Suddenly Distant and Still in Flux: The Implications of COVID-19 for K12 Teachers’ Work and Schooling

The UC Santa Cruz University Forum presents The Implications of COVID-19 for Teachers’ Work and K-12 Schooling with Professor Lora Bartlett and the Suddenly Distant Research Project Team. The COVID 19 pandemic forced the entire teacher workforce into distance teaching essentially overnight. ough a short-term crisis, the longevity of this pandemic is changing the context of teachers’ work in ways that are affecting the very nature of teachers’ work and the structure of K-12 schooling.

In this Forum the Suddenly Distant Research Project Team draws on in-depth interviews with 75 teachers in nine states to explore the ways that state and local responses to the pandemic have reshaped schooling and teachers’ working lives, affected teachers’ work/family lives, and exacerbated as well as abated long standing educational equity issues. Professor Lora Bartlett and research team members discuss the patterns that have emerged, the implications for the teaching profession and K-12 schooling, and insights into teachers’ feelings about how schools can best navigate this crisis.

This University Forum event is co-sponsored by the Institute for Social Transformation.

Featuring:

• Lora Bartlett, Associate Professor of Education at UC Santa Cruz
• Riley Collins, Ph.D. student in the Education Department at UC Santa Cruz
• Dr. Lina Darwich, Assistant Professor of Education in the Department of Teacher Education at Lewis and Clark Graduate School of Education and Counseling
• Julia E. Koppich, President of J. Koppich & Associates, a San Francisco-based education-consulting firm
• Dr. Alisun Thompson (Cowell, 2014), Assistant Professor of Education in the Department of Teacher Education at Lewis and Clark Graduate School of Education and Counseling
• Dr. Judith Warren Little, Professor Emeritus of Education from UC Berkeley, Carol Liu Professor of Education Policy emerita, and Dean of the Graduate School of Education emerita