We––teachers of Illinois and 2020 graduates––have been working diligently to meet course requirements, state, and licensure requirements so that we can receive our diploma and teaching licenses. However, a global health pandemic has shaped our futures on a large scale.

We deeply honor and value the health and well-being of our community members, children, and their families; with this, we cannot help but recognize this state of uncertainty and sudden change. As folks who continuously activate change through teaching, we have persisted in nurturing the education of our students and their families through this time.

With carrying such a powerful desire for teaching and seeing our dreams live as our existence, it is important to us that we have a support system that can help us enact change like we aim to do for so many others. Change is an active term that is rooted in sacrifice, time, and financial backing. We cannot do this alone.

The edTPA lives as a tool to measure teachers' readiness, granted, it is a reflection of the finance leniency teachers so desperately need considering a $300 payment we all have to make. With this pandemic, it leaves us in more considerable uncertainty. A lot of our schools are closed, and we are not sure when they will re-open due to COVID-19 health precautions. Thus, there is no procedure in place if we have to retake our assessment. We cannot afford additional assessments or another semester of school due to the absence of adjustment, lack of distribution of waivers, and living in uncertainty. The edTPA format does not work for such uncertainty.

We are calling on the Illinois State Board of Education and Gov., J.B. Pritzker, to hear our voices as teachers, change-makers, and active community members to construct an adjustment to the edTPA and distribute waivers to hopeful teachers.

We cannot afford another year of teacher shortages.