A Mask for the Soul

In times of COVID-19, there’s been discussion of whether to keep learning online or virtual.

Right now, the expectation is that everyone can go get vaccinated so that they can begin their lives.

There’s still another view however, that a “new normal” has taken over the world and that virtual

learning is here to stay. 

During my graduate program, there was an expectation right out of the get-go that I would be a virtual

teacher. I was made to focus on online materials like PowerPoints and Google Slides with a bunch of

links and images. 

At some point in the fall, they introduced Google Classroom and Microsoft Teams. I had to complete

one of the trainings. The questions, like on many standardized tests, reiterated every specific and

redundant details - unnecessary rewordings of the main ideas. On top of this, every video was an

overzealous testimony to what technology did in their classroom - making it sound as if the teachers

were both and horrified at the prospect of technology replacing them. 

In our meetings, there was a lot of stress by the online teachers to find enough material. They wanted

to quicken the pace of in-person teachers because they didn’t have enough material.  While there are

resources to find online available for teachers, it can sometimes be hard to find enough resources.

In-person learning, however, makes it easier to give students structured lessons as well as makes a

more efficient learning experience for the reader. Our meetings left everyone feeling confused and

frustrated - that we were doing two completely different things, and that we would not find solutions

together. 

In-person learning makes it much more easy to plan structured lessons - time to annotate, projects

research periods, and even debates. Online hasn’t done almost any of those things this year. In my

own online undergraduate major, online required a lot of responsibility upon the individual. Many of the

of my graduate program have been completely unhelpful and deliberately vague in regards to the

material - as if COVID-19 had secured them a job that they didn’t have to work any harder at doing.

They frontloaded the material - paying little attention to discussions and making almost no helpful

suggestions

 As a teacher, you can be expected to get up early and bring a positive attitude to the workplace,

while going to the computer can make you feel a sense of dread. In addition, the lack of social

interaction can lead to mental health issues. I’ve greatly missed personal interaction, but technology is

“the way of the future.”

There is something to be said of the personal interactions one may get during the day. Having a group

of friends to talk about your life, your love life, or your family greatly increases your feelings of

belonging. We need to be understood, and we need to be respected. Kids live for that face to face

interaction at the end of the day - where even a simple wave can make a person feel less alone. 

Too often as a school and society, we glamorize working efficiently rather than interacting honestly. 

So many people nearly jumped at the chance to get the vaccine, not considering themselves to

medical test subjects of large pharmaceutical companies. They talk with a sort of mania - half elated

that they are immune to the current strains, emotionally ignorant to the new variants to follow. 

We are unable to see how unhealthy we’ve gotten as a society - sticking our heads in computer

screens  and meaningless conversations. We are chasing a timeline of when this pandemic will end.

We envision a future of what will happen when it’s over - one that we can’t ultimately describe in words

nor bet our money on. Students take on so much of the emotions of everyone around them - feeling

the added pressure to succeed and the fear of getting their families sick. Some go the entire day

without social interaction. 

As we move forward, we need to look one day at a time, not months and years down the road.

We need to come to our job everyday with a positive attitude and a readiness to communicate.

Most of all, we need to make sure our masks don’t enforce walls between us and others. 

Our students depend on it.