This study explored the difficulties encountered by pandemic cohort English teachers and the implications of virtual teaching internships on their teaching practices. The participants of the study were selected through a purposive sampling technique, which consisted of 10 new English teachers who experienced virtual teaching internships during the pandemic and are currently working in secondary schools in the 3rd Congressional District of Nueva Ecija from 2022 to the present. This research study utilized a Qualitative Descriptive research design. The data were gathered through in-depth interviews, and thematic analysis was used to analyze the data. The findings of the study indicated that Newly-hired English teachers experience significant challenges with time management due to a combination of heavy teaching responsibilities, leading to elevated stress levels, making it difficult for them to effectively manage and allocate their time. Furthermore, their limited real-life teaching practice during internships has resulted in lower spoken English fluency and confidence, making communication with parents, colleagues, and supervisors difficult at first. Virtual internships, while helpful during the pandemic, did not fully prepare teachers for the realities of face-to-face instruction, especially in creating differentiated lessons for diverse learners. They struggle with issues of classroom management and encouraging students' participation, as students are not willing to engage actively. Also, they find grading and giving feedback a challenging task, mainly because of the time limitation and the need to give personalized, prompt feedback in large classes. It can be affirmed that although virtual internships have been valuable in continuing their internship during the pandemic, they are lacking in fully preparing teachers with the dynamic and complex nature of face-to-face classrooms. The lack of immediacy and real-time interaction of virtual settings limits the capacity to form critical skills like multitasking, classroom management, and communication.