Another long, frustrating day teaching high school English via Zoom. I peeled my sticky legs off the faux leather chair in the cramped back room of my house. Well, I got through it. Late August, only two weeks into the semester, and I was ready to pack it in. After 27 years in education, I didn’t need this aggravation.
I pulled up my work email. There was a message from a woman whose name I didn’t recognize: Gigi Shepherd. Was she a new teacher’s aide? “Please tell me how I can join your classes.” I don’t think so. I’d never done any co-teaching. And I certainly wasn’t interested in doing it now with some interloper. Online education was enough of a struggle. Technology was definitely not my strength.
I’d started feeling burned out the year before, during the 2019–20 school year. The expectations kept growing. Many of my teacher friends had retired, leaving me feeling isolated. Then Covid hit. Our district switched to remote learning. Running a virtual classroom was a
