Masks a hurdle in communication for several teachers

Placing an order at a deli counter while wearing a mask and standing 6 feet away can be difficult. Try teaching a class full of schoolchildren and connecting with students who are themselves wearing masks.

Teachers who in ordinary times rely on their voices to convey nuances of language and manage classroom behavior are tasked with not sounding like the trombone“wah wah” of the Charlie Brown TV specials while protecting themselves and their students fromthe coronavirus.

To help themselves communicate with students, teachers have turned to masks with clear patches over their mouths, set up plexiglass bubbles inside classrooms so they can speak without masks, and in some cases turned to props to get across howthey are feeling.

Stephanie Wanzer, a teacher who works with special education students in Fairfield County, Connecticut, uses a stick with an image of a smile during her sessions.

“I try to be really express ive with my eyes. He’s looking at me and I’ m not sure if he thinks I’mmad or happy because you can’t see my mouth smiling,” she said. “So I actually have a smile on a stick, which is bizarre, but it’s a smile like, ‘Look, I’m smiling.’”

School started virtually for Jon Resendez, a teacher in Irvine, California, but he worries about how the required masks will affect the dynamic in his 12th grade civics classes with some students now returning to the school building.

“Part of what I do as a civics teacher is to teach people to engage in civic conversations,” he said. “That has to do with seeing the person’s facial expressions, a person’s body language and sort of reading your audience, and it becomes more difficult to read your audience” when they are allwearingmasks.

It also will be more difficult for student to collaborate, to do presentations and to speak with one another in class.

“I like a lowmurmur in the room because if the students are talking, they are thinking,” he said.

The task is especially difficult for those working with students who are deaf, hard of hearing or whose first language is not English.

“For one, the mask mightmuffle some sounds, making it harder for English learners to distinguish them, such as the sound for ‘ P’ and the sound for ‘ B,’” said Deborah Short, president of the TESOL International Association. The Virginia-based group was created to unite teachers and administrators with an interest in teaching English to speakers of other languages.

“A mask stops students from watching how a teacher forms sounds, how the lips and tongue are positioned and whether air is expelled or not,” she said.

“I try tobe really expressive with my eyes. He’s looking atme and I’mnot sure if he thinks I’m mador happy because you can’t seemy mouth smiling.” — Stephanie Wanzer, teacher