Caring for Adolescent Learners in the Virtual Classroom: Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic

In the recent past, fully online instruction has been most prominent at the higher education level, though online K-12 schools have lately gained some traction. However, the COVID-19 pandemic precipitated new potential for rapid expansion of online K-12 education. As these settings continue to develop, the unique social emotional needs of adolescent learners must be considered, and the need for a robustly developed online pedagogy of care is pressing. An unexpected and untapped resource for developing a framework for an online pedagogy of care can be found in examining the practices of traditionally face-to-face teachers who were unexpectedly thrust into a virtual setting during the 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 school years. This case study examined the experiences of three traditionally face-to-face middle school teachers as they began a new school year in an entirely virtual format. Their experiences demonstrate a high potential for teacher modeling of care and individualized feedback for students and suggest that creating authentic moments for student dialogue and practice of collaborative caring interactions may prove challenging in the virtual setting.