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of the class to ensure all students are participating (Boelens et al., 2017). Because
teachers are not actively checking students’ progress in real-time, students working
at home might get left behind (Lieberman, 2020). Moreover, students need to be
motivated and disciplined in time management to ensure they can get their work
done when not in the classroom (Boelens et al., 2017). Last, trying to manage both
the in-person and online students simultaneously could be overwhelming for the
teacher and lead to a more stressful work environment (Lieberman, 2020).

Method
A qualitative narrative approach was most appropriate to answer the research
question: What stories can two veteran middle school teachers on the island of Oahu
in the Campbell- Kapolei Complex in the Leeward District tell us about the impact
of the COVID-19 global pandemic on their teaching? A narrative approach explores
the lives of one or more participants, tells the participants’ individual stories, and
uses interviews and documentation as data (Creswell & Poth, 2018). In this study,
the approach allowed teachers to describe their lives and share their stories about
teaching during the COVID-19 global pandemic and to explain how that pandemic
impacted their teaching. The impact on teaching included stories of teaching before
the pandemic (prior to March 2020), teaching in a distance and blended learning
model (March 2020 through June 2021), and teaching students in their full return
to face-to-face instruction with COVID-19 mitigation strategies (August 2021
through February 2022) in the district. Specifically, teachers discussed if there were
any changes to their pedagogy, the effect of online education on students, and any
changes in their perceptions of the profession of teaching.

Participants
The participants were two veteran teacher at a middle school in the Campbell-
Kapolei Complex in the Leeward District on the island of Oahu. Although the term
“veteran teacher” has taken various meanings in previous studies, the researcher
followed Allen’s (2017) and Mellor et al.’s (2020) designation of veteran teachers
as those having 10 or more years of experience. This threshold was chosen because
teachers with more than 10 years of experience had ample time teaching before the
global pandemic to develop and hone their craft. The abrupt change in teaching
modality required veteran teachers to change their practices that had been established
for over a decade. The quantity of participants in the study was deliberately small
due to the intensity of the data gathering and to ensure the teachers’ individual voices
could be heard and their stories could be shared.
To select the two participants, the researcher contacted the principals of the four
middle schools in the Campbell-Kapolei Complex in the Leeward District through
email to gain permission to work within the individual school. After receiving
approval from one of these four school principals, the researcher emailed the staff of
that respondent’s school to identify potential participants with a questionnaire. The
questionnaire asked for seven data points: five required questions—name, school
name, content area, range of years of service, ability to participate in interviews—
and two optional questions—ethnicity and gender.
Five teachers—two male and three female—responded to the survey. One of the
two male teachers did not qualify for the study because he had fewer than 10 years of
teaching experience and did not fit the study’s definition of “veteran.” The researcher
emailed the qualified male participant, who agreed to be in the study. Of the three

56 The Delta Kappa Gamma Bulletin: International Journal for Professional Educators