Between pay gaps, the pandemic, growing class sizes and legislative directives, “the pressure on teachers right now is so formidable,” one expert said.

Jessica Mueller was in tears after she heard Monday night that Minneapolis teachers were officially going to strike the following day.

During one week this January, a group of educators in the Washington Teachers’ Union posted selfies to Twitter from inside classrooms, accompanying the images with #It’sNotSafe. They rallied outside D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s office alongside substitute teachers, who were demanding higher pay.

Current protests and strikes — while not as high-profile or large-scale as those in 2018-19 during the #RedforEd movement — will still be influential, said Brad Marianno, assistant professor of educational policy and leadership at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, in an email.

Vaccines were supposed to be a game changer for Covid-19 in schools. Back in the more innocent days of spring 2021, it seemed as though once the shots were approved for children, education could pretty much go back to normal — kids would get vaccinated, infections would drop, quarantines would become unnecessary, and teachers and families alike could settle into a new normal that looked a lot like the old one.