Our classrooms are empty. But let’s not pine for a model that will not return, anyway. Steve Jobs, in a clear and decisive response, when President Obama asked him how we could coax manufacturing back to the United States, replied: “Those jobs aren’t coming back.”

Even if we get our children back in the classroom—and I hope we do—it will be different.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced alternative ways of thinking about how our classrooms work. Let’s approach this opportunity with imagination and do what theorists have been asking us to do: re-think education.

Since giving up the comfort of the four-wall classroom and embracing the online and blended models of teaching, I have grown like a weed in the sunshine. I apply to my cloud-based classroom the latest understanding of how our students learn. Yes, it is exciting.

It is also unsustainable. I work and teach for about 80 hours each week. Monday through Friday, rising at 1:00 AM, I stumble to my office and start work, eating breakfast at my desk. I arrive at school at 6:00 AM and stay until about 4:00 PM, on average. Eating dinner and going to bed soon after I arrive home is critical so I can get up again at 1:00 AM the next morning. I take Saturday off but am back at it on Sunday, working all day.

I will do this for the benefit of my students, at least in the short term. I admit to the thrill of innovating and having an environment that allows, even requires it. But even that won’t last forever. The day I fall down the stairs at work because of exhaustion will be a sad day, but only for me. Someone else will take my place.

I don’t hold administration solely responsible. I have never seen them work so hard just to keep the lights on. I don’t blame the taxpayers, totally, because we should be careful with what we do with our tax dollars. Nor do I only blame the teacher unions because they are protecting our professionalism. I don’t blame teachers entirely, because we have always worked hard.

But I hold all of us responsible. As hackneyed as this sounds—and it is sad that hackneyed it has become—we must all work together.

Administration must not define its task as plugging holes and instead look at our situation through the lense of growth. Administrators need to increase staff in creative and affordable ways so that our workloads do not push toward 80 hours a week.

Leadership needs to convince the taxpayers that we need a little more money to take advantage of this once-in-lifetime investment in our children, in our country, and yes, in our property values.

Unions must not protect our professionalism by insisting on holding fast to old models, but must rethink jobs and the distribution of personnel in the classrooms.

And teachers must rethink the way we guide learning. We must be perpetual learning machines, ourselves, never letting up on professional growth.

Put all of this together and imagine what our classrooms will look like. Whether in person, cloud based, or in some combination, our classrooms will become places where students wrestle with both content and the methods of learning it.

When students learn how to learn, we will finally produce those problem-solving, creative leaders and workers for which our businesses have been pleading. Now, we can finally attack the antiquated industrial model of education. This new environment should give birth to innovation and creativity, and new systems and methods—ones we cannot even imagine right now.