It can’t be easy to be an educator right now. They’re facing the challenges of either maintaining pandemic protocols in physical classrooms, or delivering a quality education through a virtual classroom in a medium that nearly nobody — teachers, students, parents or administrators alike — is familiar with.

It can’t be easy to be a student, either. Here’s hoping everyone’s cutting each other some slack. (For instance, a recent article that makes a pretty good case for letting students turn the camera off in virtual classrooms. The author, Tabitha Moses, argues that the always-on webcam can be a source of anxiety and stress; students may have competing obligations, like taking care of siblings; kids may have legitimate privacy concerns; Zoom fatigue is a real issue; and kids from lower-income families are at a distinct disadvantage if their computers and connections can’t keep up with the hefty tech requirements of non-stop video streaming. At the very least, requiring constant eye contact ought to be a non-starter.)

So we could all use a lot of compassion and patience. What we really don’t need more of is this kind of awfulness.