DISRUPTION provides a unique glimpse into how educators conceptualize their own professional purpose in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis and Black Lives Matter uprisings in 2020. In order to document teacher experience, I released a qualitative survey in partnership with the Chicago Teacher’s Union that garnered over 800 usable responses and a sample representative of CTU’s membership. Upon analyzing the submissions, I developed three chapters that detail the following: 1) How did some teachers manage to sustain and even strengthen their relationships with students during remote instruction? ; 2) How did teachers’ diversity of responses to disruption and the autonomy that disruption allowed reveal the intentions of their own professional priorities?; and 3) Why and how did teachers incorporate lessons on inequality, racial injustice, and civil unrest in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd. I find that the remote classroom and the context of crisis created opportunities to develop intentional intimate relationships that relied on social presence and emotional connection. However, teachers differently experienced this possibility based on how they used their professional discretion to mediate students’ experiences of institutional demands. Their resulting pedagogical decisions determined the course and content of their virtual classrooms. Additionally, although largely convinced of their importance, most teachers are unprepared to engage in productive conversations around the social realities of racial injustice in their classrooms. DISRUPTION documents the diversity of teachers’ experiences and their responses to the emergency shift to remote instruction. Beyond its contribution to limited literature on experienced teachers understanding of their professional identities, the study contributes to institutional studies by identifying educators’ professional priorities during a time of sudden and vast disruption to institutional cohesion and stability.