Education Week - September 1, 2021 - 20

OPINION
this year showed us anything, it is that teachers, like the
Rosies, can rally at a time of crisis and quickly develop
new capacities.
In the midst of a historic crisis, teachers learned to use
a range of digital tools and came to understand both the
affordances and limitations of technology. They learned
which lesson adaptations could aid student learning
and which ones were a weak substitute for in-person
activities. They developed new ways of supplying
social-emotional student support, and they gained new
insights into the challenges many students navigate. They
prioritized meeting the needs of the most vulnerable
students and worried aloud (or expressed hope) about
tackling inequities in the future.
It will be a while before we know the full implications
of this pandemic school year, though " experience loss " -
the loss of experienced teachers from the profession-is
already a looming reality. The effects of major crises tend
to become apparent only in retrospect. Even Rosie put
her rivet gun down at the end of the war when gender
norms were reasserted and women were ushered out of
the workforce.
Looking back, however, we can see the drop in
| SUDDENLY DISTANT
Will the Pandemic Produce
A New, Bolder Teacher?
I
By Lora Bartlett
BARTLETT is an associate
professor of education
at the University of
California, Santa Cruz.
Her research focuses
on the teaching
profession and schools as
workplaces for teachers.
She is the author of
Migrant Teachers: How
American Schools Import
Labor (Harvard University
Press, 2014). You can
follow her on Twitter at
@LoraBartlett.
n many ways, the first 16 months of the
COVID-19 pandemic created a Rosie-theRiveter
moment for the teaching profession.
During World War II, Rosie stood for all
the American women who went to work in
occupations previously reserved for men.
Entering the workforce in record numbers,
women developed new skills and capacities under
difficult circumstances. In their successful contribution to
the war effort, they expanded what counted as " women's
work. " Rosie the Riveter became a post-war symbol of
feminism that heralded widespread changes in labor
norms linked to gender.
Similarly, the COVID-19 school building shutdown
created an educational need to expand what counted
as " teachers' work. " The crisis called on schools to trust
teachers with a level of initiative unprecedented in recent
American history. When the whole world ground to a
stop, teachers were asked to step up, figure it out, keep
connected to students, and, somehow, continue to teach
through the shutdown. And they did.
The spring 2020 need for an all-hands-on-deck
educational response changed the nature of teachers'
work-at least for a bit. Teachers determined-based
on the needs of their students, the community context,
and their own experience-the instructional-delivery
formats, content, and even the timing of school lessons.
They did this with little direct administrative oversight.
As teachers worked to figure out how to make school
happen, they turned to one another for the professional
learning they needed.
Teachers were an essential part of the pandemic
response in spring 2020. They worked hard, felt part of
something important, and believed their worth was seen
and recognized.
In fall 2020, as the pandemic continued, many teachers
questioned the return to precrisis structures, routines,
20 | EDUCATION WEEK | September 1, 2021 | www.edweek.org/opinion
and priorities. Often, they found their professional
assessments fell on deaf ears. They felt sidelined and
silenced, demoted from driver to back-seat opiner.
That proved demoralizing and, for some, a blow to their
commitment.
Many objected to hybrid instructional-delivery models
they knew-from firsthand experience-would not be
effective. Additionally, teachers resented not having a say
in determining the conditions under which they would be
expected to return to in-person teaching. Some objected
to what they considered an inattention to teachers'
level of risk. Others wanted to be back in the classroom
sooner. At a time when much was uncertain, teachers'
fate was debated publicly in a politicized context that
tied decisions to ideologies. To many teachers, it seemed
that people who knew less about schools and students
than they did nonetheless had more say about working
conditions there.
Often, when people call for teacher voice, they do so in
a way that implies there is some united voice of teachers
that can be relied on as the authority. Or alternatively,
that the voice of one teacher will do-say, on a leadership
committee.
Neither the unilateral nor the token teacher voice is the
one that teachers experienced in spring 2020. Rather,
it was the somewhat chaotic voice of a diverse and
varied profession working out solutions to educational
challenges. It manifested itself in teacher solutions to
classroom-level pedagogical needs and in the emergence
of professional knowledge networks. It is a voice that
anticipates and allows for variation of practice and
trusts the ability of teachers to collectively cultivate the
conditions of good teaching.
Although there are schools where teachers feel
heard, teaching as an occupation has not encouraged
professional voice. Teachers often struggle to influence
the policies and practices that affect their students. But if
employment for women was just a lull. Within a decade,
women's labor-market participation had surpassed
wartime rates. Similarly, the pandemic may have seeded
a change in teachers' professional voice the full import
of which we will see unfold over time. It showcased what
schools stand to gain by expanding decisionmaking to
encompass teacher expertise.
As we move into the second back-to-school season
affected by the pandemic, school leaders would do well to
look to their teachers for guidance. The new competencies
teachers developed and the insights they've garnered over
the past year are the very resources schools and districts
need-if they will only capitalize on them.
Teachers deserve a seat at the table-and we deserve
schools that make the most of teachers.
Epilogue
I recently did a follow-up interview with " Leanne
Edwards, " a Texas middle school teacher I wrote about
earlier in this series. (I don't use her real name because of
research-subject anonymity.)
Edwards is exhausted from the workload of pandemic
teaching, she told me. Even more, she is demoralized by
both the decline in voice she has experienced this past
year and the ideological split that divides her community.
She shared that some parents tell her principal they don't
want their children in her classroom because of her provaccine
and pro-mask positions.
Also disheartening is that the district responded to low
state-test scores that weren't supposed to count against
schools or students with a new packaged curriculum.
Edwards said she is unhappy with the choice: The new
curriculum not only specifies the scope and sequence
of the subject matter, according to Edwards, it also
prioritizes siloed subjects over integrated ones.
Edwards has resigned from all her school-level
leadership roles and has told the central office and her
principal that this is her last year at the school. One-third
of her teacher colleagues have resigned this year, and
two weeks from the start of school, 11 percent of teaching
positions were still vacant, she told me. Edwards said she
is only staying because she has a child in the school.
Her hope is that she can find a curriculumleadership
position that allows her to help return
teacher voice to decisionmaking in her district. But if
she can't, then she is prepared to leave the district and
perhaps the profession. n
CONVERSATION: This is the final essay in this
series. Look for a live, online conversation
with Lora Bartlett, Peter DeWitt, and others
coming in September that will explore
teaching and the pandemic.
edw.link/SuddenlyDistant
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Education Week - September 1, 2021

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