Meet a teacher who quit her job to avoid returning in person — and found a position at a remote-only public school
Gary Coronado/Los Angeles Times
- A New York City teacher quit her job in March after 12 years at the school.
- She wanted a remote option and said she and her students thrived online early in the pandemic.
- The educator found a new position at a fully online public school.
Once Kentucky Parkis got into the groove of remote work in 2020, she knew she didn't want to go back in person. So the moment she had a window, she quit her job.
Parkis, 61, has been a public-school teacher working for the New York City Department of Education for 14 years. She taught in Florida before that. She teaches music and describes the shift to remote learning at the beginning of the pandemic as one that triggered a professional change, too.
She was thriving, she told Insider, and thinks her students were, too. She said that for music classes, the remote format was great for helping students overcome their self-consciousness.
"I feel more relaxed in my own studio by myself talking with my children, being silly, being more creative," she said.
Parkis said she believed some students benefited from the decreased pressure of performing in front of classmates in person.
"They can just express themselves," she said.
Parkis is one of many Americans who prefer remote working, even as companies have attempted to entice — and in some cases, strong-arm — employees back to the office.
The Wall Street Journal reported last month, for instance, that the law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP told employees that the company would cut their bonuses if they didn't return to the office at least three days a week.
But research has found that remote workers tend to be happier than their on-site counterparts. Many American workers have even said they'd take a pay cut to keep working remotely.
Parkis is one worker who prizes remote work over most else.
While she bets that kids are feeling the same way, studies have found that in-person schooling is better for the physical health and social development of children. More recent data says remote learning negatively influenced low-income students.
But nearly 60,000 public-school students in New York haven't returned, or even opted in to private education or homeschooling. The reasons aren't clear, but one survey of parents from 2021 funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, through the nonprofit CDC Foundation, found that most respondents didn't want their kids in school full time.
Parkis said that returning in person for a post-lockdown year reinforced that she didn't want to be there physically.
She was teaching full time at a Brooklyn, New York, middle school for 12 years and said her school ended remote learning last year. She knew that she wanted to teach remotely but stayed on until she found such a job in the Department of Education in March. When she did, she quit right away and began her post at a fully online public school. This type of school is becoming more common in the city.
"It's exactly the same hours and exactly the same class length, and it's exactly the same pretty much," she said. "I do everything I do in a classroom from my home studio, and the students respond individually in their own home studios."
All the added restrictions of pandemic school life, she said, make it harder to connect with her kids in person like she does online.
"I wanted to be where my students thrived," she said.
She added that the kind of classes she taught translated well online: music theory, singing, and instruments, for example.
Her students are learning the keyboard and guitar right now, Parkis said, and she understands that arrangement doesn't work for everyone, especially given the cost of instruments. But she thinks there should be an option for parents and students to have remote schools in every district, she said.
"What they're currently offering doesn't make sense," she added.
She's happy she pursued her current position.
"It's so much better when I'm remote — I don't have to chase around about taking an Uber or trying to do something with my car. I can prepare at home in my hours that I want to. I don't feel stressed," she said.