Teachers are used to being the ones who ask the questions. But, throughout the past 12 months, there have been many questions to which educators are on the receiving end:

How are you managing behavior on Zoom?How do you keep children engaged from behind a screen?Is there going to be an enormous achievement gap when the pandemic is over?

All valid questions and all in need of addressing as we come out of an unprecedented year in education. We certainly do have much ground to cover in the wake of not being with our students, in-person, for over a year.

Lessons put on hold that don’t translate well across a digital divide.

Strategies that, despite our very best efforts, refuse to land as they would have if we were sharing the same space as our students.

Wi-Fi failures and Zoom links going awry, or laptops dying and iPad screens fading to black—these moments continue to pepper the landscape of remote learning.

And, the bottom line is that most of these pitfalls along the way were and are out of everyone’s control. Sure, a kid might have snoozed once or twice through their first online class of the day. A teacher may have hit the proverbial wall and dismissed class early a time or two. But, in general, when things didn’t go according to plan, we were (and, are) at the mercy of the universe.

So, when I am asked if teachers are being more lenient this year, my answer is a resounding:

It’s complicated.

Read more at ThriveGlobal.com for my opinion on letting students off easy during this unusual school year.