Part of what feels so hard as a teacher right now is that even though every teacher and every student feels, in every possible way, how different learning and teaching are this year, there are so many others who want to pretend that we can just carry on “as normal.”

We are asked to cover the same amount of content we always have covered, we are asked to assess in the same way we have always assessed, we are asked to teach & learn within the same time frames we’ve always taught and learned it. And the cognitive dissonance of it is too much.

At the start of this all, there were so many cries of, “Just focus on the students’ emotional well-being.” But the truth is that it so very quickly became, “Prove you’re doing enough. We need to be accountable.” I can promise you, that is not how you look out for the students.

That is how you try to assert power. And it is pushing teachers to a breaking point and it is pushing kids to a breaking point. We have to remember we are in the middle of a global pandemic. We have to adjust our expectations and demands. On kids and in teachers.