Teacher Experiences During COVID-19

• In Event: Teaching During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

In March 2020, teachers were asked to do something for which they were never trained to do - pivot to teach their students remotely (Author, 20XXa). What took place when schools initially closed their buildings for in-person instruction is better described as emergency remote teaching, rather than online teaching (Hodges et al., 2020). The latter involves planned instruction that is delivered online instead of face-to-face. Researchers have reported that teachers found emergency remote teaching to be challenging and they worked much more than usual (Kaden, 2020) and experienced medium to high levels of stress during this period (Klapproth et al., 2020). In the United States, schooling looked quite different from one context to another during the 2020-21 school year, with some schools offering remote instruction for most or all of the year and schools elsewhere opening for in-person instruction for all or part of the school year (Author, 20XXb). Regardless of context or learning modality, the period between March 2020 and the conclusion of the 2020-21 school year represented a challenging time for teachers. In this qualitative study, we sought to describe and understand what teaching was like during the COVID-19 pandemic. We also sought to give teachers an outlet to share their experiences, to learn about their challenges and successes, and to understand the ways in which school systems and classrooms might look different after the pandemic.
We conducted long-form interviews with 12 teachers from around the country. To obtain our participants, we recruited teachers within our personal networks, as well as through Reddit. We selected our participants purposively to represent a range of learning modalities (in-person, hybrid, remote), grade levels (elementary, middle, and high), and geographic regions. Two rounds of interviews were conducted using a semi-structured protocol. The first round of interviews took place between December 2020 and February 2021, and we asked participants about their experiences during the transition to remote instruction during the spring of 2020, as well as how they navigated the first half of the 2020-21 school year. A second round of interviews took place between May and June 2021. These interviews explored how teachers experienced the remainder of the 2020-21 school year. In this paper, we share narrative accounts of five teachers. See Table 1 for participant demographics.
Our findings suggest that teachers were offered very little guidance as to what instruction should look like in the beginning of the pandemic. Teachers we spoke with worked incredibly hard during the pandemic to ensure students received quality instruction, whether that be online, hybrid, or in-person. However, the increased workload and fatigue resulted in teachers and students feeling exhausted and burnt out by the end of the year. Our participants discussed the need for clear communication from school leadership, the importance of investments in technology to ensure equal learning opportunities for students, and the tradeoffs associated with decisions made about accountability. We conclude with recommendations the teachers we spoke with offered.

Authors

• Savanna M Love, Randolph-Macon College

• David T. Marshall, Auburn University