LIVING AND TEACHING DURING COVID-19: THE DAMAGES AND BENEFITS OF TELEWORK

Abstract

The pandemic of COVID-19 represented a turning point for educational systems across the world, whether we speak of pre-university systems or university ones. As most of the teaching activities used to happen within offline contexts, moving almost all the processes in an online environment represented a huge challenge for everybody. Thousands of people had to adapt to telework overnight and this situation brought both opportunities as well as unpleasant changes. Hence, the present paper, through descriptive research, intends to analyze from the teachers' point of view, the damages and benefits of telework over the past year and a half. It is our intention in the present study to highlight thoroughly the features of telework in the Romanian educational system, along with an inventory of teachers’ perspectives regarding this change. We assume that such a study is of great importance as the pandemic is not over yet and we envision a future in which telework will become a normal part of the teaching activities. Thereafter, learning from today’s lessons will help us all build a better tomorrow for teaching the next generations.