The COVID-19 pandemic affected all aspects of human life, with significant impacts on education, as higher education institutions across the world were forced to make rapid transition to a fully online education format with no time to prepare. This qualitative study applied the narrative approach to examine the stories of six university instructors regarding their experiences with promoting student engagement during the COVID-19 emergency remote teaching. The study findings present the instructors' feelings during the transition to distance education, the challenges they faced, and their efforts to promote their students' engagement by using various strategies and assessments and by providing the students with emotional support. The findings also present the effect of local culture and millennial generation student status on students' engagement.