When you are wearing a mask and facing a classroom full of students wearing masks, the literal barrier creates an emotional barrier. It's harder to be vulnerable, present, and real when there is so much between us. When the face is covered, and the communication that happens around the words in the face, the brows, and the mouth goes away, you are just apart. It's hard to connect, it's hard to communicate, and it's hard to share deep feelings.
During the times of wearing masks, there were emotional connections I made with my students, but it felt lacking and strained. Also, with all the stuff going on in my personal life, struggling through the pandemic, sometimes it was important personally to not be as emotionally connected to my students, well, because I had to save that emotional energy for my student or because I was drained from all that my personal life asked of me.
Maybe it was because of how wonderful this summer was or because of all that is changing in my life, but I've felt an exciting sense of balance. I know that my family is the most critical priority in my life, and the longing that I have to spend more time at home feels right. This clarity is helping make work feel more enjoyable. There are things that I feel like I have a good hold on, and there are many things that I feel behind on. However, I feel I am getting good work done at school.
Engaging with my students in work feels more connected and emotional than in the past couple of years. As a result, I'm being emotionally affected in a way that surprised me.
I'd started teaching my 4th graders "Crowded Table" by The Highwomen.
It is fun to revisit the song I have taught in previous years. In my introduction to this song, I talked about what it means to feel alone in a crowd. I talked about how I feel alone as the only Asian-American person in a room. The Highwomen were trying to do something about feeling alone as women in the music industry, which is a feeling everyone sadly experiences. By the time I got to talking about how the meaning of this song had changed with the pandemic, I was barely able to keep it together.
Hearing my students tell me about how the experienced the early days of the pandemic was sad at times, but more than anything it felt vulnerable and important.
I also felt really emotional when I saw the look of awe and wonder when I showed my students Prince's Superbowl performance.
This was the first time some of my students had even seen Prince perform. I felt so lucky that I lived in Prince's time and that I could share all that incredible about Prince with my students.
Then there were moments when I got genuinely excited when my middle school students got their first sound on the flute.
I feel like an emotional mess in class, and it's kind of nice.
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