Concierge Teaching

Ms. Wright teaches science to students in 6th, 7th, and 8th grades at a Catholic middle school in Illinois. As COVID began rapidly spreading across the United States in March 2020, her school made the decision to immediately move to remote instruction. During this time, Ms. Wright was working almost 12-hour days in an effort to assist every student possible. This included planning online science lessons, nightly meetings with other teachers on her team to discuss what students across the school were struggling with, reviewing student assignments, and delivering instruction during the school day.

Although the school day for us goes from 8 until 2, in those three months, March, April, May and into June, I’d say most of our days went until eight or nine o’clock at night. Because then we would regroup and meet. We would talk about what was working, what students seemed to be struggling with on a daily basis. And then we would be figuring out how to post things for the next day, how to look at any evidence that students were sharing, because we were trying to still hold them accountable for the work that we were doing. And we were devising plans that would work in this new format.

This excessive workload continued into the 2020–21 school year, and Ms. Wright began to feel the weight of what she described as “concierge teaching.” She explained that she and other teachers at her school regularly sacrificed their own personal time and mental health to meet student needs. For example, all teachers in her school were loading daily instructional materials onto carts and taking instruction to the students instead of having students move about the school, a logistical strategy for reducing COVID spread. Additionally, teachers were regularly preparing make-up or work-ahead assignments for students who were absent due to illness, family commitments, or family vacations.

As travel became more available, many of our families were making up for lost time and taking vacations they canceled or put on hold. So there was probably never a week all year, and I have 150 students that I see daily, that a family wasn’t going to be gone for two, three days a week. And they were asking for assignments ahead of time, asking for assignments afterwards. So we still were providing concierge teaching, on demand, depending on what they needed.

Constantly changing school sanitation guidelines, based on evolving knowledge of the virus, also impacted Ms. Wright’s science instruction. She noted that maintaining safety guidelines meant making daily changes to planned instruction, sometimes at a moment’s notice.

We would get new directives as to, “Okay, you can do this, but now this has to be reported, or eased up or we didn’t have to report it.” But then around the holidays, it would spike again, and we’d have to go back and refollow the guidelines. So it was keeping track of which guidelines were in place so that lessons could be planned. I try and plan out lessons for a unit at a time, but usually they would be adjusted daily because of guideline concerns.

Because of her desire to provide students with high-quality science instruction, Ms. Wright struggled to take time away from teaching during the pandemic. Even after the school day ended, she felt the need to constantly be working, whether it was planning for the next day or researching a new topic that she thought her students might find interesting.

I’d always be going back to my computer. I was tethered every waking minute of every day. . . . There was always something else I could be doing. I never felt like I did it all. So I was always feeling like, “Okay, if I just spend a little more time, I could research geology and try to find a way to make it interesting for the students who are sitting in front of a computer.” Because offering them a video isn’t very worthwhile. They can’t have a hands-on experience. What can we do to make this engaging or make a STEM experience out of it and get them involved?

The 2021–22 school year finally brought some relief as all students returned to the school building in person and full-time. Ms. Wright’s workload generally returned to what it had
been in school years prior, and she expressed relief about being able return to a pre-pandemic classroom atmosphere.