“Before I was always visible,” says Perry. “That's gone now. You take on different roles because there are fewer staff and fewer children in the building.” Perry says students’ families are overwhelmed by remote learning and the process for setting up or changing services takes longer. But she’s learned “you have to be creative and adapt to the situation at hand.”

“There’s nothing that compares to in-person learning,” Kaplan says, “but I'm putting the same amount of energy and love into every session I create, whether in-person or remote.” In a challenging year, Kaplan points to rewards: speaking to parents more frequently, seeing skills carried over from school to home, and deepened relationships with colleagues.

Jeff Orlowski, who attended PS 42 and IS 7 on  Staten Island, is a filmmaker who specializes in movies about existential threats such as climate change and social media. As a senior at Stuyvesant HS in Manhattan, he was editor-in-chief of the school newspaper on 9/11. Covering that act of terrorism started him on a journey to tackle important issues on a worldwide scale.

“My greatest challenge,” says Johnson, “has been making sure my school community was able to keep safe. I knew it was essential for classroom teachers and support staff to have easy access to first aid items because they had to remain contained within their group.” So Johnson created and distributed emergency kits.

“In our school,” Pardo says, “we do as many things as we can to engage students. Our goal is to create a safe space where students feel they belong and are validated.” Pardo has been working remotely since March and finds it extremely difficult because she is a hands-on person.

The deadliest school shooting in U.S. history claimed the lives of 14 students and three staff members on Feb. 14, 2018, at Marjory Stoneman Douglas HS in Parkland, Florida. Five weeks later, students nationwide walked out of classes to support the March for Our Lives in Washington, D.C., organized by Stoneman Douglas survivors.