Compassion Fatigue Is Overwhelming Educators During the Pandemic

In April 2020, my great-aunt suddenly died from a rare and aggressive cancer. She was an adored and hilarious high school “cafeteria lady” of 20 years, but her funeral wasn’t the celebratory affair I had envisioned: a procession of students past and present, decades in the future. Rather, it was me, her casket, and my cellphone. My grandmother, her sister, could not travel at the time so I was elected to facilitate a video-call viewing—a virtual goodbye for two sisters. I remember my phone screen in those first moments. My...