Teaching has long been considered a stressful profession, but the COVID-19 pandemic upended the profession in ways that are transforming teaching and learning. Worsening work conditions for teachers are impacting the well-being of educators and leading to burnout, teacher attrition, and increased issues with health. While some changes resulting from the transition to online schooling are positive, the rapid pace at which change has occurred has made working conditions even more challenging. In response to this crisis, school districts, principals, and other school administrators have provided a variety of guidelines and outreach methods as a way of minimizing the damage. Similarly, university teacher education program faculty are experiencing many of the same challenges, while continuing to work with teachers and students in the field. This chapter presents real-time descriptions of the state of schooling during the COVID-19 pandemic and identifies connections for teacher preparation programs as they grapple with ways to support teachers and the teaching profession.
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This week has been a mix of getting a handle on virtual learning and getting ready for students to come back on Monday. I am so excited to get students in the classroom, and to actually see more of them than just their heads and shoulders. Since they announced the kids were coming back, new guidance has been coming down, what seems like every day. We have had to change our plans for the first week back several times. This past week, Elisa [supervising teacher, pseudonym] and I have figured out what we think will work best for our class. Everything is such a puzzle these days with social distancing and the new changes the superintendent wants to make. We finally settled on holding off on small groups until the second week the kids come back because 1) the first week will probably pose unforeseen hiccups, and 2) we want to assess our kids in person to see where they are. We are going to be on Zoom from 7:50-9:20 each morning and then the students at home will continue learning like we have been, and students in the classroom will receive double dose instruction, hands-on learning, higher-order thinking, and small-groups (after the first week). The hardest part of the puzzle was figuring out what to plan for each group since we are not allowed to do any of the same assignments for virtual and face-to-face learners. This is just a completely different semester for everyone at the school - I really know no different…
Student 1 intern journal entry, 10/11/2020
The COVID-19 pandemic crisis has made clear to teacher educators working with pre-service and inservice K-12 teachers that teaching and learning in both university classrooms as well as K-12 schools will be forever changed. While both university faculty members and K-12 public school teachers experienced the rapid, forced transition to 100% virtual teaching, teacher educators were privy to the anxieties, confusion, demands and questions of the pre-and inservice teachers with whom they worked. At our university, faculty were given an extra week of spring break to shift modalities and revamp course agendas, while expected to maintain the integrity of the original student learning outcomes of their courses. They shifted living, working, and studying spaces in their homes, while accommodating other family members and roles. Soon faculty members, along with other professional fields, acquired a new vocabulary based on technology that reached from the classroom to the kitchens, bedrooms, and play areas of students and their families. K-12 school to family messages went from information about traditional school events to what might be called emergency information, regarding classwork packets and food distribution. Once delivery systems became somewhat routine, many schools began to settle into a new normal completely focused on virtual schooling.
As this new reality for teachers unfolded at what seemed to be a breakneck pace, education faculty members became astutely aware that the lives of their university students were being upended as well. Recognizing the importance of unpacking the lived experiences of being jostled by the COVID-19 pandemic, university faculty sought ways to support students before continuing with more routine teaching and learning in courses. As the second half of the spring 2020 semester began, faculty looked for insight into the lives of the students who were undergraduate pre-service and graduate level in-service teachers. When asked, students anecdotally reported feelings of confusion, conflicting directions from districts, and being overwhelmed with health news. And, as noted in the above student intern journal entry, it continued into the fall 2020 semester. Teacher educators need to acknowledge that the stress their students, pre- and in-service teachers, express may be directly related to the fast-changing landscape they are being asked to navigate. Understanding the stress that teachers are feeling has become an even more important focus driving the work of teacher educators.