After my second day with students physically in my classroom since March, I can safely say that work is A LOT right now. My district’s policy for teaching right now is essentially “don’t get too comfortable,” and I am definitely feeling the discomfort.

Starting entirely virtual was already a lot. I typically spend 30-45 minutes out of every 90 minute block with my students on Zoom before releasing them to their asynchronous assignments in Google Classroom, so in theory I’m teaching less time than I would in person.

In practice, I have to be more organized than I ever have been. I’m lucky to have a 3/3 split on preps for my six classes, so I teach the same class all day A Day before I teach my second class all day B Day.

Before I get on Zoom with my kids, I have to make sure that my slides are prepped, that assignments are scheduled for the right time and with the right due date with clear instructions in Google Classroom, and that the Zoom links I have posted are current.

I change Zoom links weekly to avoid zoombombing, even though the one time I was zoombombed, it was from someone posing as one of my students, so they had to have had access to my Google Classroom.

I spend 30-45 minutes on Zoom, talking more than I would in a 90 minute class period as I lecture, ask questions, and narrate answers for students who post in the chat instead of unmuting. My throat hurts constantly.

When I was entirely virtual, I could drink water whenever I needed it. Now, I have to pause teaching, step into the hallway outside my classroom, remove my mask, drink quickly, and return.

After the official synchronous Zoom time ends, I stay on during asynchronous time to answer questions, in case my students need me. As the Zoom call stays on in the background, I also post the slides from the day and take attendance for the first time.

In order to keep track of all the different ways kids can be counted as present, I have a clipboard with a printed roster. Kids who are physically present get a P; kids who enter the Zoom call or turn in an assignment before class get a check.

Students who turn in work before 11:59 PM but after I log off for the day get a star and I update their attendance via a Google Form that has to be filled out individually per student. The attendance updates often fall off my radar.

Then, of course, I get emails from parents wondering why their student has been marked absent. Often, the parents who email have students whose attendance I can’t fix, because all of their assignments are missing and they haven’t been on Zoom.

Once I’ve answered any immediate post-class questions and taken attendance, I start sorting through the emails that have piled up since the start of class. Today, between the start of 5B and the end of 6B (about three hours), I had 32 new emails.

Some of the emails can be deleted, like the scheduled post emails from Google Classroom. Some of them are emails from students, asking for help. Some of them are Google Classroom notifications that my students have commented on an assignment somewhere, usually asking for help.

Some of them are parents, responding to an email I sent, or asking about attendance, or asking about grades. Some are from admin on my campus, with information I need to know/have/share. Some are just notifications that students have turned work in late.

Once I’m caught up on my email (as much as I can), and everything either has a response or has been flagged for later follow up, I sometimes still have time before the next class starts and the whole cycle starts over again.

That extra time usually goes toward grading 175 students’ work, answering a question from one of my coworkers, or working on planning/future assignments. I am always about 2 weeks behind on grading. 175 students x 14 grades per quarter gets messy very quickly.

More emails generally roll in throughout the period, so the work is completed in small, distracted chunks between the dings of my email.

Repeat the cycle 3x per day, and add an extra 90 minutes to build and schedule assignments, create slides, grade 175 students’ work, attend meetings, and occasionally eat something or use the restroom, and virtual learning was stressful, but starting to settle out.

And when I say “settle out” I mean, I only worked until 8/8:30 PM 2-3 times a week & slept 6-7 hours a night & also managed to treat the physical symptoms my anxiety was giving me sufficiently that I could get up & go teach every morning without crying in front of my students.

Yesterday, we had 25% capacity of our students return to in-person learning. There have been good things, and there have also been 100 new logistical nightmares to deal with. Seeing students’ faces instead of teaching to a wall of white names on black backgrounds helps.

I’ve never required my students to turn their cameras on, but it is definitely exhausting to teach into a void, with a smile on my face to assure them that even though this is difficult and stressful, we will get through this together.

I now teach 4-9 students in person and ~20+ on Zoom virtually each class period, at the same time.

I try to greet my students at the door, where I direct them to their assigned seat in my classroom, which is able to seat 9 students 6 feet apart. There are tape borders around each of their desks, and around the 6 foot space around my desk and the desk for my inclusion teachers.

Students sit at their desks, and watch the slides I have projected on my board as I scramble to let 20+ students into the Zoom call from my waiting room after matching their names to my roster to avoid zoombombing.

I share the projected slides with my Zoom students, and turn my head periodically to read the slides while managing students who join late or are booted off by unstable connection, reading the chat, and keeping an eye on the faces of both virtual and in person students.

I’m still on Zoom for roughly the same amount of time, unless I’m conferencing with students individually about their reading/writing to mimic the one-on-one conversations that would happen more organically in person.

My in-person students participate alongside my Zoom students, but I’ve had to ask them to hold questions about their individual progress in class for after synchronous time to preserve any kind of balance.

My in-person students are in my class for the full 90 minutes, so some of our time is spent talking about logistics, especially since I teach freshmen. They also have questions about their work, and their questions can’t be flagged for later response.

I also have duty 3-4 times a week, once in the morning on door duty to make sure that students enter at the right place, and 2-3 times in the afternoons on days when I have the last class period off. When I don’t have duty, I’m often responsible for other teachers’ students.

And of course, because students are in my room all day, I’m doing all of these things while wearing a mask. I can take it off when I am alone in my classroom with the door closed, which means mostly during whatever lunch I manage to eat while managing my workload.

Then today, I received an email that says that I can’t be on campus after 5:30 PM because the custodians need time to sanitize the school each night. I don’t want to make their jobs harder, but this means I’ll be taking work home nearly every day.

Today, I skipped the grading I had planned to do in favor of building the assignments and slides I needed to teach all day tomorrow. Since I stopped checking my email at 5:30, 18 emails have already piled up in my inbox for first thing tomorrow morning.

It’s been two days since students came back. I was already burning out two weeks ago. We’re halfway through September and it feels like the last week before Christmas. I’ve cried at least three times in two days. I’m exhausted.

I’ve also had to cut out the limited, in-person contact I had in my personal life as we figure out how contact tracing will actually work if one of my students tests positive. Because I’m an essential worker, I have to be at school unless I test positive.

I don’t know what the point of this thread is, beyond verbalizing the sheer volume of demands on my time right now. Every teacher I know right now is exhausted, and just as overworked as I am.

I am pasting on a smile for my students and counting down until someone tests positive or I sit down and cry with students in my room. I’m not sure which one will happen first.

My students are not the problem, but I am at the limits of my resilience right now. I can’t be the teacher I want to be for them. I feel like I’m failing. Every single day, I feel like I’m failing.

I am lucky to have health insurance that covers my weekly therapy appointments. All we can really do is manage expectations, set boundaries, and practice some kind of self-care. My goal is to avoid burnout for as long as I can, knowing that it’s coming soon.

If things continue the way they are, there’s going to be an even worse shortage of teachers next fall, assuming we all survive to May. Be kind to the teachers in your life right now. They really, really need it.