Parent diplomacy has always been a dicey endeavor for educators. The war stories teachers swap about nightmare parents are the stuff of legend. But in the decade since I started teaching in a public school outside of Boston—and particularly during the pandemic—strained conversations have become the norm. Expectations about how much teachers communicate with parents are changing, burnout is getting worse, and I’m worried about what this might mean for the profession.

More parent involvement is, on its face, a good thing. Research shows that kids whose par­ents stay involved in school tend to do better, both academically and socially. But when I hear from some parents all the time and I can’t reach others at all, students can start to suffer. As I’ve talked with colleagues and experts in the field, I’ve realized that this is a common problem, and it’s been intensifying.

Some communities are struggling with major teacher shortages. Half of those that remain in the profession say they’re thinking about quitting sooner than intended, according to a 2022 survey of National Education Association members working in public schools, and nearly all agree that burnout is a significant problem. In fact, a 2022 Gallup poll found that people working in K–12 education were more burned out than members of any other industry surveyed. Without enough teachers, instances of classroom overcrowding are popping up in public schools across the country.

[Read: Teachers, nurses, and child-care workers have had enough]

Still, many parents (understandably) want to talk—seemingly more than ever before. According to a 2021 Education Week survey, more than 75 percent of educators said that “parent-school communication increased” because of COVID. Similarly, just under 80 percent of parents said that they became more interested in their kids’ education during the pandemic, a poll by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools found. My school district has always encouraged teachers to get parents involved; it recently invested in translation services to make talking with caregivers easier. This past year, the district encouraged teachers to call at least three families a week and log the conversations in a school database.

Online grading systems, which became popular in the early 2000s, were supposed to facilitate parent-teacher communication. Some of my veteran colleagues complained that the new system was confusing, but I loved the simple accessibility. I used to make students have their parents sign failed tests and quizzes, but once more parents joined the online portal, I could send grade alerts directly to parents’ phones. Since then, these platforms have become nearly universal; only 6 percent of respondents to a 2022 Education Week survey said that their district didn’t use one. They’ve grown more advanced, too, letting me share written feedback on assignments, class-discussion notes, and updates on school policies. But although this has given parents a more comprehensive view of their child’s performance and made information more accessible, it has also introduced a new set of stressors for teachers. Whereas parents once had to either wait for official events or go through secretaries and principals to set up separate in-person conferences with teachers, they can now ping me with the click of a button. Though I’m glad the bar for asking questions is lower, I learned quickly not to post grades after I put my baby to bed, because when I did, within minutes, I’d receive emails from parents who wanted to discuss their kid’s grades—no matter how late it was.

[Read: Why online gradebooks are changing education]

These challenges can be even greater for private-school teachers, according to Cindy Chanin, the founder of a college-consulting and tutoring business, who has worked with hundreds of teachers and administrators in elite schools in Los Angeles and New York City. Some private-school parents are paying $50,000 a year (or more) for their child’s education. Because they’re spending so much, many tend to focus on the outcomes and want a greater say in elements as varied as whether their child gets extra time on a project and how a field trip is run, Chanin told me. She said the teachers she speaks with are completely overwhelmed.

Yet although finding time to wade through emails from parentscan be hard, some teachers face a problem that can seem even more insurmountable: getting parents involved at all. Erica Fields, a researcher at the Education Development Center, told me that though it’s important not to generalize, research shows that sometimes “lower-income families view themselves as ‘educationally incompetent’ and [are] less likely to participate in their child’s learning or question a teacher’s judgment.” Some may also speak a different language, which can make any type of communication with teachers difficult—and that’s before you even get into the educational jargon. Indeed, on average, parents of students whose families fall below the poverty line or who don't speak English attend fewer school events.

In 2020, this all reached a breaking point for me. The loudest parents seemed focused on issues I couldn’t control, and the strained parents I had always struggled to reach had even more on their plate, during what was likely one of the biggest disruptions to their children’s educational career. When my district opted for remote-only schooling in the fall of 2020, some parents complained to me that we were acting against our governor’s advice and caving to “woke” culture. Tensions with certain parents escalated further after the global racial reckoning sparked by George Floyd’s murder. My students were eager to express their opinions, but as parents listened in on these virtual discussions, some told me that they didn’t think we needed to be talking about these topics at all. In other districts, the problems could at times be even more intense: According to a 2022 Rand Corporation report, 37 percent of teachers and 61 percent of principals said that they were harassed because of their school’s COVID-19 safety policies or for teaching about racial bias during the 2021–22 school year.

Despite how much I was hearing from these caregivers, I don’t think that the bulk of our conversations were actually helping students. Some of my parent-teacher conferences turned into debates about vaccines and police brutality—anything but a student’s academic performance. I wanted to work with these parents, but I didn’t know how to find common ground.

Meanwhile, I was even more uncertain about how to reach the parents of my most vulnerable students—many of whom I was really worried about. Though I knew that going back into an overcrowded building was unsafe, I also knew that many of my students were living in poverty. Some didn’t live with anyone who spoke English and couldn’t practice their language skills in between classes. A few didn’t have internet access and had to go to the local McDonald’s or Starbucks for free Wi-Fi to sign on to school. When I did get in contact with parents, I heard stories about being laid off and struggling to put food on the table. Other caregivers told me about family members who had died. When these families were dealing with so much, I felt silly bothering them about their child’s missing homework assignment.

I’d estimate that over the course of my career, I’ve spent at least five hours a week talking with or trying to reach parents. When I don’t feel like I’m helping students, I wonder if these conversations are worth having at all. Still, I do have discussions with parents that feel genuinely fruitful. During the pandemic, for example, I weighed the risks of in-person learning against the potential mental-health dangers of online schooling with caregivers who told me that they felt just as stuck as I did; the situation ahead of us might have been uncertain, but at least we knew that we would work through it together.

With parents and teachers both under so much strain, it’s clear to me that nitpicking over grades isn’t the most productive use of our time—and neither is fighting about COVID policies, which teachers don’t have the power to set. But we shouldn’t give up on these relationships altogether. They can easily go wrong, but when they go right, they help students not just survive, but thrive.

Daba is determined to cross the English Channel and finish the journey his brother started 17 years ago.

The surface of the United States is crisscrossed by 4 million miles of public roads—more than that of any other nation in the world. Roads are an essential part of infrastructure; they allow people, goods, and services to flow quickly and efficiently from one corner of the country to another. Bud Moore, who began a long career with the U.S. Forest Service in 1934, and spent decades cutting roads into the American West, once believed that these incursions also benefited wildlife and wildlands. With better access, “elk could be cared for. Natural stream fisheries could be improved. Log jams could be moved … to create more room for fish to spawn.” Nature was messy, he reasoned; human beings could bring order to it.

The environmental journalist Ben Goldfarb shows otherwise in his new book, Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet. Crushing turtles, severing ancient deer migration routes, isolating cougar populations—Goldfarb argues that “there may be nothing humans do that causes more misery to more wild animals than driving.” Even Moore realized this toward the end of his life, noting in his 1996 book that “none of us had the wisdom to foresee the consequences.”

Crossings is a follow-up of sorts to Goldfarb’s award-winning first book, Eager. That book focused on the industrious beaver, a creature that fundamentally changes the world around it by constructing dams that can have the unintended but beneficial effect of preventing flash flooding and helping maintain groundwater levels. Goldfarb now turns his attention to another “infrastructure species”: humans.

[Read: America is telling itself a lie about roadkill]

Although scientists have been examining the negative impact of roads since at least the 1920s, only relatively recently, in the 1990s, was the subject given an English name: “road ecology.” Richard Forman, the Harvard ecologist who coined the phrase, defined it as “how life change[s] for plants and animals with a road and traffic nearby.” This is the concept that animates Crossings. Goldfarb expertly researches the history of American roads, shows how the freedom of movement they facilitate became part of the American identity, and outlines the negative and positive ways roads affect both wildlife and humans. Most important, the ideas in Crossings, which Goldfarb examined in a 2019 article for The Atlantic, explore how we can do less harm in the future by rethinking road construction and placement.

The roadkill data that Goldfarb collates from scientific papers, citizen scientists, and state officials are alarming. He writes about roads in North America with nicknames such as “The Meatmaker” and “Slaughter Alley.” On one road by Lake Erie, cars killed almost 28,000 leopard frogs during a four-year period. On another in Manitoba, 10,000 red-sided garter snakes died in a season. Roads are usually built to maximize travel efficiency, and the faster cars can drive, the more destructive the result. Various species respond differently to the threat of an approaching antagonist. Some, such as porcupines and rattlesnakes, are confident in their defensive skills. Instead of scurrying from a road when a vehicle approaches, they stand their ground and brace for a siege. An F-150, however, is intimidated by neither quill nor venom, and its driver may not even notice the creature they obliterated.

Other animals are hardwired to flee only when a predator is sufficiently close. Called a “flight distance,” this is an energy-saving tactic designed to counter a four-legged threat trotting up at five miles an hour or so, not an 18-wheeled one barreling forth at 70. As a result, deer and some birds don’t even try to escape until it’s too late. “Cars hijacked their victims’ own biology,” Goldfarb laments, “subverting evolutionary history and rendering it maladaptive.”

Crossings explains that the ramifications of roads go far beyond skid marks and carcasses: Our roads are changing the molecular composition of wildlife. Cliff swallows nesting under highway bridges in Nebraska may be evolving shorter wings, which one researcher theorizes gives them more maneuverability to avoid vehicles; their less nimble long-winged relatives lie crumpled on the roadside. In areas with high traffic, some species won’t cross highways at all, resulting in genetic isolation. Researchers can look at the DNA of a black bear in Connecticut, or of an Amur tiger in Russia, and know which side of a major road it came from. This isolation can have catastrophic effects: Small wildlife populations are more prone to inbreeding, genetic abnormalities, and extinction. Roads have negative impacts on humans too, reducing walkability in our neighborhoods and increasing stress levels.

Goldfarb writes early on that Crossings is “about how we escape” from this trap, a promise I clung to throughout the book like an overboard sailor might to a capsized ship. However, the hoped-for map turned out to be more like a trail of breadcrumbs. The author’s skill as a storyteller, the inspiring road ecologists he meets, and the flashes of successful mitigations could not mask the predominantly grim subject matter. Goldfarb guides the reader from “massive squishings” of frogs in Oregon to the “bloody carpet” of Tasmanian highways, and signs of optimism come only in fleeting spurts. The Netherlands, for instance, has built a wildlife crossing with a functioning wetland spanning a road, a railroad track, and a sports complex. In 2019, India completed the Kanha-Pench Corridor, which is a road mounted on stout pillars that allows elephants and tigers to continue roaming undisturbed underneath.

[Read: A basic premise of animal conservation looks shakier than ever]

Although drivers can and should take more responsibility for their actions, Goldfarb argues that the onus of wildlife safety should lie at the top—not on drivers like you and me, but on the institutions that cleared wildlands and laid the asphalt to begin with. “What could be more American than blaming deep-rooted problems on individual failings rather than corporate power structures?” he asks. “By all means, slow down at night, brake for snakes, and shepherd salamanders across the pavement. Yet making roads lie lighter on the land isn’t the job of individual drivers any more than swapping out light bulbs will solve climate change. Instead, it’s a public works project.”

The key question Goldfarb seeks to answer in Crossings is not whether roads are inherently good or bad, but how we make them better. China’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative will eventually link about 70 countries around the world with improved transportation infrastructure—which is an opportunity to build roads and rails that are less damaging to wildlife. Brazil, though not officially a member of the initiative, has received significant infrastructure investments from China. Its government is working with local nonprofits to install canopy bridges across highways in the Amazon to aid safe primate crossings. Elsewhere in that country, the road through Carlos Botelho State Park is closed to regular traffic at night, when most wildlife are active. The design of the road might also play a role in wildlife safety, as it’s filled with rises and turns that inherently encourage drivers to slow down and thus reduces the risk of collisions. Developers around the world should take note.

In his highly influential 1949 book, A Sand County Almanac, the preeminent American conservationist Aldo Leopold introduced the concept of a land ethic. He believed that water, soil, plants, wild animals, and humans are all part of the same community—one that should be guided by mutual respect. “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community,” Leopold wrote. Against this standard, Goldfarb notes, “roads are the wrongest things imaginable.” He extends Leopold’s idea to advocate for a “road ethic”: A road is good when it works with the land and its inhabitants rather than seeking to conquer them.

For too long, road ecology has been the domain of academics. Researchers have counted the bodies of mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians lining our highways for a century; engineers have learned to design mitigations that continually lessen the carnage. But too many of the conversations around road ecology have been confined to the walls of conference rooms or the tight bindings of academic journals. Notably, Crossings is the second mainstream book in as many years to foist the discussion of road ecology on the wider public, after Darryl Jones’s A Clouded Leopard in the Middle of the Road. Beyond the staggering data and the constructive ideas, Crossings is an important book because it is timely: Road ecology is bleeding into the public consciousness at a moment when we can still act on its lessons.