care if a kid is in the 10th or 99th percentile. It can raise the bar of what's possible.” 

In “Alpha School,” students spend two hours in the morning focused on personalized education supercharged by AI, with instructors taking the role of “supportive guide and counselor” rather than “traditional teacher,” Price says. Students spend the remaining hours of the school day on life skills, arts, sports, and even entrepreneurship. 

“It has made learning a lot more fun,” says 18-year-old Peyton Price, a senior at Alpha High (and MacKenzie Price’s daughter). One example Peyton shared is recently using AI to replace lyrics to the Taylor Swift song “Blank Slate” to help her study for her AP U.S. Government final.

“Nice to meet you, let's begin, explaining AP Gov, where to begin? Declaration of Independence, set the stage, for American democracy, a turning page … Natural rights, sovereignty, social contract, it's true, these are the principles that guide what we do.”

She also uses another of her mother’s latest tech tools, a new “ TikTok for studying ” called TeachTap . In the app, students learn from AI-generated versions of Albert Einstein, Harriet Tubman, Marie Curie, and hundreds of other historical figures who speak to – and interact with – them. TeachTap starts free but runs anywhere from $20 for “discounted course access ” to $250 for “unlimited AP test prep.” 

“A lot of adults and educators are like, ‘TikTok is bad, or social media is hurting you,’” Peyton explains, “but what’s working for my generation is people who ask us, ‘What are the things you find interesting, what do you enjoy,’ and then figure out how to make a version of that to help with our education.” 

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MacKenzie Price adds, “That’s what we’re doing here, taking all those potential negative effects of screen time and turning that into learning. We’re taking the power of AI and using it for good.”

Can AI help all the kids at public schools?

Back in Odessa, 8-year-old second grader Trip Galloway tells a similar story. Trip is an advanced student at Pease Elementary. “He’s in the second grade but already reading at ninth grade level,” his mother Savannah said over the phone. “He learns so quickly that he was getting bored and just kind of tuning out in school. Once they started AI learning, he’s able to excel, concentrate, and work more to his ability.” 

“It’s important because it teaches us things the teacher wouldn’t normally (be able to) because the apps teach you when you need it,” Trip chimes in. “Most of my friends are a grade level under me, and it didn’t used to be any fun. Now it’s fun.”   

When I ask Trip what it would be like to return to how things used to be in his classroom, he groans and says, “It would feel boring because, with the (AI), we’re doing our things faster and more fun. It’s way better than doing worksheets all day and having the teachers teach us all day.” 

That’s a tough sentiment for veteran teachers like Carlton Conn-Oquendo to hear. She’s taught various grades and subjects at Chicago’s Hawthorne Scholastic Academy for some 42 years and knows firsthand that for all the help AI tools can give students and teachers, they won’t ever replace the single most crucial part of her job. 

“Technology is a great tool, but it can’t replace the human connection,” she says over the phone. “Most of us still remember that one teacher who really spoke to us and influenced us. You can augment all you want with technology. But it really, really makes an impact on children to have that connection.”

Jennifer Jolly is an Emmy Award-winning consumer tech columnist and on-air correspondent. The views and opinions expressed in this column are the author's and do not necessarily reflect those of USA TODAY. Contact her at [email protected].

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Guest Essay

Higher Education Needs More Socrates and Plato

By Ezekiel J. Emanuel and Harun Küçük

Dr. Emanuel and Dr. Küçük are on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania, where Dr. Emanuel is a professor and the vice provost for global initiatives and Dr. Küçük is an associate professor of the history and sociology of science.

The right attacks colleges and universities as leftist and woke. Progressives castigate them as perpetuating patriarchy and white privilege. The burdens of these culture war assaults are compounded by parents worried that the exorbitant costs of higher education aren’t worth it.

No wonder Americans’ faith in universities is at a low. Only 36 percent of Americans have confidence in higher education, according to a survey by Gallup last year, a significant drop from eight years ago. And this was before colleges and universities across the country were swept up in a wave of protests and counter-protests over the war in Gaza.

But the problems facing American higher education are not just the protests and culture war attacks on diversity, course content, speech and speakers. The problem is that higher education is fundamentally misunderstood. In response, colleges and universities must reassert the liberal arts ideals that have made them great but that have been slipping away.

By liberal arts, we mean a broad-based education that aspires to send out into society an educated citizenry prepared to make its way responsibly in an ever-more complex and divided world. We worry that at many schools, students can fulfill all or most of their general education requirements and take any number of electives without having had a single meaningful discussion that is relevant to one’s political life as a citizen.

Over the past century, what made American higher education the best in the world is not its superiority in career training, but educating students for democratic citizenship, cultivating critical thinking and contributing to the personal growth of its students through self-creation. To revive American higher education, we need to reinvigorate these roots.

In Europe and many countries elsewhere, colleges and universities have undergraduates specialize from Day 1, focusing on developing area-specific skills and knowledge. College students are trained to become doctors, lawyers or experts in international relations, English literature or computer science.

In the United States, European-style specialization for medical, legal, business or public policy careers is the purpose of post-collegiate professional schools. Traditionally, the American college has been about imparting a liberal arts education, emphasizing reasoning and problem solving. Those enduring skills are the critical ingredients for flourishing companies and countries.

Historically, students arriving on American college campuses spent a majority of their first two years taking classes outside their projected majors. This exposed them to a common curriculum that had them engage with thoughtful writings of the past to develop the skills and capacity to form sound, independent judgments.

Over the past half century, American colleges and universities have moved away from this ideal , becoming less confident in their ability to educate students for democratic citizenship. This has led to a decline in their commitment to the liberal arts, a trend underscored in the results last year of a survey of chief academic officers at American colleges and universities by Inside Higher Ed. Nearly two-thirds agreed that liberal arts education was in decline, and well over half felt that politicians, college presidents and university boards were increasingly unsympathetic to the liberal arts.

Today, there is almost no emphasis on shared courses among majors that explore and debate big questions about the meaning of equality, justice, patriotism, personal obligations, civic responsibility and the purpose of a human life. Majors that once required only eight or 10 courses now require 14 or more, and students are increasingly double majoring — all of which crowds out a liberal arts education. Ambitious students eager to land a prestigious consulting, finance or tech job will find it too easy to brush aside courses in the arts, humanities and social and natural sciences — the core of a liberal education.

The devaluing of the first two years of a shared liberal arts education has shortchanged our students and our nation. Educating young adults to be citizens is why the first two years of college still matter.

To that end, the so-called Great Books have long been the preferred way to foster citizenship. This approach is not, contrary to critics on the left and right, about sanctifying specific texts for veneration or a mechanism for heritage transmission.

Books by Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke, Kant, Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman as well as Wollstonecraft, Austen, Woolf, Baldwin, Hurston and Orwell are worthy of introductory collegiate courses for students of all majors. These writers address the fundamental questions of human life. They explore the ideas of self-determination, friendship, virtue, equality, democracy and religious toleration and race that we have all been shaped by.

As students address those big questions, the Great Books authors provide a road map as they challenge and criticize one another and the conventional wisdom of the past. The Socrates of Plato’s dialogues is the exemplar — asking about beliefs and then subjecting them to respectful but critical analysis and skepticism.

These books are best studied in small seminar discussions, which model and inculcate in students democratic behavior. This discourse is an antidote to the grandstanding in today’s media and social media.

The teacher is less an expert in specific writers and more a role model for intellectual curiosity, asking probing questions, offering critical analyses and seeking deeper understanding. In an idealized Socratic fashion, these discussions require listening at length and speaking briefly and, most important, being willing to go where the argument leads.

Parents who are paying for college might question the value of spending $80,000 a year so that their son or daughter can read Plato, Hobbes and Thoreau instead of studying molecular biology or machine learning. But discussing life’s big value questions in seminars gives students personal engagement with professors that can never be reproduced in large lecture halls. Discussions among students on their deepest thoughts cultivates curiosity and empathy, and forges bonds of friendship important for citizenship and fulfilling lives.

Although we like to set ourselves apart from the past by appeals to modernity, the fundamental questions that we find ourselves asking are not always modern, and the latest answer is not always right. But how would you know how to think beyond the readily presented check boxes if you haven’t done the work of laying things out and putting them back together for yourself?

War was no less a concern for Thucydides, Tacitus and Thoreau than it is today. Discussing Great Books allows students to gain distance from the daily noise and allows their reason to roam free among principles and foundations rather than becoming absorbed in contemporary events. Our biggest problems are often best addressed not by leaning in but by stepping away to reflect on enduring perspectives.

Liberal arts education is not value neutral. That is why it is indispensable today. Freedom of thought, critical reasoning, empathy for others and respectful disagreement are paramount for a flourishing democratic society. Without them, we get the unreasoned condemnations so pervasive in today’s malignant public discourse. With them, we have a hope of furthering the shared governance that is vital to America’s pluralistic society.

Ezekiel Emanuel and Harun Küçük are on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania, where Dr. Emanuel is a professor and the vice provost for global initiatives and Dr. Küçük is an associate professor of the history and sociology of science.

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