Abstract: This may be an unpopular take: technology did not transform my teaching and learning in 2020. My goals for helping pre-service science teachers develop professionally, my focus on teaching students before any insertion of science content, and my drive to foster positive relationships with students in a safe learning community, all remained the same. As such, the heart and soul of my teaching did not change. Rather, the medium from which I delivered it did. This new online hybrid of synchronous and asynchronous sessions elicited a range of emotions, uncertainties, and situations I had not previously experienced in a career of teaching face-to-face. Narrated in this best practices paper are five lessons I learned this past year while teaching from home in isolation due to the pandemic.