Following our spring email on masks, we heard from several parents. Here are some things we learned:
Staff Feedback on Mask Wearing
Now I would like to share what we heard from our teachers and staff members. I asked them to share specific information about some of the experiences they had this year with their students who wore masks.
From a 2nd Grade Teacher: I had a second-grade student who wears a mask daily come to school one day without one on. I saw her sobbing and asking the office for a mask. The office informed her that they weren't giving out masks anymore. My student sobbed harder. I told her that it would be okay to go one day without a mask.
Throughout the day she took her long hair and was trying to hide her face. I finally asked her if she wore a mask because she was afraid of getting sick. She told me no and that she wore a mask because she thought she looked ugly and didn't want anyone to see her face. We had a talk about how I loved seeing her face and that I thought she was adorable. She didn't take what I said to heart and kept her head low with her hair in her face for the rest of the day.
From a 6th Grade Teacher: I had one boy who forgot his mask try to tape a napkin to his face. When asked why, he said it was to hide the gap in his teeth (which he is embarrassed about).
When Mrs. Leavitt asked the students to pull down their masks while performing for the Memorial Day assembly, the students reacted in extreme ways. I had students crying about not wearing their masks and trying to hide their faces from everyone. These are 11 and 12-year-old students. They were not concerned about health issues, they just did not want to show their faces.
From a 4th Grade Teacher: Most of my students have begun to bounce back and are able to thrive in their learning, but I have a select few who have not. It is those who continue to wear masks at school. One in particular who I have seen little to no academic growth from this year. She is a sweet, beautiful girl. She continues to wear a mask each day, and I can't get her to choral respond, to participate in "think-pair-share" with her neighbors, or make eye contact with me. When I give reminders for her to participate, she apologizes sweetly, but the behaviors continue, and she consistently gets low scores. Her cognitive testing has shown she is capable and should be achieving in all of her subjects. She is not. When I met with her parents, at the first PTC, they were outgoing, happy, and supportive parents. They did not wear masks. We had a productive conversation about my concerns. Vaccinations for students rolled out, masks in my classroom disappeared, except for 3 students, including this girl. She continued to be disconnected from our class all year. At spring PTC I asked mom and dad if she can come without a mask, and reiterated my concerns that she is 'hiding' from school. I was assured they will speak to her. Nothing changed and she wore her mask the rest of the year. This student did not meet the promotion requirements. It is so sad but I feel as though she learned nothing this year. It is truly heart breaking and maddening to see this bright girl achieving so little.
From a 6th Grade Teacher: Student engagement has decreased sharply because students are able to hide behind their masks and not respond during choral responses or participate in the recitation of poems and songs. It is difficult to tell who is participating and who is just sitting there not responding. Additionally, there are students who say inappropriate things while hiding behind the mask making it difficult to know who said it.
From a 4th Grade Teacher: I have 3 students that remained masked all year. The parents of these students came to events at the school and were never wearing a mask. All three of these students' parents talked with me multiple times about their concerns about their student not having any friends at school. It is crystal clear to teachers that students who wear masks don't emotionally connect with others. These poor parents just did not see the correlation between their child's mask wearing and not having friends. And I think we didn't do enough to draw those conclusions for them and keep talking about that. It's just such a tough topic and parents get offended when you bring it up. But after another full year of little to no social interaction with their peers, I have huge and grave concerns for these students. I don't want to see more of this damage happening next year. Students need to NOT wear masks at school. If they do, they will learn less, have less friends, and lose confidence in themselves.
From a secondary administrator: As an administrator and working with students to improve behavior and work habits, I found it difficult to get to know students on a deeper level to connect with them. Masks made it more difficult for me to remember names and faces. When dealing with discipline or reports of inappropriate behavior, there were countless conversations with fellow admin and teaching staff trying to identify individuals on the cameras. The masks made it difficult to see faces which at times meant that even though we could see the misbehavior, we couldn't address the issue since we couldn't identify the student. This either led to never addressing the issue or a much more extensive investigation including multiple interviews that exhausted time that could have been better spent elsewhere.
My personal observation with mask wearing is the students that were still wearing masks at my campus were students that struggled with social anxiety or students that wanted to remain anonymous in the hopes of not following rules or expectations of the school.
From a 1st Grade Teacher: I had a little boy who forgot his mask one day. He was very, very upset. He not only wore his mask ALWAYS, he even wore it when he ate and just went underneath the mask to put the food in his mouth. The day he forgot his mask, we told him it was fine, and he didn't need to wear a mask. He couldn't accept that and he tried to pull his polo shirt up above his mouth and hold it there. His hands and face visibly shook he was so upset. He was having an emotional meltdown that we couldn't resolve for him.
Misc. Reports from Staff - We had students who, when asked why they were wearing a mask, said "Because I am ugly" (too many to cite individually here), and one who said "I have a zit today so I can't show my face". A kinder teacher was unable to properly correct a child's pronunciation of letter sounds, and some students practiced the wrong sound all year without the teacher's knowledge because she couldn't see the sound he was making with his mouth. Older students clearly use the masks to reduce or eliminate their participation in school, and often as a result they have very little success in learning. Of course there are outliers and those who didn't fail classes yet wore a mask. But their social interactions were greatly minimized.
Maybe the biggest difference we saw between students who wore masks and those who did not was the level of enthusiasm. Mask wearers were far less enthusiastic and engaged in learning, in social activities, and in every setting at school.
SUMMARY
We hope this information is helpful for our parents to understand what we experienced at school last year, and the impact on the academic, emotional or social growth that happens when a student wears a mask at school.