Plastic Dividers and Masks All Day: What Teaching in a Pandemic Looks Like

Commissioned by The New York Times
Featured on The New York Times 2020 Year in Pictures
Text by Erica Green

Zia Hellman prepared to welcome her kindergarten students back to Walter P. Carter Elementary/Middle School. Ms. Hellman was among about two dozen teachers and staff members required to return to work on Nov. 16 for the first in-person instruction in Baltimore City Public Schools since March. The city was the first large school district in Maryland and the latest among urban districts in the country to tiptoe into one of the highest-stakes experiments in the history of the nation’s public education system: teaching face-to-face in a pandemic.