Many years ago, just a little while after I had joined a new school, the presiding union representative decided to step down. He was moving jobs and moving roles, and couldn’t continue. When the staff convened and discussion turned to a potential replacement, some eyes turned to me. “You’ve got a mouth on you. Why don’t you do it?”

This is what I thought a union role would be: being a bit of a big mouth, being a fly in the management ointment. Years later, the mouth may be of similar size, but - I hope - I have come to see the role in much more nuanced terms. Having become a rep to help to support staffroom colleagues, I now coordinate NEU reps across a whole group of schools. With schools shut, staff dispersed and the exam system transformed overnight, we found ourselves suddenly dealing with perhaps the most complex HR challenge for a generation.

To put it crudely, the majority of my work has been about standing up for those involved in frontline delivery of education - teachers and support staff - when managers have asked too much of them. An extra hour on parents’ evening. Another set of reports. A new tranche of time-consuming “initiatives”.

With the overnight, wholesale changes in working practices that the lockdown created, this entire playing field of expectations was torn up. Like all teachers, my colleagues and I are committed to provide the best possible education in these trying circumstances - but this had to be done appropriately and safely.

Brand new questions were thrown up that no one ever thought we’d be asking. What should teachers be expected to deliver while working from home? What level of “service” should parents expect? What if teachers were parents? What if parents were key workers? How can you judge if a child has been “present” at an online lesson? To what extent can - and should - new technologies be adopted at great speed to help continuity of provision? Six weeks ago, organising regular video chats from their home with a small group of sixth-form students would have probably got a teacher fired. Now, raising questions about whether a school can insist on delivering video lessons can get you into hot water with an anxious head.

Coronavirus: How unions are supporting teachers

For me personally, teaching in this Brave New World has been the most challenging period of my career. Trying to manage my own children, worrying about vulnerable parents, anxious about my examination classes - it was a fortnight of very significant stress, even before the phone started ringing with colleagues from my school, and link reps across my school network, anxious about the work they were being asked to do under extraordinary circumstances. Furlough? I had to look it up in the dictionary.

But this is where I have found that being part of a union has been fundamentally important, and that the additional responsibility of being a rep has actually helped to reduce stress.

Firstly, when staff are so physically divided and there aren’t those day-to-day, low-level contacts around the staffroom, the union network is a significant resistor to the peril of “divide and rule”. Having a means of sharing with other colleagues across different departments - and with those who are support staff, those who have been teaching for years and those who are just qualified - meant that we were quickly able to identify and share the particular pinch-points of this new situation.

Working alone, you are never quite sure if it’s “just you”, and sometimes it can be awkward to be open about anxieties and vulnerabilities with those you are working directly with as you don’t want to let them down. Knowing that there is the formal structure of a union network to call upon, an organisation whose sole focus is to support your rights, has been hugely reassuring. The NEU responded incredibly quickly with dedicated pages of advice, all of which was powerful leverage in helping heads to understand staff concerns.

More widely, though, because of the long-standing relationships that I - and other excellent reps across the school network I am a part of - have developed, we were quickly able to identify the key common issues and talk to those at the top of the organisation about how to put things right. This was an entirely new situation for everybody. Leaders were having to make difficult decisions at breakneck speed, most of which were very good but - inevitably - not all of the consequences were thought through. Heads had all reacted in slightly different ways to these extraordinary circumstances. It was only through the union network that staff voices from across the organisation were able to be heard quickly and powerfully.

This has helped to protect staff from some demands that might have been well-meaning in terms of aiming at good provision for students but had totally failed to take staff wellbeing into account. Being able to explain to the top brass what it was really like trying to deliver five hours of online provision with your kids running around was incredibly powerful, and it was only the union relationship that made that possible.

We were able to make it clear that this could not be “business as usual”; a full parallel delivery of the school day online was not only impossible to deliver but also would be counterproductive because the staff would quickly burn out.

Looking into the future, this virus has raised the spectre of more devolved provision increasingly becoming the norm. In an age of social distancing and increased atomisation, unity of staff voice through well-run unions is going to be more important than ever. When schools do return to “normal” it is going to be vital to hold leaders to account as the changes to policy and practice that have been effected in haste come under proper scrutiny, and it will be unions who will, as they always have, stand up for hardworking staff and for the students that they serve.

It’s been a long journey for this big-mouthed teacher. But through this pandemic I have become more convinced than ever of the need for a strong union voice in education. It is only through this organised web of horizontal relationships that staff create a strong safety net for one another - one that will lobby tirelessly for the very best working conditions for everyone. The physical distancing that we have all been put through because of this virus should fire us into action: more than ever we have to stand united.

The writer wishes to remain anonymous