This article draws on interviews undertaken with 20 teachers as part of a larger study on the impact of COVID-19 on schools. Although the schools varied by location, level, and socio-economic status, teachers' experiences were remarkably similar. Teachers found the sudden move to on-line learning stressful, and the constant demands of delivering a different style of pedagogy, maintaining contact with students and their families, and looking after their own family situations exhausting. Participants who worked in isolated or less advantaged communities were also attending to delivering learning devices, food and basic supplies to their families and communities. In this article, we present the data in in both thematic and poetic styles to highlight the nature of the caring pedagogy that they undertook as schools moved in and out of lockdowns, despite the toll that it took on them, personally and professionally.