How about a round of applause: assets, dispositions and contributions of first-year teachers during parallel pandemics of 2020

ABSTRACT

This qualitative study aims to learn about the experiences of first year teachers as they rapidly transitioned to remote teaching during the global Covid-19 crisis in March 2020. Additionally, the murder of George Floyd shortly thereafter exacerbated racial turmoil, impacting communities, students and families simultaneously. As the shift was sudden and drastic, and the first year of teaching is already quite challenging with a large learning curve, we seek to highlight the experiences of beginning teachers during Covid-19, and specifically focus on their strengths, assets and resilience, adding to the literature on asset-based perspectives of beginning teachers. Using data from individual journals and focus groups involving 15 first year urban and suburban teachers, we assert that first year teachers were assets to their school communities due to their technological strengths and their equity-based teacher preparation.

KEYWORDS:

• Beginning teachers
• COVID-19
• remote learning
• asset-based pedagogy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/10476210.2023.2260751