Abstract:

The Global Pandemic of 2020 challenged many teachers and administrators in teaching communities. While many left, others remained. In a study, Kush, et al., (2022) revealed that teachers experienced higher levels of anxiety and stress than healthcare workers did. In this mixed-methods study, I used the coaching process to explore the difficulties and successes that teachers and administrators experienced during the pandemic and how that affected their decisions to stay in the teaching professions. Through the Survey of Emotional Intelligence (SEI) and the Neural Net Report through Six Seconds Emotional Intelligence Network (6seconds.org), I explored the participants’ emotions through effectiveness, relationships, quality of life, and wellbeing to determine their levels of emotional intelligences in the pathways that teachers and administrators used to build their own ability and resilience to stay in the teaching community.

In this mixed methods study, I interviewed 7 educators about their experiences during and immediately after the Global Pandemic. All 7 participants made important decisions about their careers in education during the Pandemic. 2 participants chose to leave education through new careers and retirement, while 5 participants chose to stay in education, while choosing different pathways in their educational settings. All of the participants described the difficult times that they experienced in their educational settings during the pandemic throughout the U.S. and Mexico. In this study, I chose an action research intervention through transformative coaching. As the participants described their varied experiences during the pandemic, they had opportunities to reflect on their experiences. This gave them the opportunities to begin a healing process in their personal and professional lives.

As the Global Pandemic subsided with vaccines, the world opened again. Educators and students went back to school. The world was not the same even though many wanted to “return back to normal”. The participants in this study did not want to return to the way it was before the pandemic. What they wanted was opportunities to commit again to their vision and goals that they had during the pandemic with a passion and intensity of a changed world. The inequities of education settings were uncovered in the shutdown of the schools and cities universally. The decisions that they made changed their lives. The coaching sessions gave them the opportunities to reflect about their experiences through emotions that they felt during the pandemic and today. These coaching sessions helped to explore those emotions in a safe environment. They all stayed committed to the decisions that they made but with a stronger pledge to what they now wanted to accomplish.

In this presentation, I will tell each participant’s story as they told it to me. I was honored to receive such honest, vulnerable, and fragile stories as they talked about the pain and hurt, they and their students experienced during the pandemic. They also described the persistence and resilience that they had as educators as a calling or vision. They called for a need for teacher wellness and kindness as the world returned to a ‘new normal’ that could possibly change the inequalities that were uncovered. They presented a world of hope as they moved forward in their visions as educators in a changed and hurting world.

Keywords:

Teacher Wellbeing, Using Transformative Coaching to Explore Educators, Emotions and Healing Process during the Global Pandemic.