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To understand the experiences of educators during the 2020 extended school closures, we interviewed 40 teachers from across the country in public, charter, and private schools, at different grade levels, and in different subject areas. Teachers articulated three main concerns about emergency remote schooling: 1.) student motivation; 2.) professional loss and burnout; and 3.) exacerbated inequities. As the climate emergency makes school disruptions more common, school systems must learn from the tragic school closings under COVID-19 to prepare for an uncertain future. We propose five design considerations to build school systems with greater resilience for the long-term: center equity, focus on relationship-building, address student motivation, address staff motivation and burnout, and mitigate uncertainty.

Teacher Moments is an open source resource for teacher educators to create and use practice-based simulations in teacher education. Teacher Moments may be used to create digital clinical simulations (DCS) which are defined as opportunities for improvisational interaction with scripted character(s). During the COVID-19 crisis, we implemented an equity-based simulation created by a teacher educator. Results demonstrate the utility of the system for surfacing student perspectives which, in turn, provides opportunities for deeper discussion and reflection.

The addition of computing to England's National Curriculum was welcomed as a much-needed modernization of the country's digital skills curriculum, replacing a poorly regarded ICT program of study with an industry-supported scheme of computer science, robotics and computational thinking. This paper will demonstrate how teachers have acted as gatekeepers to block a curriculum that they view as narrow, difficult to teach and in conflict with their beliefs and practices as educational professionals. Extensive qualitative data were collected through classroom observations, teacher and student interviews and student artifact creation in four state-maintained primary school classrooms to explore how teachers acted agentically to minimize or altogether reject a legally mandated curriculum that clashed with their local, professional knowledge. Analysis of this data was supported by official documents and personal accounts of the creation of the computing program of study, which highlight a discourse of economic anxiety and post-imperialist nostalgia on the part of the curriculum's designers. This study will illuminate the significant influence that teachers wield as gatekeepers for subject content, with the ability to reject digital technology curricula even when it is supported by industry and mandated by law.