A new teacher reflects on a surprising first year By Alicia Simba

I started my first day as a teacher last August, staring at seven little 4-year-olds who stared back at me through a quiet Zoom screen. I pressed unmute, animatedly introduced myself, and invited them to do the same, as they sunk into their parent’s lap or squirmed in an oversized chair in their living room. We sang “Old McDonald” with each voice cutting in and out on top of each other. I pressed Mute All to read Jacqueline Wilson’s The Day You Begin, and their eyes glanced at the illustrations before grabbing the nearest toy. Then, 30 minutes after we started, we waved goodbye, and I sat in the screeching silence of my apartment in Oakland, Calif., wondering, what next?

I began teaching transitional kindergarten in a large, public school district in the Bay Area, at a small, Title I, predominantly Black P-5 school. As a Black female teacher myself, I was aware of how relevant these demographic details were during the pandemic. Remote learning hit low-income communities of color particularly hard, thanks to a mix of limited funding, barriers to connectivity, and the disproportionate toll of COVID-19 on Black and Latinx families.

Of the many upheavals caused by the pandemic, the disruption to K-12 learning has been one of the most severe. First-year teachers like me were thrown into the crisis, beginning our teaching careers in the middle of a pandemic.