8. Teachers’ Self Regard During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Chapter 8 focuses on teachers’ self regard. It explores the values the teachers in this study brought to their practice and how those values impacted their experience of emergency remote teaching and learning (ERTL). Specifically, the teachers in this study suffered from profound regret, guilt, and frustration with respect to what they imagined they could have done for their students if they had been able to teach them in person. In reflecting on the experiences of these teachers, a conception of what keeps teachers teaching even when it is difficult and unrewarding is developed, grounded in the scholarship of bell hooks, Christopher Higgins, Doris Santoro, and Gert Biesta. The necessary conditions for teachers’ professional fulfillment are explored.