At first I thought I’d never be able to get used to it. But as the first term staggers towards its conclusion, I’ve got so used to wearing a mask where needed that it’s almost second nature. I was even complimented, last Friday morning, on having coordinated (albeit accidentally!) my mask with my comforting woolly scarf. Indeed, when outside enjoying a coastal walk in exceptionally cold conditions late on Sunday afternoon, I almost wished I’d brought it with me…
I’ve grown accustomed, too, to reminding students to wear their masks on corridors and in the lunch queue, on buses and at Assembly. I no longer find it weird that we’re all doing this: I’ve finally grown accustomed to something I found quite threatening at first.
But there’s only so much a mask can hide, and behind it, it’s been a very difficult term for teachers everywhere. I can’t speak for every teacher; in a year when we’re being discouraged from gathering in the staff room, I have never felt so ill-qualified to talk for anyone but myself. But teachers will always find a way of keeping in touch with one another, whether it’s a busy Whatsapp group, a quickly-populating email inbox, a thread on social media. And nobody seems to be finding this straightforward.
Teaching has always involved multi-tasking, but this year has redefined this at a whole new level. You’re not just teaching the class members sitting in your classroom. You’re settling work online (and quite possibly live streaming) for those who are at home, self-isolating for a fortnight. You’re marking work on screen and on paper and by email. You’re making calls home to the parents of those who are off, always bearing in mind that not everyone is just self-isolating, that some are really very ill; some parents too. You’re constantly revisited by the Ghost of Exam Sessions Past and Yet To Come, and wondering if Centre Assessed Grades will kick in again… which means that every homework, every class test, every assignment, every early module, has to be the students’ best, otherwise their final mark is doomed. Your exam classes are exhausted from the constant pressure, which normally hits just at the end. They, and you, are in fight-or-flight mode constantly. Tempers fray and concentration lapses. You mark an assignment and they beg you for more marks, ‘Just in case, Miss; just in case it ends up like last year.’ You have parents emailing you at 10pm, begging you to extend your electronic deadline. Year Heads urging you to be kind, but let nobody get away with anything. Students in tears in your class, unable to tell you exactly what’s wrong except that ’Miss, it’s just all too much’.
Before long, you find that the emoji you use the most in texts to your closest friends is the picture of the exploding head.
And yet… you go onto social media, in the evenings, and you see it everywhere. The anti-teacher vitriol. The talk of lazy, selfish teachers who are voicing concern that both they and their students will have their family Christmas cancelled if told to self-isolate for fourteen days, right at the end of term. There are calls to close schools early: some of these come from Principals, many more from parents, some of whom have openly said they’ll keep their children at home before the end of term. And yet the response to these calls seems to be an angry attack on teachers, with angry voices calling for their Easter and Summer holidays to be cancelled right away. You remember that morning when the girls in your third year class were tearful because they’d been told they probably wouldn’t get to hug their grandparents at Christmas, because the school term would go on until just a couple of days before the 25th. You think about the students and staff who’ve actually been really ill in the last few weeks. You remember your own Covid scare, a month ago, when for about 16 hours you had to isolate and do a test, and it could all have gone wrong.
But no: it’s selfish, lazy teachers who are just generally useless and should be put in some kind of medical-grade detention for the rest of their lives. Selfish, useless teachers going to shops and bringing covid back to their pupils. Feckless, stupid teachers congregating at lunchtimes and spreading the virus among themselves. Idle, holiday-seeking teachers who had four months off in the spring term and are outraged at being asked to do the job they’re paid for now.
Sometimes wearing a mask has a distinct advantage, in that people can’t see or hear what you’re muttering behind it.
By our nature, most teachers are fairly obedient, law-abiding souls. We tell our students off for shouting out answers without raising their hand, for uniform infringements, for chewing gum, for so much more. In our constant feedback we become professional nit-pickers, picking on our own and one another’s professional shortcomings just as much as on those of our students. But behind the mask, the muttering is increasing in volume. Our schools didn’t close for four months before the Summer break: they were open for the children of key workers, and for everyone else there was full provision of online school each day. If you teach teenagers, your classes probably became semi-nocturnal, meaning that your work notifications were probably chirping away late into the night. I know I’m not alone in having had to get stronger glasses after the four months of online school: I was even more impatient to get to Specsavers than to the hairdresser when things opened up again as summer began.
The call to ‘Boo for teachers’ from the doorstep on a Thursday night came from a well-known social media extremist, but the virtual boos are constant in the comment threads of Facebook and Twitter. So many people hate us. Even, it feels at times, the government ministers responsible for our work. We are wearing the mask of doing everything we possibly can for our students and their families. We’re even trying to give them a Christmas celebration in school: virtual carol services, seasonal charity activities, a few sweet treats, a movie afternoon… will someone, from an armchair somewhere, spitefully tap out a message saying that we’re doing this because we’re just too lazy to teach?
So what’s going on, then, behind the mask? What am I trying to say? I’m not sure I can formulate it fully any more. Maybe it’s as simple as this: teachers, everywhere, are working very hard. We are doing our best, and probably going many steps beyond what we’d thought was our best before. We are taking personal risks on behalf of our students: risks to our own health and that of our closest family members. We are making sacrifices and saying very little about it, whether it’s choosing not to see more infirm family members, completely jettisoning our social lives, or simply going without sleep. We’re trying to keep positive and we’re putting on a brave face for our students, reassuring them that everything will be all right. We’re covering our courses as we’ve always done, and doing a million extra things as well. We worked throughout the first lockdown, including part of our holidays; furlough was not an option. I won’t be the only teacher who was slightly appalled on seeing a photo of myself, last week, observing how exhausted, old, tired and downright ill I looked.
At first I thought I’d never get used to it. But I’ve become accustomed to being told that nothing that teachers do is good enough. That our place is in the wrong. But when I look around at my colleagues, in my own school and further afield, I know that nothing could be further from the truth. Teachers have never worked so hard, at such cost to their own physical and mental wellbeing.
It’s time to look behind the convenient teacher-bashing smokescreen. To appreciate the work, and strain, behind our masks.
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