Now, this week, we have been looking at how the pandemic affected students, their lives and their learning. And, tonight, before we go, we're going to hear from teachers.
These voices are part of our special report called "Disrupted: How COVID Changed Education" from the "PBS NewsHour" Student Reporting Labs. That's our network of high school journalism programs across the country. If I can only think of one word to describe this year when it comes to teaching, it would be exhaustion, to be quite honest. We were trying desperately to figure out what was going on. We were building the plane while it was flying up in the air and hoping we weren't crashing and burning. We didn't know how to reach our students. Students didn't know how to reach us, and yet we were told, somehow, teach them. Tough is a nice way to put it. It's been frustrating. It's been annoying. It's been devastating. This will be my 19th year of teaching, but, let me tell you, it feels like my first year. This pandemic kind of forced us to adapt kind of on the fly.