Ok this title is a reference to an obscure idiom that young people may not get unless they watch legislative votes on CNBC. ↙️
I’m making reference to all that I have been able to see on children for the last two years. In other words, what’s above their masks.
I have to say that it is just one highly insufficient part of teaching during a pandemic: The not being to able to see children’s faces. On the other hand, I seem to look more carefully at their eyes to check their emotional states. Are they sad, frustrated, confused? I can even tell if they are smiling at this point, too.
And now that I’ve been teaching in these Covid-era conditions, (sweating under and above my own mask, policing the masks of others and offering a replacement mask to a young student who has gotten theirs wet or dirty) it’s becoming normal (NAY!) but every once in a while I catch myself thinking WHAT IS HAPPENING?! HOW ARE WE HERE and it passes because it has to.
I am teaching the same material I have in the past years, and honestly, the students are seeming no different than in other years, but are much more at ease working alone and being solitary. It’s something we will have to teach again, when we can be closer together without fear of spreading a virus we dont know if we or another has!
In spite of all the inconvenience and the forced acceptance of an abnormal normal, their being in school is so important; I take none of it for granted, and I am so glad to see them, even if it is just their eyes and heads, outfits and masks.
We will be the tellers of a great story someday, I tell them. People won’t believe we did this.
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