Teachers Are Sharing Just How Much The Pandemic Changed Their Jobs

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“Many school systems changed policies during the pandemic flat-out stating that no teacher could fail a student for any reason and always had to accept late work of any quality under any circumstances and then didn’t change the policies back after lockdown was over. My district did not keep those rules in place, and that’s been hard for many students transferring in to adjust to. I teach older teens who come to our school from all over the country, and depending on where they were prior to my class, there is a VAST difference in preparedness and awareness of their responsibilities in terms of their own learning.”

“A lot of them are genuinely shocked if they don’t automatically get 100% for turning in an assignment on time, even if the assignment doesn’t meet any of the metrics outlined on the syllabus other than the due date. I’ll also have students not turn in any assignments all semester, then assume it’s fine for them to turn everything in two days before final grades are due and that doing so will turn their grade around from an F to a B+. Through no fault of their own, they got used to not facing repercussions for failing to meet stated requirements and are shocked and sometimes even traumatized when they enter environments that are more rigorous about meeting metrics that, prior to the pandemic, were the norm.”

—32, North Carolina