‘I Couldn’t Do What I Needed to Do for My Own Family’: Teacher-Parents During COVID-19 Lockdowns

This article draws data from a wider research project that focused on New Zealand and Australian schools' experiences of delivering education during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this article, we share the stories of 21 classroom teachers as they navigated teaching during the pandemic. We include a subset of teachers who were also parents of school-aged children and explore how they managed their dual role. The findings highlight the toll that teaching during this time took on teachers, personally and professionally, especially, those who were simultaneously balancing work and family demands. We use work-family border theory to explain the role conflict experienced by teachers, and teacher-parents, in particular.