Secondary Teachers' Experiences Adapting to the COVID-19 Pandemic
Date
2022-05
Authors
Mingote, Nicolas
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Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic (“the pandemic”) forced many public schools in the United States to switch from an in-person learning modality to a simultaneous online and in-person learning modality during the 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 school years. In this study, I conducted two interviews with four teachers who experienced this transition and asked them questions regarding their responses to the pandemic and how their strategies impacted their ability to engage students. An analysis of the interviews revealed that the policies the teachers were operating under influenced their satisfaction as educators and in turn affected their ability to successfully engage students. All teachers discussed their satisfaction with the approach their school districts took going in to the 2020-2021 school year, when teachers in these districts were expected to prioritize forming positive relationships with their students and explore ways to successfully engage them. However, in the 2021-2022 school year, two of the teachers who worked in the same multi-high-school district expressed their dissatisfaction with their districts’ shift in priority to be
more evaluation-oriented and “check list” based, which negatively impacted teacher agency. This study’s findings showed a drastic difference in teacher satisfaction between
the school districts, with teachers who worked in schools that maintained teacher-student relationships as their priority having an overall higher satisfaction with the way their
schools enabled them to navigate their new terrain. Future research may aim to investigate the relationship between school districts’ approaches to teacher evaluation and
teachers’ satisfaction.
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Keywords
COVID-19, Secondary education, Agency, Adaptations, Teacher satisfaction, Student motivation, Teacher-student relationships
Citation
Mingote, N. (2022). <i>Secondary teachers' experiences adapting to the COVID-19 pandemic</i> (Unpublished thesis). Texas State University, San Marcos, Texas.