Few professions outside of medicine and research have played as pivotal of a role in the events of the past year as teachers have. In today’s episode, we’ll hear two stories — one from a Chicago Public Schools teacher and another from a New York Public Schools teacher — about how the challenges and triumphs they’ve experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Part 1: Jenny DeLessio-Parson has always prided herself on being a super teacher — until the challenges of remote teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic begin to add up.
Jenny DeLessio-Parson was born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. After studying Public Policy in college, she worked in various roles serving Chicago students and families before returning to school to become a teacher. Jenny has been an educator with Chicago Public Schools for 8 years and currently serves as a middle school Social Studies teacher and staff delegate to the Chicago Teachers Union. She was introduced to storytelling through Lily Be, which later led her to become co-host of The Stoop, a Chicago-based storytelling show.
Part 2: As the COVID-19 pandemic progresses, Amanda Geduld begins to feel that she and her fellow teachers aren’t receiving the support and respect they need to do their jobs.
Amanda Geduld received her B.A. from Dartmouth College in English Literature and Women's and Gender Studies. She went on to study English education at Boston University where she received her M.Ed. Now serving as an 11th and 12th grade ELA teacher in the Bronx, she is deeply passionate about approaching education reform through a social justice lens. Her writing has been featured in The Washington Post and CNN.
Story Transcripts
Part 1: Jenny DeLessio-Parson
I have been a teacher for Chicago public schools for eight years. And throughout those eight years I have prided myself on being a super teacher. For me, being a super teacher means that I throw my heart and my soul and all of my waking hours into designing social justice‑infused lesson plans that teach my students how to be change makers in their community. It means that my classroom creates space for discussion and for student identity and voice to thrive. It means that my classroom is a safe and brave space and that I emphasize social emotional health among my students and their families. It means that I'm an advocate for myself and my colleagues, the union delegate.
Jenny DeLessio-Parson has been an educator with Chicago Public Schools for 8 years.
And being a super teacher means that I can play the Chicago public schools game. I hit all the numbers that the district says are indicative of teacher success and I take special pride in sitting in staff meetings and looking at Google Spreadsheets for my classes highlighted in green because 21 out of 22 of my students show growth on their NWEA test and because my attendance rates are consistently at 97% or 98%. That I have high ratings as a teacher in my evaluations, I complete all of the trainings that are required of me and ones that are not because I'm a super teacher, and that's what super teachers do.
So when I woke up on the morning of March 17, 2020, I was ready for the challenge of remote learning in a pandemic. The directive given to us was forget about the numbers just for now and focus on social emotional health. Make your kids feel seen and valued. Get a hold of them. Connect with them and their families. Create spaces where they can connect and have fun with each other and so that's what I did.
I put aside any of the drama and anxiety and fear that I was feeling personally and I created scavenger hunts for my students. I gave them engineering challenges to do at home and I got to see their personalities come through the screen. I got to see Jesse show us a video of a game he invented and Tony show us the catapult he made out of sporks. And Jasmine and her little sister with their coin rollercoaster that they had taped to their wall.
And as an added bonus, I got to sit in staff meetings where once again my class was highlighted in green because every single day, more and more kids were coming into my remote classroom. By the end of the school year, all but two had been able to log on and connect with us and see each other.
And so when summer 2020 rolled around, I was anxious and I was worried about what the New Year would bring but I wasn't completely fearful, because I knew I was a super teacher and I knew that I was up for the challenge.
I would be transitioning from fifth grade into the middle school, teaching sixth through eighth grade social studies. I get to keep my fifth graders with me so I was going to build on that success, build on those relationships. I was ready for the challenges. I was ready for the directives that I'd be given in the fall.
So I'm sitting in meetings with my colleagues in that last week of August, these back‑to‑school teacher meetings, looking at presentations on the new CPS attendance tracker or the online platforms that we're supposed to be using to keep kids engaged, or the systems we were going to be using to track student academic progress.
And I knew that the CPS numbers were back but I wasn't scared of them. I knew I could rise to the challenge and meet those numbers again because I always do. I'm a super teacher. I do everything.
So when we realized that a third of our students didn't have the computers that they needed for remote learning, me and my colleagues sprung into action and we set up tables in front of the school. We grabbed our hand sanitizer and our PPE. We were out there before, after and during school hours passing out computers, passing out supply bags, giving out schedules, telling kids how excited we were to see them.
I made phone calls all that week, and sure enough on the first day of school, all but two of our middle schoolers showed up for online learning. Once again, our names were highlighted in green. We had met our attendance rate markers. We were successful. We were super teachers.
But the novelty of online class and Google Meets wears off pretty quickly. And after about a week, I had students that just weren't logging on. And I found myself in a staff meeting in September on a Wednesday looking at a chart shared with everyone when my class was highlighted in yellow, because my attendance rate had dropped to below 96%, and that's not what it should be.
So I did what super teachers do. I tried harder. I called families during my lunch hour. I reached out to kids after school. I worked late into the evening designing lessons that I was sure would keep kids engaged and focused and wanting to come to school. But next week, my class was in red. We had fallen below 94%. And we can't be below 94% because the network says that that's not successful.
An action shot of Jenny teaching online — to an empty room because her student has walked away.
And it doesn't matter, it didn't matter that I did have some kids that were still coming. I had that that group of fifth graders from the year before showing up. Jesse was there every day. Tony was there saying hi. Jasmine was still there quietly, but turning in her work every single day. It didn't matter.
It didn't matter that the students that weren't coming had really good reasons not to, because one of them didn't have a place to do online learning so she was traveling back and forth to the library every day. And one student was driving around with his family in their car all day looking for housing. And one student didn't have internet because it had been shut off after their utility bill was outstanding balance of a thousand dollars or more. And several students were too busy cleaning their house or watching their siblings because they were at home alone while their families served as essential workers. None of that mattered because my attendance rate was below 94% and that's not what it's supposed to be.
But I didn't have a lot of time to think about that because then I started getting emails about all the trainings I hadn't completed, the webinars that were given out by the district that were going to tell me how to be a better online educator. I was short on getting those done.
And I didn't have time to worry about those trainings because then I was getting notifications about my students that were off track. And nine out of 32 of my sixth graders were in danger of failing sixth grade or having to complete summer school and so I needed to do that documentation and get those rates up.
And then I couldn't think about that because I was getting text messages and emails from my colleagues because, as the union delegate, I needed to help them deal with these same challenges. And so I tried to take all of those numbers and all of those failings and put them out of my head and just focus on the kids.
But middle schoolers aren't really known for being the most enthusiastic and they don't like to turn on their cameras. So my days consisted of me staring at a screen of 30-plus little black squares, anxiously staring and waiting for that red line to disappear from a microphone to show that a student might have something to say or, God forbid, turn on their camera, but they never did and they never do.
And I know that brilliance exists behind the computer screens and but it just doesn't matter. No matter how many Jamboards or Nearpods or Pear Decks I created in order to get at that brilliance, the only thing that I was getting back was short, truncated responses and a chat box full of one-word answers, like ‘yes’, ‘okay’, and my personal favorite ‘idk’.
And I'm consistently stressed out and overwhelmed by my Google Meet notifications, my Google Classroom notifications that are showing that the number of missing assignments is rapidly outpacing the number of submitted ones.
And I just am reaching a point where I am failing at everything, because I've already failed to meet all of the numbers that have been set for me by the district and now I'm failing to meet the metrics that I've set for myself, because I'm not patient and I'm not inspired and I'm not creating engaging lesson plans, I'm not creating space for student voice and student discussion, I'm not creating spaces that allow for safety or student emotional health to flourish. I'm failing at every single metric that has been set for me or that I've set for myself.
So one day, sometime in early December, I'm sitting at my computer, staring at the screen of 30 black boxes with a smile plastered on my face, drenched in my own anxious anger sweat, realizing that I don't actually know what my student Amy looks like because she has never once turned on her camera. And I'm seeing in the chat one more student say, “Wait, what are we supposed to do?” about an assignment that was due three weeks ago. And something inside of me just breaks.
I make it to the end of class. I slam my computer closed. I grab my phone, I grab my keys. I put on my coat, I put on my mask and I storm out of my apartment calling my mom and sobbing into the phone that I just can't do it.
And I'm walking along the lake in the dark and the cold and the sleet telling my mom that I need to quit, that I need to take a leave of absence because I can't keep doing this. I can't keep putting my heart and my soul and my waking hours into teaching and failing so hard, so much every single day.
She tells me to calm down and just wait until after the holidays to see how I feel and then we can work something out then.
So I go back to my apartment. I open up my computer and I see another email notification, another question on Google Classroom. And this time it's from Jasmine who always does all of her work and so I'm wondering what could she possibly need from me.
I click on the email and it just says, “Watch this after class.”
I click the link and a YouTube browser pops up. Once it loads I can hear the opening bars to Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up.
You know that song? “Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down…” that one. And it's just a video of him shimmying on the screen while those instrumental bars play over and over and over for ten straight minutes.
I laughed so hard and then immediately thought afterwards how did I forget about Jasmine? How did I forget how funny she is and how intuitive she is? How did I forget about that personality and that humanness, because she clearly didn't forget about mine.
So it's now the end of January, 2021 and I still work for Chicago public schools. I haven't quit yet. And I'm still overwhelmed by the numbers and the metrics and all of the messaging that tells me that I'm a failure, from my attendance rates to my rate of work completion, to the new metrics that don't make any sense about how we're supposed to be going back to school in the midst of a pandemic.
But I'm really trying to just focus on two metrics that I've set for myself and that is, one, do I create space for my students’ humanity? And the second one is do I allow that same space for myself? Because I am not a super teacher and I don't want to be one.
So now my new numbers for remote learning success look something like this. That every day we create time for ten or 12 jokes to be told during our class study hall, and nine out of ten times when I go into seventh grade social studies, Danielle is going to be blasting Korean pop music and that is great.
And there's a 60% chance that my afternoon sixth grade social studies class is going to be interrupted by Edwin's cat or Annie's dog, or David showing us his two turtles. And all of those numbers make me a success. And all it took was one Rickroll video for me to realize that. Thanks.
Part 2: Amanda Geduld
From my very first days as a student, I knew that someday I wanted to be on the other side. I wavered a bit when I got to college. I remember so vividly standing in the cafeteria my first week of freshman year chatting with a guy who lived in my dorm. And he told me that he had taken a gap year the year before he started college to go and teach in Saudi Arabia.
And I was so excited. I was like, “Wow! That's amazing. When I graduate I also want to be a teacher.”
Amanda Geduld serves as an 11th and 12th grade ELA teacher in the Bronx.
And he looked at me and sort of smirked and was like, “Oh, no. I don't want to be a teacher. That was just my gap year. I have much higher aspirations for my career.”
And I was sort of floored because my family it was awesome to be a teacher. That was a really respected academic career. I was very quickly learning that in the Ivy League world it was not as celebrated.
After a lot of soul searching and a very brief, very miserable internship in investment banking, I ended up pursuing teaching anyway. Now, I am in a school that I love, doing what I love most every single day.
I knew teaching would be challenging. It was never billed to me as a glamorous career, but I never anticipated that I would be teaching through a pandemic.
In early March, as I sat on the D-Train heading up to the Bronx, I was listening to The Daily as I do every morning and, all of a sudden, I heard Michael Barbaro inform us that there was this virus that was pretty quickly spreading.
I didn't think a whole lot about it, but being a huge hypochondriac I immediately dropped the pole, grabbed my hand sanitizer, sanitized myself and then just continued on with my day.
Within a couple of days, students were coming to school in masks and gloves, and I'm embarrassed to say now that I actually laughed with another colleague thinking about how much kids were overreacting to this. Little did we know we were actually the ones who were severely under-reacting.
We were told by the mayor and the chancellor that no matter what happened schools would not shut down. We would remain open. But our schools would be closed every evening for really intensive cleanings and, if need be, they'd be closed even more frequently.
I think anyone who works for the Department of Education knows that a little bit of skepticism might be healthy there when we are told something. So I, as I'm leaving work one day, noticed that there's a dead cockroach in the corner of my classroom and I decide to use this as a little bit of an experiment. I'll know the next morning when I return whether or not the classrooms have actually been cleaned.
Lo and behold, we get there the next morning, the cockroach is still standing as are the overflowing trash cans, the empty Snapple bottle on the floor and I realize that these cleanings are not happening. And to be really clear, we find out later that it's because the government did not allocate proper funding for the cleanings.
So I sort of panicked. Kids are about to enter my classroom and the room is dirty. So I grab the hand sanitizer out of my purse. I squeeze it all over a desk and I just use these gross single‑ply tissues to wipe it down.
A few days after that, kids stopped showing up to school. Parents and guardians knew well before our local government that this was no longer a safe situation. Then the next Friday, my principal calls us in for a meeting and there are like 50 of us packed into this pretty small classroom. At this point we think that the virus is spread through surfaces so we're all hand sanitizing, washing our hands, but not really thinking about how dangerous it is that we're standing shoulder to shoulder breathing the same COVID-filled air.
She lets us know that although we should plan on being at work on Monday, there's a chance that we'll be shut down for a few days so we should bring home what we'll need. On Sunday, though, there's a press conference and the mayor announces that we'll actually be shutting down for two full weeks.
I immediately get panicked communication from students who had no idea. They left their books in their lockers. They don't have laptops at home with them. My favorite text was one from a senior who left her chicken sandwich in her locker and is worried that in two weeks it will smell really bad. Little did we know that that chicken sandwich would not be rescued for another eight months.
So we shift to virtual learning, which ends up lasting a hell of a lot longer than two weeks. And we have to do it with not a whole lot of support or time. We have two days to turn our curriculum virtual and then we're back on with kids. There's no really set schedule, no set number of hours that we need to be live with kids. We're just sort of told to do what feels right.
Amanda, in front of her classroom’s reading wall.
As a teacher, I love the flexibility but I wasn't really sure how to proceed. So I decide I'm going to take the classroom and I'm going to make it as similar as I can via Zoom. So the first day of live classes we have a Socratic seminar about the book of unknown Americans. The kids are engaged, their cameras are on. We're laughing about how weird this is and I think to myself like, okay, this is not going to be so bad. We've got this.
Within a couple of weeks, though, we receive guidance letting us know that students’ grades can't really be impacted by what they do during the pandemic. For example if they don't complete any work for the remainder of the year, they won't fail the course. They'll have the following year to make it up even as they progress to the next grade.
I think those of us who have kids or work with kids know that young people meet the expectations that we set so we need to set high expectations. And I was so frustrated with the city for setting such low expectations for our very resilient students. I knew that these were unprecedented circumstances and that kids were experiencing daily traumas. But at the same time, I knew that they were capable of doing this work even if it had to shift a little bit.
And we very quickly saw the result of these low expectations. Attendance fell, investment fell, participation waned. The kids who did keep showing up to these now optional classes had their cameras off. At this point, I feel like I spend most of my day looking at a sea of profile pictures repeatedly saying, “Hello? Is anyone there? You want to type in the chat? Out loud? I'll really take anything.” And it's just sort of this sad, one-woman show at this point.
So the end of the year is a welcome time as it always is, but after the longest teaching year, I hope, of my entire career, June rolls around and I'm excited because I think this is the last time I'll have to teach this way. I'm really hopeful that by September they will have figured some way out to get us back in the classroom, at least a couple of days a week because I miss seeing my kids in person. It's just not the same over Zoom and the same learning isn't happening.
But there is silence all summer. We do not hear a thing from our local or state governments. And this sucks for teachers, because we're trying to plan our curriculum. For people who aren't teachers, we spend typically most of the summer figuring out what we're going to teach the following year and how we're going to do it. So that felt frustrating.
But even more importantly, it was so unfair to students and their families. I was receiving communication from students and their parents, kids wondering, “Will I have a graduation? Will I have a prom?” And I had nothing to tell them.
At the beginning of the pandemic, it felt like for the first time in my career teachers were really being celebrated. Parents were witnessing firsthand education happening in their living rooms and they saw how much hard work we were putting into that. And we were being praised. There were memes floating around saying that teachers should be paid a million dollars a year.
But by the summer, that started to fade. Although we weren't receiving a lot of communication from the government, there were rumors that we would be returning to school and there was a lot of pushback from teachers.
I think that after seeing how thoroughly the government failed us back in March, we did not feel confident that we would be protected this time around. I had this flashback to the cockroach in the corner of my classroom and just knew that the PPE wouldn't be there and there wouldn't be enough soap and hot water to get us through a day of school.
But this pushback is met suddenly with a lot of vitriol. People saying things like if teachers are refusing to teach in schools then they shouldn't get paid. A nurse wrote an op-ed calling for teachers to get back into the field just like her.
I made the mistake of reading through the comments on these op-eds. Some of them called for guards to be stationed outside of bars to make sure that if teachers weren't teaching, we also weren't drinking. I'm not sure exactly where the logic lies there but it made me flash back to that moment in the cafeteria years before when I was told that teaching wasn't a real career.
Because those of us who teach do it because we love our kids and we love our subject matter. We are professionals and we work really hard to deliver content in an engaging and useful way. The fact that we were being called lazy because we didn't feel safe entering buildings after we had seen firsthand how unsafe we really were, just felt so deeply unfair.
Finally, at the beginning of August, we get some sort of communication. The chancellor lets us know that there will be a meeting and we can submit questions ahead of time. So I submit somewhere north of ten questions, all very specific.
Lo and behold, the meeting is a complete joke. It becomes clear that they have done very little planning and, it seems, even less thinking about how to get us back in the classroom, but they're going for it anyway.
Finally, we get to the Q&A period and I'm guardedly hopeful that I'll get some real information. But they've cherry picked the five low-ball questions that they received of thousands and they have these ridiculous scripted answers that give us absolutely zero actual information.
I'm just fuming. I feel disrespected. I feel scared. And, most of all, I just feel angry. I'm not athletic. I am not a particularly fast runner, but I decide that I'm going to throw on a pair of sneakers and sprint out the feelings.
So I head out on this run. And sometimes I like to use speech-to-text to write in my notes app just as like a journal. So I started doing this on my run and I lay out all of the things that are making me feel most upset in this moment. I return home from my run and read over these notes and I realize it kind of sounds like an op-ed. I read a ton of op-eds but I've never written one before.
And I think to myself, “Okay, I could post this on my Instagram story and maybe a hundred people will see it. And of that, ten will respond and it'll basically just be an echo chamber. Or I can push myself and let more than just my silo read this.”
So I sort of haphazardly reach out to a million different places begging them to publish this op‑ed and give teachers a voice in this debate. Shockingly to me at the time, The Washington Post agrees to publish it.
And I'm so excited that I'll have this like national platform to contribute to a conversation that centers teachers but doesn't ask to hear from us, but I realize that I have this dilemma.
Quick back story. Although I was teaching in New York City at the time, I was working on a substitute license. I had recently moved from Massachusetts to New York and my New York City license hadn't gone through yet. In order for that license to go through, I needed my principal's advocacy and I needed the support of the city and state.
So I became terrified that if I published this piece in a national newspaper slamming the government, they would not be super pleased and wouldn't give me that license after all and my career would be down the drain.
So I have this back and forth with myself and debate really what is my responsibility to myself and my own career but also what is my responsibility to the community that I serve and to teachers across the nation who are feeling the same way that I'm feeling. So I decide to publish anyway, a choice that's wrapped up in a whole lot of privilege, but for me it was the right choice.
Unfortunately, The Washington Post op-ed section still allows comments. Even more unfortunately, I decide to read through every single one of them and then respond to every single one of them, all 800, because I decide that if I provide responses that are thoughtful and calm, even though their comments were filled with vitriol, maybe I can change their hearts and minds.
My partner woke up in the middle of the night one night at 4:00 a.m. She sees me slamming away on my keyboard responding to someone named John The Plumber. She tells me that I need to just stop. Like I wrote a good piece but I'm coming across as a little bit unstable in the comments section.
She was right and I stopped responding, but I just sort of like sit with my piece now and I start questioning myself and poking holes in my own argument. I let John The Plumber get to me.
Then suddenly I realized that The Washington Post has also published a piece on the exact opposite side. And my optimism is shattered a little bit because I thought they wanted to give me a platform but now I think maybe they just wanted clicks about this controversial subject of the moment. I realized perhaps op-eds don't actually change people's hearts and minds. People just read to…
And so I start to realize that maybe op-eds aren't the way to change people's hearts and minds and I need a new approach. Despite my piece, schools reopen after multiple delays and my op‑ed has changed nothing.
I still somewhat believe in the power of writing so I try to write another one. This one I know is stronger. I'm not able to poke holes in my argument. CNN publishes it and they don't allow comments. I'm like great. Like people are going to focus on the meat of my argument rather than the vitriol below.
It doesn't matter. People retweet it, tag me, talk about how I should get my pension pulled, how I don't have the emotional constitution to teach their kids if I refuse to go into the building.
In the end, New York State certifies me, no one at work mentions it, and the lack of punishment is almost worse because it meant that the piece wasn't even powerful enough to piss anyone off.
That leaves me with a new dilemma. I knew public education was a screwed up system, which is why I entered in the first place. I wanted to help fix it and be a part of the solution. But now it's more clear to me than ever bureaucrats who know nothing about teaching or running the show.
So what do I do next? Do I do what I've criticized others for? Leave the classroom after five years, head to law school and work in policy. Is there some middle ground where I can remain in the classroom but still contribute to policy and writing in some way? I don't know.
I'm going to keep teaching. I'm going to keep writing. I'm going to continue to call out those in power who are harming our most vulnerable students. I don't know what form my career is going to take moving forward. All I do know is that I want to make sure teachers are in the rooms where decisions are being made.