This past week the area in which I live experienced the lifting of mandatory mask wearing, allowing schools to decide how to proceed with safety protocol. While some individuals still need to protect themselves, there was a refreshing sense of not only freedom but true inner liberty as educators and students faced each other person-to-person with nothing between them except the air they breathe.
As a recently retired elementary teacher still working in the field of education, I felt a positive energy and sense of hope for so many, even as I recognized the continued lack of understanding by individuals who want everyone to think the same way. This of course led me to think hard about what the masks have and have not done.
In March 2020 when schools shut down along with the rest of their communities to curb an ever-expanding pandemic, educators scrambled to figure out how to redefine education with very limited training in this new frontier. But explore and educate they did… getting through the final twelve weeks of school then taking a short breath in preparation for September 2021.
We have all heard the arguments regarding what the pandemic has done to our children… How they’re far behind… How it has affected their social/emotional growth…
I would never minimize the negative effects this pandemic has had on all of us. Yet the lifting of the mask mandate has prompted me to look deeply and commit to remember the lessons learned.
There is something very challenging but no less rewarding to have only the eyes of another individual with which to ‘see them.’ It takes incredible energy, commitment, perseverance, compassion, and patience to only have access to another’s eyes, and still do a quality job of communicating, and teaching.
If there was one thing I sorely felt during the pandemic was the ache of criticism. Individual and group frustration often lead us to a focus on lack more than on effort. But I grew up in the 60’s and 70’s when a frequently used saying reminded us, “until you walked a mile in their shoes…”
None of us really know what the pandemic has been like for somebody else. We can relate on so many levels, but we really cannot understand. What we can do, is what so many educators have done. They went the extra mile. Teachers had to come up with new ways for children to be able to ‘read each other’ so that they would still be prepared in their world to interact, to communicate, to feel empowered, to succeed.
Looking into the eyes of another person can be a very, very holy thing. As we re-enter the world without masks, I pray that we will not lose the art of working hard to see and hear and want to understand where someone is coming from. Imagine what could happen if we strive to put that same effort in now, as we did when all we had was the top of our faces for clues and cues. Let us each commit to invest in this lesson we’ve had almost two years to learn.