Year 12: Week 25 - Why Teaching With Mask-Optionals is…sigh.

I didn't think masks-optional was going to be so hard.

This week was weird because this week was when we started the masks-optional policy. While it is obvious to me that a mask-optional policy is beneficial, logical, and the right policy. Teaching when students choose to wear masks is weird, joyful at times, and frustrating. 

Like so much that has happened during this pandemic, teaching in a mask-optional school is a new experience. Like remote teaching and teaching with mitigations during the fall of 2020, we are jumping into teaching in a mask-optional school with little training, lots of anxiety, and more unknown than known.

The transitions masks-optional policy in America is a shameful mess. Instead of a smooth transition that acknowledges evolving science and centered on the need of children, the movement towards mask-optional policy was muddled by politics, misinformation, overreactions, power battles, and lawsuits. This is the context that people in my school community had to make decisions around a mask-optional policy this week.

I chose to teach without a mask. I am boosted, my wife and oldest son are vaccinated, and my children are in the age brackets where COVID-19 has very low chances of being a severe illness. I accept that the likelihood of I’ll get COVID-19 is moderate, and I also know that the possibility of I will get a severe case of COVID-19 after exposure is diminishingly low. There is no reason for me to wear a mask.

After this week, here’s the bad news about the masks-optional policy.

• Kids were wacky this week. There is an unsettled feeling in the school. More students are distracted and express anxiety in unproductive ways. Hopefully, this will pass.
• So much feels unsaid. Why is a student wearing a mask? Why is someone not wearing a mask? Are people wearing a mask resenting those who aren’t? Am I making other people uncomfortable by not wearing a mask? We don’t know how to talk about these wonders, but we are all thinking about them.
• There are new concerns as a teacher. Am I paying more attention to students not wearing masks? Do I have a bias around mask-wearing that I am unintentionally expressing?
• It’s really to know how to handle teaching a class where not wearing masks except for two students and then teach a class immediately after where everyone but two ARE wearing masks.
• Some students choose to wear masks for specific classes and then go unmasked for other times during the school day. I had two students walk into my music class, grab an extra masks by my door, and wear it throughout the class. Then when they left my classroom they threw the masks away. I checked in with their homeroom teacher. He hadn't seen them wear masks that day.

The good part of masks-optional.

• The smile on the students' faces who aren't wearing masks combined with the light in the eyes of those are wearing masks enjoying other people's faces feels great.
• I feel more connected to my students when I’m not wearing a mask. They react to my smile, and my “teacher face.” Teaching feels more unrestrained without a mask. It feels like shedding a layer of fear.
• Mask-optional is progress. This is a movement when hope has been fulfilled in a time when hope is not something we have in excess.

We can’t do this forever. Mask-optional is a way for people to transition into the next stage of this pandemic, but it can’t be an arrival point. Maybe all of the negatives I experienced this week will go away with time. I hope because among the bright moments this week, I felt many frustrating moments of “I don’t know,” which unfortunately has become the norm for the past two years.