In 2018, when instructor protests spread across the country, TIME spoke to several instructors who described how stalled wages and budget cuts were affecting their lives, forcing them to take a moment and spend piles of dollars of their own cash on school supplies or prevent them from being offered to their own children. Two years later, when educators face an entirely new set of demanding situations caused by the coronavirus pandemic, we follow those instructors to see how they prepare for an unprecedented school year.
Read their stories below. Comments have condensed and changed for clarity.
Professor of Language Arts at Norman High School in Norman, Oklahoma, which began the school year nearly August 24
As a teacher, I don’t feel like he’s been very replaced in the last few years. Oklahoma teachers were given a pay raise, which was great. My salary is now about $41,000. I felt paid for hire, and now I can save, and the budget is much less stressful. But the state of Oklahoma still has paintings to be made. We still want a lot more investment in education. Class size is still important. I still buy a lot of my own supplies.
I’m relieved that we have almost the school year. It has been a whirlwind and everyone is asked to do more than they can do in a day, so I simply try to be patient and offer answers when I can locate them.
The first day of school, it’s very in bad taste, but it can be magical and it’s a lot of fun to see kids excited to rub shoulders with their friends and be in a community. Turns out we’re missing that this year. I teach in an empty classroom and it’s a little sad. But it was great to interact with the students, even virtually, because the school was so empty.
“I teach in an empty classroom and it’s a little sad.”
My colleagues and I have been under pressure since spring break because we care, are concerned and know the ins and outs of our work, and we know that what the CDC recommends for in-person learning is simply not feasible. given the lack of investment we’ve had over the last decade.
I’m not an online teacher. I haven’t been trained to do anything and I don’t need my scholars to get lost because I’m in uncharted territory. I just hope that other people know that we are doing our best and that it is difficult to make a resolution that everyone likes. It’s just a situation.
English instructor at Carman-Ainsworth High School in Flint, Michigan, who plans to start school year remotely until September
Michigan was one of the states most affected by COVID-19. My scholars have lost the circle of family members and there are many traumas that we do not deal with. When COVID arrived, the young men texted me in the middle of the night and I would answer them every single time. At the beginning of the school year, care should be before the content. We can’t just go in and be informed about algebra.
This total scenario is a mirror image of all the things that went with education before IT hit COVID. Everyone knows that fairness is a huge problem. Everyone at school knew that lack of generation was a problem. The huge number of academics who didn’t have the equipment to do any learning at home was already huge. You’re already leaving them behind. Some schools have everything they want to do everything, and they’re usually white and middle-class schools. Everyone sits down and says, “They never gave us what we wanted. But now we only intend to turn it into paintings in the middle of a pandemic?” The pandemic has revealed all those things.
“This total scenario is a mirror image of all the things that went with education before COVID arrived.”
Starting the school year is the safest option. This is by no means the simplest. It will be incredibly difficult for teachers to do their job. I have an idea of what I can do to have a space of respect, love and freedom for all of us. Actually, it’s complicated in a virtual area. But protection and care are meant to be at the forefront of education. So if almost finishing school is the way to protect everyone during that time, that’s what we deserve to be doing. I need to be safe. People say, “Teachers don’t work.” We run harder than ever.
Freshman instructor at Eddie Bernice Johnson Elementary School in Wilmer, Texas, will begin the school year with distance learning until at least October 6.
It’s been hard to get first graders together this spring. It’s less difficult for older kids because they know how to navigate other systems, and most high school students are already very informed about the generation. For our academics, it’s a challenge because they may not do the systems themselves. They should have had help. She had some parents painting, and you may not just prevent and help her son. A lot of parents were overwhelmed, so I reviewed each of the assignments and filmed myself doing them, showing them how to mark a call in a sentence or count money. He had grandparents raising his grandchildren and the generation on their heads, so I drove home and gave them genuine paint packages.
“Teaching almost many more paintings than training in class.”
I think the maximum of young people are reported when they are in class, where we can explore more. I know the benefits of interacting socially with your peers and being informed of your peers. I just want leaders to do anything for the youth. After all, I’m a user and there are millions of young people who want to train.
Some other people feel that teachers just don’t need to move on to painting, and that’s not true. Many teachers have underlying fitness issues and concerns, and we fear for our babies. We see other people holding meetings virtually and then they say, “Just send the kids to school.” We need them to be safe. We happen to have to paint independently, either virtual or at school. Teaching almost many more paintings than training in the classroom. But we need the most productive for children.
Art instructor at Riverside High School in Belle, West Virginia, who plans to start in person for some academics in September
Part of my fear about reopening schools is that, across the country, about a quarter of our teachers are in the age organization where this is dangerous. They play Russian roulette with the top experienced educators. I just had a verbal exchange with a teacher’s organization, and it’s so serious that I know two of them are leaving. They’re done.
Directors deserve not to be the ones who have to make life-and-death decisions for our communities. It’s not our backs that the economy works. But every time there is a crisis in our communities, somehow there is a belief that we are destined to be the ones who handle it.
“They play Russian roulette with the highest experienced educators.”
Are we going to get the fabrics we need? Will there be enough masks? It’ll charge more than we don’t have. A significant percentage of our school-age students live with a grandparent, and although you argue that the virus does not affect young people as much, it is the elderly. If their grandparents die, they don’t have anyone else. I have scholars who paint full time. These young men are looking to keep their homes afloat.
These disorders are much more vital than their grades. For me, it’s ridiculous that going back to school is the hill on which to die for some people. Why don’t you say, “This is not the right time right now. We’re going to put it online.” There are young people who have to live an adult life right now. Stop trying to force this thing. We’re going to make it. But right now you’re generating a lot of stress.
Professor of Mathematics at Lincoln High School in Tacoma, Washington, who will start school year remotely
A lot of students in the best schools don’t like math. And one of the tactics that convince you to show themselves elegantly is to be the clumsy instructor who cares about them. It will be much more complicated to be that user on a PC screen, when I do not have the opportunity to have those conversations one by one or even be at the door of my elegance and welcome each and every student to elegance.
“It’s just being on the user and crossing their fingers, waiting for no one to die.”
It will be attractive to see how this year’s online commitment compares to engagement in my same classroom when it’s not a pandemic, and I anticipate that it will be significantly minimized. In the spring, I only had about 10% of my students participating in distance learning every week. I don’t expect as many fellows to pass this year as they did before, just because it’s going to be a lot less difficult to verify. If a child is on a computer screen, how do I know he’s worried about what I’m talking about? How do I know they’re not on his phone?
It’s bigger than being on the user and crossing their fingers, waiting for no one to die. In fact, it’s not ideal. I’d rather be in user with my kids, but now I can’t. I started training because I was looking to spend time with the kids all day. I need to frame them. I am able to share my knowledge, delight and feel uncomfortable with other young people and hope in their lives and have fun. I don’t know if I’m really going to do that this year.
Special education instructor at Millbrook Magnet High School in Raleigh, North Carolina, which started the school year nearly August 17.
When I met academics for the first time, I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it wasn’t so complicated because they’re in the comfort of their home, and we’ve made other icebreakers that paint at home: place an object in your space and teach 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 some other level.
“We don’t need our young people to get out of this pandemic in the short term.”
But I hope to become a user again because my academics want it and so do I. I’m an eighth-generation educator. It’s anything that’s part of me, being able to give them a hug, have a verbal exchange and look them in the eye.
I can do a lot of things online. But I can’t give them that confidence. I can’t touch my eyes when they want it, when that soft bulb moment blinks and they want to see that space, even if just hunting me reminds them that they have the courage to ask a question or give an answer. I can’t do that online.
I think teachers do what we did: we take what we earn and make sure our students get the most productive educational pleasure possible. And we stayed up late at night, looking for a way to get there. We don’t need our young people to get the short term of this pandemic and lose the things they’re entitled to, the things they desperately need.
Professor of social studies and AP of government and policy at the American Community School of Abu Dhabi, a foreign staff who welcome academics to face-to-face courses with exchange schedules.
I dropped out of Lincoln High School in Tacoma, Washington last year to teach at Array. I’ve been told many times that schools need American teachers, especially, because if you can teach and thrive in an American public school, you can teach and thrive anywhere. The other thing now is that my day is more realistic. I have more time to plan, I have smaller categories and my academics are able to succeed through meeting their important fundamental desires in a way that I have not experienced at other times in my career.
“If I taught in the United States, I would have much more to say given the current situation.”
The description of an instructor’s homework in a prototype American public school, especially a very poor school, is very long: instructor, counselor, social worker. Society does not care or recognize that for millions of low-income academics, life’s fundamental desires are not being fulfilled and the burden of filling those gaps rests with the instructors. In my current school, my students’ wishes are fulfilled, so my task is just to teach.
There are about 10 million other people in the United Arab Emirates, larger than Washington or New York. During the pandemic, there were approximately 370 COVID-19 deaths in the United Arab Emirates, a fraction of deaths in Washington state or New York. Because of the way they treated the virus, demonstrating competent leadership, we’ll go back to school face-to-face with a changed schedule this fall. If I had to teach in the United States, I’d have a lot more to worry about, given the situation that exists.
Professor of Humanities at The University of Neighborhood Middle School in New York, where the school is expected to begin with a combination of face-to-face and remoteness in September
Spring was in fact an emergency teaching. We had very little time to prepare for distance learning. Participation was a problem. I’ve had academics from the 90th percentile who just disappeared. I contacted the parents, only to check the social and emotional status of the students, as well as their families. I emphasized how to maintain their learning and make them expand academically when they did not reach elegance steadily. Many of the systems and routines in the room of elegance that we had put in place since the beginning of the year have collapsed.
“I’m afraid the scholars will be there in silence.”
I won a medical home to teach remotely this fall. My biggest fear is that I teach sixth graders. I’ve never met them before. They’re new logo scholars. Building an appointment with them where they can accept me as a facilitator of their learning, I think that’s the biggest fear I have right now. We don’t have the opportunity to play and we don’t have the opportunity to plant the grass that we usually do every year, things that I think are essential for my network of elegance and that leads academics to accept as true. with me enough to ask for help. I’m afraid academics will sit quietly for 30 days of school without knowing how to improve it. There’s nothing I can do to force them to participate. We are preparing to reorganize our program to make it much more suitable for students.
Professor of U.S. History At Woodford County High School in Versailles, Kentucky, which begins the school year and plans to resume user training in September
The pandemic has replaced everything in education. I am involved in the potential fitness dangers of returning to the user and losing the learning environment we had. In the classrooms, if possible, we will all have to do two meters of social distance and wear masks. It’s almost like I have to start sitting in front of the back of the room and giving lectures to the children who are all sitting in the same direction, without running together, not discussing together, without collaborating, without being creative. For me, it’s so dry and institutionalized.
“It’s terrible to be.”
There will be no motivational meetings or meetings. The music band season has already been cancelled. Everything that makes young children like to go to school is past. I think young people and families may have in mind that this will be the case before COVID. But it’s not any of that.
I sense the need to reopen. I perceive him as someone who has had young children at some point. This is largely because parents both want to go back to paintings and want to have a position to go through the young. So I think that’s how they perceive us, just a position that young children can go through while parents paint.
I don’t know what the answers to that are. There are no smart answers. I care about my students, I care about my own children. The district seeks to do everything possible. It’s just a terrible scenario to be in. And if we had had a transparent direction from the beginning, and it hadn’t been politicized, then maybe we’d be in a position where things would have been general again since school started.