Disconnected

For teachers and students across the country, the COVID pandemic brought about many changes. Ms. Lopez, an eighth-grade science teacher at an urban middle school in California, began feeling the impacts of the pandemic when her school district made the decision to pivot to online learning in the spring of 2020. This quick shift was difficult because it required her to put in long nights creating lessons that she could use the next day.

I was basically creating curriculum every night to try to adjust to the new mode of teaching. Maintaining rigor, for one thing, was really difficult.

The district decided to remain online the remainder of that school year and the beginning of the 2020–21 school year. Ms. Lopez explained that the remote learning environment limited teachers’ ability to form relationships with their students and she felt very disconnected from her students during that time.

We never got a chance to form relationships in-person. That’s just how we started. It was online, and whoever showed up would be there. So I would have discussions with maybe out of a class of 30, some kids, maybe five or six of them would show their videos, and they would be responsive.

Online instruction also limited her ability to have engaging and meaningful discussions with students. Ms. Lopez noted that she typically encourages her students to be creative and tailors her instruction to student discussions. However, it was nearly impossible to have those types of discussions or quickly answer student questions when teaching online.

I think a lot of teaching science is in the moment, when we’re all working on something together and the kids ask a question, and you’re like, “Okay, let’s pursue this.” It was really hard to maintain that in a Zoom format. When I normally walk around the classroom, I can just like, “Hey, how about try this way or something?” Whereas online, it was like, “Okay, come back to me and show me what you did.” It just wasn’t quite the same.

As a result of online learning, Ms. Lopez found that the gaps in engagement that had existed prior to the pandemic widened. Students who were typically engaged and interested in school continued that trend, and students who had previously struggled continued to struggle.

I think this really exacerbated whatever gap that we saw before. Certainly, there were kids who were still interested. They showed up every day. They asked questions, they participated, they were curious. And then, the ones that tend to require more effort to be engaged, they were just not as engaged. And then, the ones that we really struggled with typically in the classroom, they just tuned out. It was playtime for them.

However, Ms. Lopez did find that informally talking with students about COVID helped improve their engagement because it provided a safe space for them to ask questions.

[Talking about COVID] provided an arena for them to ask questions. . . . It gave them a place where they could ask if they wanted to, and they did ask questions.

The district eventually transitioned to a hybrid approach during the spring of 2021. However, Ms. Lopez noted that hybrid was even more difficult than being fully online because she had to teach students that were in person and remote at the same time.

It was tiring going through the online classes one after another. When you’re just sitting in front of the computer, it’s just really hard. It takes a lot of energy. Midway through the school year, we switched to asynchronous and synchronous, so some kids came into school, but then we had to teach kids that were online at the same time. That was super tough. That was really hard to do.

She recognized that school administrators were aware of the extra stress that teachers were experiencing but expressed disappointment that they did not offer personalized strategies or resources to ease the burden.

They kept telling us, “We know it’s stressful, we know it’s really hard, please show grace, please take care of yourselves” and then they would say, “Here’s this package thing someone just sold us. This is the way we should online teach.” And so, it wasn’t really personalized. They did try to give us technology, but the way they taught us how to use the technology wasn’t very personalized. It was like, “Here, watch this online video.” So as much as they acknowledged that we were stressed and really struggling, they just tried to check off boxes and give us stuff to do.

For the 2021–22 school year, Ms. Lopez and her students transitioned back to in-person instruction. She was immediately struck by the impact online and hybrid instruction had on student behaviors. She quickly realized that her students were not used to being in a classroom and, as a result, behavior problems increased dramatically compared to years past.

We were pretty confident going into [the school year], and we were really looking forward to having an actual class where we could form our relationships and get back on track again. But it actually turned out horrible. I think what we didn’t expect was, we knew there would be gaps in education, but what we experienced was kids who just weren’t used to being in the classroom. And so, behavior was a huge issue, and we really struggled as a school and as a district with discipline because the argument was, “The kids had been traumatized.” And so, how do you carry out discipline given that scenario? We really struggled with that all year. That was a distraction in the classroom. I felt like kids really weren’t used to doing work at all. Homework was just a pipe dream for me. They actually really pushed back on it. They just wouldn’t do it. We really struggled with getting the kids really the academic skills to get back on track. Even by the end of the year, I still felt like some kids were really struggling. They hadn’t really gotten back into school mode.

Additionally, she found that parents were starting to withdraw their involvement and partnership in schooling.

I did feel a distancing from the parents. The parents weren’t as involved or interested. . . . Certainly, over the pandemic years, that relationship between the families and schools was hard.

Looking forward, Ms. Lopez has concerns for her students’ futures and questions about how to lessen the educational and behavioral gaps that COVID widened. Yet, despite the challenges, she holds on to her passion and love for teaching.

I told myself a long time ago that if I get too bitter, that I should move on. It’s not good to be a bitter teacher. Certainly, during the pandemic, online teaching, and asynchronous and synchronous teaching, it was just really tiring. I did think about, maybe there are other things to do, but never seriously. So I think I just still love teaching enough. I think my concern is, how do we get the kids back on track again? How do we get kids to feel confident about school? How do we get them to learn the skills they need to actually sit down and work through a problem without giving up so easily?