ABSTRACT
While the rapidly expanding field of pandemic research has explored the well-being of children and families, less attention has gone to early childhood education and care (ECEC) educators’ experiences. Such research is critical, as the ECEC workforce faces high and growing demands/low resources. As such, the workforce was vulnerable to pandemic-related constraints. This chapter contributes to ECEC and pandemic literature by describing the personal and professional experiences of teachers of Head Start, the only federally funded ECEC program in the United States. To do so, we interviewed 19 teachers in a mid-Atlantic city. Interviews occurred in summer 2020, which followed the March 2020 closure of most Head Start sites and many programs’ transitions to online learning. Findings coalesce in three themes: (1) dedication to work that was both demanding and fulfilling, (2) exacerbation of existing stressors and addition of new ones, and (3) a dearth of resources for online learning. This chapter begins with a description of the state and challenges of the ECEC workforce. Next, it describes each theme, including supporting and counterpoint quotes. This chapter concludes with recommendations for policies to improve teacher morale and to support young children’s online learning. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.