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Remote Learning Was Breaking This Math Teacher So She Showed Her Emotional Work. A year ago, teachers were handed an unprecedented request: educate students in entirely new ways amid the backdrop of a pandemic. In this comic series, we'll illustrate one teacher's story each week.
Jessica Peacock is a 6th grade math teacher in Raleigh, NC.
Special Series

COMICS: Teaching In The Pandemic
NPR logo COMIC: How One Math Teacher Broke Through To Her Virtual Students

COMIC: How One Math Teacher Broke Through To Her Virtual Students

It's been a year since teachers were handed an unprecedented request: educate students in entirely new ways amid the backdrop of a pandemic. In this comic series, we'll illustrate one teacher's story each week from now until the end of the school year.

Episode 1

Jessica Peacock — on what success has meant for her while teaching virtually during the pandemic

Sixth-grade math, Raleigh, N.C.

So, I am kind of a comedian. I'm a fun teacher. I get a lot of energy from the crowd. This has been rough.
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The kids weren't turning on their cameras, their mics. Forty or so students, but there was just ... nothing. Little boxes with their names in them.
So it had been about nine weeks of this, and I was mentally, physically and emotionally broken. I was tired — a different type of tired — at the end of the day.
I went to Chick-fil-A with another teacher, and we just ... cried in the parking lot.
And so I broke down in front of the kids — these sixth-graders I had never met, some of them I had never even heard their voices — and I said, "You know, y'all, it really feels like I'm teaching in an aquarium!"
"It's like, you can look at the fish, you can talk to them, but they're just gonna do what they do!"
And as soon as I said that, it was — Pop! Pop! Pop! The cameras started turning on. And they were giggling. And I'm like ... "Yes! Yes! Thank you! I didn't know what you looked like! Did you have glasses? Or purple hair?!"
So I started thinking of other ways to engage the kids. I had them start sharing their screens, and that changed everything. By the end of the next class, everyone was talking and sharing their screens.
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LA Johnson/NPR
So I started thinking of other ways to engage the kids. I had them start sharing their screens, and that changed everything. By the end of the next class, everyone was talking and sharing their screens.
LA Johnson/NPR
So really it was me modeling that vulnerability that I usually don't have to when we're face-to-face.
And now there are days where I hear from every student more than once. That is success to me. The End.

This comic was adapted from interviews with the teacher conducted by Eda Uzunlar and LA Johnson.

Jessica Peacock is a 6th grade math teacher in Raleigh, NC.
Special Series

COMICS: Teaching In The Pandemic