2nd Grade Teacher wears a mask

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Are we talking about the same teachers who refused to go to work during the pandemic, even when the entire medical profession said it was safe, because they didn't "feel" it was safe?

Are we talking about the same teachers who refused to get vaccinated for covid, even after it was required?

You'll have to forgive us parents if we're not ready to give teachers the benefit of the doubt after the string of horrendous decisions they made during the pandemic.

They made correct decisions and protected themselves and their families during a pandemic. You’re still Big Mad you had to deal with your own kids during that same pandemic,but that’s 100% a You Problem.

-parent,not a teacher, so don’t bother with the predictable childish clapback

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My son has a teacher who wears a mask daily in high school. I thought it was odd as well, but he hasn’t complained about being able to hear her so it hasn’t been an issue.

Good thing he already knows how to read and spell. Unlike a second grader

As long as the second grader can hear the teacher, I don’t see the issue. If your child can’t read in second grade there are larger issues. Get a tutor. A kid who can’t read in second grade may have learning issues that go beyond whether a teacher wears a mask. And what the hell does spelling have to do with mask wearing? Spelling is written.

lol

How do you take a spelling test PP?

DP.

The teacher says “please spell the word ‘popcorn’”.

And then the kids spell “popcorn” to the best of their abilities.

I don’t see the problem? You can say “popcorn” through a mask. (I can put one on and try quickly if it would help, but I’m fairly certain it’ll work.)

Poplearn? Raccoon? Popcoon?

What did you mumble under your mask?

No one “mumbled.” You have a hearing problem. You should see a specialist.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You should consider getting your hearing checked, OP, if you can't understand people who are wearing masks. It sounds like you have hearing issues and use lip movement to provide context clues.

+1

I have truly never had an issue hearing any adult or child who was wearing a mask

Hearing loss is a pretty common long term complication after having covid. Perhaps you also need to be wearing a mask

As someone who also struggles to understand people wearing masks and for sure has some hearing (fairly minor) hearing loss, I find the glibness here really rude.

And first, to be clear, my hearing loss is not Covid related. I had Covid for the first time in fall of 2022. I experienced hearing challenges before then and specifically challenges understanding people in masks.

But second, telling people to "get their ears checked' like this solves the entire problem is incredibly rude. Addressing hearing loss is more complicated and can be expensive. Also for some people the problem is not their hearing specifically but auditory processing which is specifically impacted when listening to voices without seeing lips move or being able to read expressions. I have become the issues and the advent of widespread mask wearing made me realize how much I rely on visual cues to help with understanding people

Anyway the upshot is that even with my hearing aid I still sometimes can't understand people in masks (or who have heavy accents or who speak without moving their lips much). If the mask muffles their voice and covers their lower face then turning up my hearing sometimes just makes something unintelligible, louder.

This doesn't mean I think no one should mask. I dutifully wore a mask through the pandemic and still do when it's appropriate (I'm sick or someone close to me is sick or risk of getting sick is very high). But it's so rude and selfish to write it off when people talk about the challenges of communication with masks, especially in a setting like school where communication is very fundamental.

And stop telling people "get your ears checked." It's rude and betrays how little you care about people with hearing loss, as well as how little you understand what it means to have hearing issues and how they are treated.

And stop telling to stop wearing masks cause you have hearing issues. It’s rude too. You never know what health issues the person wearing the mask has. It goes both ways.

I literally said that I am not saying people should not wear masks because of my hearing issues. And that I myself mask when appropriate.

It obviously does NOT go both ways because a lot of people expect me to just always defer to someone's mask wearing and no one gives a crap about those of us who struggle to understand people who wear masks. If this was really something that went both ways then people would have said things in this thread like "that sounds hard even though the teacher has a right to wear a mask -- have you considered asking about masks with clear panels or seeing if there is some other solution that could meet everyone halfway."

Instead people who said that they or their kids struggled to understand someone in a mask were called names. Because apparently mentioning one of the obvious and unfortunate downsides of masking is the same as being an anti-vaxxer or a Covid denier.

So yeah it should go both ways but it very much doesn't.

Dp. I agree that there have been some callous responses to you. But OP said that OP struggles with this, not their kid. If OP had said the child is having difficulties and complaining, perhaps more people would have responded with suggestions instead of anger at OP’s anger.

OP is worried about her kid understanding because she struggles with it. Kids don't always voice difficulties like this because they don't know better. My 2nd grader had bad vision decline between 1st and 2nd grade but never once mentioned having difficulty seeing at school. We caught it with a routine eye exam. Then after she got glasses she noted how much easier it was for her to know what was going on in class because apparently the teacher had been placing instructions for certain things around the room and DD was not even aware of this until she could see better.

So it's perfectly normal for a parent to wonder whether this might be impacting their kid even if the kid has not expressed a problem.

Agree.
A 7 yo doesn’t even know what pronunciation and enunciation is. Let alone how debilitating a masked teacher is at teaching it

Are you always this absurdly melodramatic, or only on DCUM?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Bring it up with the principal, not the teacher. It would help if several parents did this. You are not the only parent bothered by it.

She’s not breaking any rules by wearing a mask.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My son has a teacher who wears a mask daily in high school. I thought it was odd as well, but he hasn’t complained about being able to hear her so it hasn’t been an issue.

Good thing he already knows how to read and spell. Unlike a second grader

As long as the second grader can hear the teacher, I don’t see the issue. If your child can’t read in second grade there are larger issues. Get a tutor. A kid who can’t read in second grade may have learning issues that go beyond whether a teacher wears a mask. And what the hell does spelling have to do with mask wearing? Spelling is written.

lol

How do you take a spelling test PP?

DP.

The teacher says “please spell the word ‘popcorn’”.

And then the kids spell “popcorn” to the best of their abilities.

I don’t see the problem? You can say “popcorn” through a mask. (I can put one on and try quickly if it would help, but I’m fairly certain it’ll work.)

Poplearn? Raccoon? Popcoon?

What did you mumble under your mask?

No one “mumbled.” You have a hearing problem. You should see a specialist.

+100, Parents think because they can’t hear clearly that kids can’t hear clearly. Many adults have diminished hearing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You should consider getting your hearing checked, OP, if you can't understand people who are wearing masks. It sounds like you have hearing issues and use lip movement to provide context clues.

+1

I have truly never had an issue hearing any adult or child who was wearing a mask

Hearing loss is a pretty common long term complication after having covid. Perhaps you also need to be wearing a mask

As someone who also struggles to understand people wearing masks and for sure has some hearing (fairly minor) hearing loss, I find the glibness here really rude.

And first, to be clear, my hearing loss is not Covid related. I had Covid for the first time in fall of 2022. I experienced hearing challenges before then and specifically challenges understanding people in masks.

But second, telling people to "get their ears checked' like this solves the entire problem is incredibly rude. Addressing hearing loss is more complicated and can be expensive. Also for some people the problem is not their hearing specifically but auditory processing which is specifically impacted when listening to voices without seeing lips move or being able to read expressions. I have become the issues and the advent of widespread mask wearing made me realize how much I rely on visual cues to help with understanding people

Anyway the upshot is that even with my hearing aid I still sometimes can't understand people in masks (or who have heavy accents or who speak without moving their lips much). If the mask muffles their voice and covers their lower face then turning up my hearing sometimes just makes something unintelligible, louder.

This doesn't mean I think no one should mask. I dutifully wore a mask through the pandemic and still do when it's appropriate (I'm sick or someone close to me is sick or risk of getting sick is very high). But it's so rude and selfish to write it off when people talk about the challenges of communication with masks, especially in a setting like school where communication is very fundamental.

And stop telling people "get your ears checked." It's rude and betrays how little you care about people with hearing loss, as well as how little you understand what it means to have hearing issues and how they are treated.

And stop telling to stop wearing masks cause you have hearing issues. It’s rude too. You never know what health issues the person wearing the mask has. It goes both ways.

I literally said that I am not saying people should not wear masks because of my hearing issues. And that I myself mask when appropriate.

It obviously does NOT go both ways because a lot of people expect me to just always defer to someone's mask wearing and no one gives a crap about those of us who struggle to understand people who wear masks. If this was really something that went both ways then people would have said things in this thread like "that sounds hard even though the teacher has a right to wear a mask -- have you considered asking about masks with clear panels or seeing if there is some other solution that could meet everyone halfway."

Instead people who said that they or their kids struggled to understand someone in a mask were called names. Because apparently mentioning one of the obvious and unfortunate downsides of masking is the same as being an anti-vaxxer or a Covid denier.

So yeah it should go both ways but it very much doesn't.

Dp. I agree that there have been some callous responses to you. But OP said that OP struggles with this, not their kid. If OP had said the child is having difficulties and complaining, perhaps more people would have responded with suggestions instead of anger at OP’s anger.

OP is worried about her kid understanding because she struggles with it. Kids don't always voice difficulties like this because they don't know better. My 2nd grader had bad vision decline between 1st and 2nd grade but never once mentioned having difficulty seeing at school. We caught it with a routine eye exam. Then after she got glasses she noted how much easier it was for her to know what was going on in class because apparently the teacher had been placing instructions for certain things around the room and DD was not even aware of this until she could see better.

So it's perfectly normal for a parent to wonder whether this might be impacting their kid even if the kid has not expressed a problem.

That’s a bad analogy with flawed logic.

I was once a kid similar to yours. When I got my first pair of glasses in 4th grade, I was shocked at the difference they made. I vividly remember being amazed at being able to see the individual leaves in the treetops, instead of big green blobs. While I obviously knew trees had leaves, since they were all blurry, it didn’t occur to me that they weren’t all blurry for everyone. The blurriness had come on so gradually that I hadn’t registered the change and eventually believed that was just the way treetops were supposed to look.

On the other hand, if I tried to look out a window that had fogged up, I was well aware that I had trouble looking out that window. I knew that I could see clearly through windows that weren’t foggy and perhaps had even seen clearly through that particular window sometime when it was clear.

If a child’s universal experience of a phenomenon involves a problem, then it is logical to reason that they might have difficulty separating the problem from the phenomenon and never realize the problem exists. On the other hand, if a child’s general experience is problem free and when a problem occurs it is an aberration, then the problem is apparent, even to a child.

Unless everyone the child interacted with (including yourself) wore a mask when talking to the child, the child should be able to recognize if understanding a masked teacher is problematic. Even then, if universal masking should make comprehension more difficult, the child would recognize that fact due to the contrast from the abrupt change.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Are we talking about the same teachers who refused to go to work during the pandemic, even when the entire medical profession said it was safe, because they didn't "feel" it was safe?

Are we talking about the same teachers who refused to get vaccinated for covid, even after it was required?

You'll have to forgive us parents if we're not ready to give teachers the benefit of the doubt after the string of horrendous decisions they made during the pandemic.

They made correct decisions and protected themselves and their families during a pandemic. You’re still Big Mad you had to deal with your own kids during that same pandemic,but that’s 100% a You Problem.

-parent,not a teacher, so don’t bother with the predictable childish clapback

100%. There were so many loooong posts here from parents arguing that, yes, school is daycare and those teachers needed to be back because the parents had to go to work. Selfish as F.

[Anonymous]

Two years ago my older DD’s 4th grade teacher wore a mask all year. She was harder to understand but she’d missed the entire prior year while her 8 year old fought leukemia. He was still getting regular chemotherapy treatments. My daughter and her classmates always wore masks if they had so much as a sniffle because they knew they were trying to protect the teacher’s son. She shared this with the students and parents - in part because she had to use subs sometimes to cover for during chemo treatments - but I assume we don’t always know what a teacher is dealing with.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Two years ago my older DD’s 4th grade teacher wore a mask all year. She was harder to understand but she’d missed the entire prior year while her 8 year old fought leukemia. He was still getting regular chemotherapy treatments. My daughter and her classmates always wore masks if they had so much as a sniffle because they knew they were trying to protect the teacher’s son. She shared this with the students and parents - in part because she had to use subs sometimes to cover for during chemo treatments - but I assume we don’t always know what a teacher is dealing with.

That teacher is a normal person who explains what's going on. A teacher who masks all year in 2024, with no explanation and gets bent out of shape when some asks what's going on, is just another loon. With the high numbers of English learners in our schools, you need a good reason to mask all day.

PrIVatE mEdICaL rEaSOn!!1!1!1

Get an office job.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Two years ago my older DD’s 4th grade teacher wore a mask all year. She was harder to understand but she’d missed the entire prior year while her 8 year old fought leukemia. He was still getting regular chemotherapy treatments. My daughter and her classmates always wore masks if they had so much as a sniffle because they knew they were trying to protect the teacher’s son. She shared this with the students and parents - in part because she had to use subs sometimes to cover for during chemo treatments - but I assume we don’t always know what a teacher is dealing with.

That teacher is a normal person who explains what's going on. A teacher who masks all year in 2024, with no explanation and gets bent out of shape when some asks what's going on, is just another loon. With the high numbers of English learners in our schools, you need a good reason to mask all day.

PrIVatE mEdICaL rEaSOn!!1!1!1

Get an office job.

Good luck finding a replacement. People pretend that there is this vast pool of teachers just waiting to get hired. There isn’t.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Two years ago my older DD’s 4th grade teacher wore a mask all year. She was harder to understand but she’d missed the entire prior year while her 8 year old fought leukemia. He was still getting regular chemotherapy treatments. My daughter and her classmates always wore masks if they had so much as a sniffle because they knew they were trying to protect the teacher’s son. She shared this with the students and parents - in part because she had to use subs sometimes to cover for during chemo treatments - but I assume we don’t always know what a teacher is dealing with.

That teacher is a normal person who explains what's going on. A teacher who masks all year in 2024, with no explanation and gets bent out of shape when some asks what's going on, is just another loon. With the high numbers of English learners in our schools, you need a good reason to mask all day.

PrIVatE mEdICaL rEaSOn!!1!1!1

Get an office job.

No one owes you an explanation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Two years ago my older DD’s 4th grade teacher wore a mask all year. She was harder to understand but she’d missed the entire prior year while her 8 year old fought leukemia. He was still getting regular chemotherapy treatments. My daughter and her classmates always wore masks if they had so much as a sniffle because they knew they were trying to protect the teacher’s son. She shared this with the students and parents - in part because she had to use subs sometimes to cover for during chemo treatments - but I assume we don’t always know what a teacher is dealing with.

That teacher is a normal person who explains what's going on. A teacher who masks all year in 2024, with no explanation and gets bent out of shape when some asks what's going on, is just another loon. With the high numbers of English learners in our schools, you need a good reason to mask all day.

PrIVatE mEdICaL rEaSOn!!1!1!1

Get an office job.

No one owes you an explanation.

This.

In my life when I’ve offered an explanation to someone, that person has often weaponized it and tried to invalidate my reasoning. My boundary now is that I say or do what I need to with no explanation to others. Reasonable adults accept other adults’ reasonable boundaries. You are not entitled to know about my medications, pregnancy status, possible diabetes, etc.

[Anonymous]

It’s not anybody’s business why the teacher’s wearing a mask, but if she’s incomprehensible, she should wear a microphone or the student should be allowed to switch to a teacher she can understand.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Two years ago my older DD’s 4th grade teacher wore a mask all year. She was harder to understand but she’d missed the entire prior year while her 8 year old fought leukemia. He was still getting regular chemotherapy treatments. My daughter and her classmates always wore masks if they had so much as a sniffle because they knew they were trying to protect the teacher’s son. She shared this with the students and parents - in part because she had to use subs sometimes to cover for during chemo treatments - but I assume we don’t always know what a teacher is dealing with.

That teacher is a normal person who explains what's going on. A teacher who masks all year in 2024, with no explanation and gets bent out of shape when some asks what's going on, is just another loon. With the high numbers of English learners in our schools, you need a good reason to mask all day.

PrIVatE mEdICaL rEaSOn!!1!1!1

Get an office job.

No one owes you an explanation.

This.

In my life when I’ve offered an explanation to someone, that person has often weaponized it and tried to invalidate my reasoning. My boundary now is that I say or do what I need to with no explanation to others. Reasonable adults accept other adults’ reasonable boundaries. You are not entitled to know about my medications, pregnancy status, possible diabetes, etc.

I’d be so thankful if a teacher masked and set a positive tone to keep everyone healthy as that also teaches empathy and kindness.

[Anonymous]

This would bother me too. The teacher has a right to wear a mask but if it’s impacting her ability to perform her role and kids abilities to understand her, then that’s a problem. I’d talk to the school about it and have your kid switched. Teacher should probably be reassigned to something like a librarian or something. I don’t think she can be an effective teacher of elementary kids in a mask.