Suddenly Distant: Teachers’ Work During COVID-19

By Lora Bartlett (UCSC Education Department)

Contributions from Building Belonging Fellow: Lila Harte

January 2021

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to upend conventional schooling in most of the U.S. as states, local communities, and school districts contend with fluctuations in reported cases. In this second report from the field, the research team draws on interviews conducted with 75 teachers from nine US states between late July and early September, and on a survey completed in November by 73 of those teachers (97%) as well as some details from the second interview conducted in December 2020 with a focal subset of 36 of the original 75 teachers.

This report chronicles teachers’ journeys from summer projections and concerns about the fall to the lived realities of the 2020-21 school year. Some of these teachers work in schools that navigated the summer with a presumption of a September return to schooling as usual. All of these teachers worked this fall in schools that bear little resemblance to the pre-pandemic reality of teaching and learning.

This research was supported by Building Belonging Undergraduate Fellowships from the Institute for Social Transformation at the University of California, Santa Cruz.