How do you teach with a mask on?
I didn’t get it. Projecting your voice, articulating clearly, making exaggerated facial expressions is all part of teaching. Just as important, is watching the kids’ faces, to see if they’re tuned in, checking their expressions for understanding. I have trouble enough deciphering what some kids are saying without them muffling themselves with a mask. Teaching is dialogue.
There was no way. I would have to do something else.
That was my mindset during that summer of ’21, when it was announced that California schools would finally fully re-open after two school years being ruined by lockdowns, shutdowns, and Zoom, but all students and teachers would have to wear a mask and try to stay 6 feet apart. I personally had lucked out during those two ruined school years, the first year painting a mural at a school, and the second year running a ‘pandemic pod’ of 14 kids at a pony ranch. Now it seemed my luck had run out.
Then this teaching job appeared, I t seemed almost by Providence. I wasn’t looking really, I just told my plight to some former colleagues when we got together for lunch at Harry’s Hofbrau, where we had gathered in late summer to tell the tales of our war-time teaching during the pandemic. Little did I know that one of my old work buddies had recommended me to her principal, I’ll call her Ms. A, who was moving to a new middle school, and was hiring. My friend had told Ms. A that I was good at art. The next day Ms. A called and offered me a full-time job teaching art at a salary higher than I’d ever had in my teaching career thus far.
Maybe my Lucky Pandemic streak had not ended! An art job! Even though I snuck art into every subject I taught, and a few times was the art specialist for elementary schools, teaching art full time was a job I had coveted since I had begun teaching, but I didn’t quite have my art credential yet. I needed one more pedagogy class to get my single-subject, but Ms. A was willing to hire me for the art position since school was about to start in a few weeks, and they were short of teachers. The district paid very well. Outside of the mask thing, it sounded like my dream job. How could I say no?
I justified breaking the mask rule to myself by thinking that teaching art didn’t require as much direct instruction as teaching English, my usual gig, so maybe I could tolerate wearing the mask until they lifted the mandate. They would lift the mandate eventually, wouldn’t they? I imagined a hands-on classroom, children creating, in their own worlds, where oral communication might not be as important, art was the universal language! I justified further that there would be no test scores at the end of the year, grading would be simplified.
I accepted the job.
The first day of our two-week orientation, I was sitting in the sunny district office around the table with other new-hires, and we were each given a folded card to make a name plate, just as I often assign kids to do on the first day of school before I have learned their names. I often try to make even this lesson somewhat creative, teaching the kids bubble letters, or telling them to draw a symbol on their card that would help me remember them. They always treat us teachers like kids in these meetings, I thought to myself, when we were told to write our name on the card in large letters, and in the four corners write our favorite color, the city we live in, an adjective to describe ourselves, and our preferred pronouns.
I did as I was told, filling in my city of Half Moon Bay, ‘orange’ as I always do for my favorite color, and creative for my adjective, the one I always use since it works when they require the adjective to start with the same sound as your name, so I was on autopilot, but when I got to “preferred pronouns” I didn’t know what they were talking about. Do people have favorite pronouns? Like the royal ‘we’? Or maybe ‘mine’ if they are particularly possessive? Maybe ‘everyone’ if they liked to be inclusive? I seriously did not get it. I looked around the table to see what everyone else was putting down, and I noticed most of the other teachers putting she/her/hers on their cards, except a guy who put he/him/his so I did the same as the other gals, but I was mystified. That’s how isolated I had been in my Pony Pandemic Pod with no access or time for the internet.
The Asian woman who was in charge of the orientation, was wearing a mask as we all were, but what made it even more difficult to understand her was the fact that half of her face appeared to be paralyzed. Her one eye and the brow above it drooped down, and was slightly closed. When she pulled down her mask to take a sip of water, one side of her mouth turned down and didn’t move. She apologized and explained she had Guillain Barre syndrome, another thing I had never heard of, and reassured us that her condition wasn’t permanent, and bravely carried on lecturing to us for two weeks about the school district, that had a very thorough hiring process. I stared at her face daily during our orientation, finding her condition very strange. It was much later that I found out that this condition was one of the vaccine injuries often reported.
Finally, I was brought to the school itself, a very large, modern concrete-penitentiary type of place with iron gates in front, to meet Ms. A. who was sitting in her windowless office eating out of a Tupperware bowl. When she saw me at her door, she carefully put on a mask, and then, to my somewhat amusement, a second mask over that. I inwardly rolled my eyes, wondering if this was for show.
I sat down and she started going over some logistics emphasizing the masks and distancing procedures. “It is only required that the students wear the masks indoors, but we’re going to require that they wear them at all times when on campus, even during PE and music.” I’m thinking, ‘oh kaay’, and also ‘oh nooo’. She went on to talk to me about my application, ignoring completely my impressive resume and years of experience.
“I see you have decided not to disclose your vaccination status,” she muffled to me, her eyes narrowing over the double-mask that I could see was somewhat digging into her face. “You are not required to disclose this, but if you do not, you will be required to take a covid PCR test in the mobile van that will be visiting our school once a week, who will share the results with you and the administration. The policy at this school is if you test positive for covid, even if you do not have symptoms, you must stay home for ten working days if you are not vaccinated.”
I’m thinking, ok, whatever, I’ll go take the dumb test every week. I heard that they didn’t stick the probe all the way up into your brain like they were doing at first, god knows why. What I wasn’t going to tell them was my ‘vaccine status’ since I hadn’t taken the vaccine. Yet. I hadn’t entirely written off the idea; I was taking a more ‘wait and see’ approach. The more I waited, the more I could see I didn’t want to, unless I was forced to.
Note the foreshadowing: pronouns, masks, vaccines. I thought a high-paying art position was my dream job. I pinched myself when I thought my teaching luck had continued during what I could see was a systematic dismantling of the California education standards during those lockdown years.
It was a dream I suppose; I mean nightmares are dreams, right?