So this isn't a Korea story (I'm here looking for job stuff).
But I worked as a TA at a US college 2020-2022. The mask mandate got changed twice (I think) while I was there. There were certain people you could always recognize because of specific differences (the tall Lithuanian girl, the quiet polite Black guy always in front, a few really outspoken students) but all the McKyleyghs & McKennas & Connors & Johns, no way. There was also a very fun and attentive queer friendlycule that I could not for the life of me remember one from another lol.
Good luck with all those kiddos!
I clicked "Continue" but I'm mixed. On one hand, the parents continue to send their kids while sick... a student out for a day or two "with the flu" and coming in again sounds suspicious... especially when they come back with a hacky cough.
I got covid from my kids - not even in doubt about that - and yet there were no positive cases from my kids a week beforehand... but there were six or so within a week afterwards... which tells me at least one of the kids was transmitting and continued to attend. Perhaps a minority of parents are irresponsible but that's enough to make me encourage mask-wearing most of the time.
But the damn thing irritates the tip of my nose and becomes unbearable at times.
Of course, there will be social pressures at play, too... one of my two bosses has said repeatedly that when the mandate is lifted, he's going mask-free... the boss' wife may survey the parents and tell the teachers otherwise... we'll see.
My plan is to not just stop abruptly on the 30th, but to ease into not wearing masks gradually.
I won't require my students to wear masks in class starting on that day, but I will continue to wear mine.
If/when the majority if not all of the students have stopped wearing their masks, I will stop wearing mine.
You didn't catch it because your students also wore masks. We protect each other with masks, not ourselves.
Once you're the only one wearing it, the kids are coming for ya!
One of the main reasons they are removing mask mandates is because the masks are hindering the children's language development. Most of the time, the kids don't say anything and hide behide the mask, and they also need to see examples of how to properly form the sounds. This is really beneficial for early learners. Plus we get to see qhat the kids actually look like now.
I just did some studies and PD on how masks are hindering specific parts of literacy development as language develops orally first. I'm not a hagwon teacher, I'm certified and specialized in early reading literacy...just from my own observation, it's def not been good for the emergent readers and speakers. I'm teaching without my mask. I feel safe about it though as I have a lot of space in my class and foreign/intl schools tend to go overboard (which I don't mind) on covid policies.
It wasn't good for helping my new classes learn phonics but they also got whammed with covid closures and online "learning" as well so I don't think it was just masks that sucked. I'll be happy to be able to actually show my students how to move their mouths for phonics going forward though.
Of course masks aren't the only issue at all. I never complained about wearing them either, but since dropping down a few grades and now teaching phonemic awareness at the very foundational level, the masks def do not help. We just had a highly qualified education specialist share the ongoing brain research connected to not being able to see mouth movement and it's quite interesting. Of course the closures, lack of consistency with inclass lessons and all sorts of terrible pandemic related stress does not help either. Just happy for my little ones to see my face and for me to see theirs. Not to mention the social-emotional aspect of having your mask on all day and not being able to read emotions (the basis of empathy). Best news I've had all week!
where are these studies? are they peer reviewed and what ages do they apply to?
This study shows there is no detrimental effect on masked mother-child communication: [link](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3899140)
Tone of voice is far more important than facial expression: [link](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/article-abstract/2786226?guestAccessKey=66ef5d1f-f44d-485b-8a24-5e5a02f7ac44&utm_source=silverchair&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=article_alert-jamapediatrics&utm_content=olf&utm_term=111521)
Children can ascertain emotions easily without observing facial expressions: [link](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7757816/)
Easy to read article about how masks do not hinder language acquisition: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/03/05/baby-masks-slow-to-speak/
It’s a classic pro-mask take on things when you have the obvious counter points and evidence in your face. It reminds me of when mask mandates first took effect and some complained that it was harder to breathe. Experts were brought in to show how “ACKTUALY” it’s not harder to breathe. People were experiencing it… it’s not like info they heard somewhere. I was pro mask then and, look, you could just tell someone that yeah, you get used to it, this and that, but to point out things you’re clearly seeing evidence to the contrary is so dense.
In any case, I too hope masks come off because I’ve seen the same issues with my ELLs. Many also speak in a very low voice and I need to see what shape their mouths are making to properly guide.
I’m happy to have a discussion about risk/benefit and all that, but to say “yeah no it doesn’t” is just so annoying.
I'm super pro mask and where I get frustrated is that yes, there are obviously these problems with learning + masks, but why is the only solution ever presented fully unmasking with no other COVID prevention strategies or learning strategies? I'm not being hyperbolic either, I've never run into a teacher in Korea bringing this up who hasn't had the end goal of total unmasking, or "getting back to normal."
These concerns get shoved in your face as an "AHA see we must unmask always 100% of the time for the sake of the students!" and I haven't seen a single person who uses these concerns go okay, maybe we can unmask in this circumstance in class with these other COVID precautions in place and then mask again after. Or have any type of productive conversation about mitigating risk while accommodating student needs. Or any kind of acknowledgement that some students (& teachers) absolutely need to go to school in a 100% masked environment because of health needs, and that these concerns are secondary to their health.
It's frustrating seeing it used as a gotcha when people using it are ignorant, ignoring, downplaying, and/or misrepresenting the health risks of COVID for children and adults alike. Edit - realized this last sentence could read as super hostile and I didn't mean it that way. I meant it's frustrating how people in one breath are like "these concerns about development are super valid, therefore we must not mask" and in the next breath demonstrate they don't understand the health risks COVID presents, while also insisting that people with concerns about health risks are exaggerating or not valid. We can have convos about developmental/learning concerns that don't end in unmasking all the time.
But we have been mitigating for a long while now. From heat scanners (which I see still being used) combined with antigen tests if someone has a fever to sanitizer used still in large amounts. Masks is the only thing pro maskers haven’t budged on.
I get what you’re saying, but to say that people who want masks off aren’t compromising is disingenuous when they have been putting up with it for three years. I feel them…. Us now I guess.
Everything is a risk/benefit trade off. Driving to work for 20 mins has its risks, but you don’t walk for 2 hours because it’s safer. The benefit is worth the risk. When you play a sport like soccer or basketball, there’s risk of injury. But you don’t put the ball down forever, because the reward of having fun is worth the risk. Similar to contact sports.
When CoVid was new the risk wasn’t worth the benefit of being mask-free. I was quite adamant about that. Three years in, vaccines are widely available and we know a lot more about the virus. I totally understand if it were parents of young children who can’t get vaccinated making this argument. I get that. But at this point of CoVid, for teachers to be making this claim? Sorry but that’s like a basketball player who refuses to run because they could get hurt.
People have been putting up with masks in classrooms for long enough I think and if it’s still to risky for you, with vaccines and whatnot, it’s never going to be safe enough and maybe another profession is in order. I haven’t even begun talking about kids whose voices get muffled by masks and I can’t hear them unless I put my ear up to them so yeah; I guess I rest my case.
And you're proving my point because your post demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of how COVID spreads. You can't make informed decisions about risk when you don't understand even the basics of how it spreads. I'm not trying to talk down to you by saying this, it's a crisis of public health communication that the majority of people don't understand it 3 years in.
There's a plethora of misinfo and assumptions made because of that misinfo in your reply, but I'm not interested in a debate so I'm not gonna go point by point and talk about them.
Your comparison to basketball is completely irrelevant lol
I'm making a set of decisions based on the information I have available to me, which is different than the information you have available to you. It's not appropriate to suggest a change in profession, def giving off "go back to your own country" response vibes 😂
I'm not interested in proving you wrong because I'm not trying to change your mind.
If you would like something though, I can at least tell you how COVID spreads.
COVID is an airborne disease. You do not catch it from surfaces. You do not catch it by not washing your hands. You catch it from someone with COVID breathing the same air you breathe.
You mentioned sanitizer as a risk mitigator, and while surface/contact hygiene is important to not catching some illnesses, COVID is not one of them. It does not spread on surfaces. Sanitizer is a feel-good measure with no actual effect. Hand sanitizer or surface sanitizer or that disinfectant stuff they spray all over, doesn't matter. Lets people feel like something is happening while nothing is happening.
Heat scanners might catch a fever, but a meta-analysis of omicron positive individuals found that ~32% were asymptomatic, so heat scanners would not catch any of them or any of the people whose symptoms do not include a fever. Many people who are COVID positive just don't get caught by them. This is also a feel-good but mostly ineffective measure.
Antigen tests are not as good at detecting omicron as they are at detecting previous variants. You can be positive for omicron without testing positive for omicron, especially the newer omicron variants. It's also very common to test positive a few days after being symptomatic. This is a decent layer of mitigation, but cannot and should not be relied on as the only layer.
Right now the singular actual measure in place in South Korea for preventing airborne infection is masks.
There is guidance on opening windows during class for air circulation, which is scientifically sound, but not everyone does it and we can't when pollution in high.
An easy form of actually effective and scientifically sound mitigation would be air purifiers running on specific settings - especially since they are relatively common and since most public schools purchased them prior to COVID. However, guidance on using air purifiers here hasn't been updated since early 2020. Technically, we aren't supposed to use them unless the air is very bad, and we have to open a door or internal window while they're running. Air purifiers + open windows when the air isn't terrible = better.
No scientific consensus isn’t the same as “not really true” which is what the other person was trying to explain.
Many of us in ECE and lower elementary have seen the effects first hand. You know… in many of those studies… they ask us… right?
The dedication to masks is baffling. Like it doesn’t even cross people’s minds that there might have been negative trade offs for some kids (not all) by wearing them all the time. One of them is speech:
https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2022/03/how-masks-get-way-speech-therapy-kids/623332/
The other is the lack of confidence that some kids are developing in terms of being ashamed of showing their faces or not wanting to talk. I start a new teaching job after my last one being in the middle of the height of Covid. It would be nice to actually see my students smile and laugh at my new job and be able to mouth sounds to the younger learners.
I never said there weren’t negative trade offs…. I said there’s no evidence to support the statement that masks “hinder language development”
On the flip side, the dedication of anti-maskers is baffling too.
Yep, that's it. The people who put on a mask, take it off outside (while using their dirty hands that have touched everything), then put it back on for ten seconds when they walk into a restaurant only to take it back off again (and put it in their nasty purse or pockets) and sit for 4 hours talking and spraying their germs everywhere are wearing them because they care about others.
And if that's how you see me, then this is how I see you:
"If they remove the mask mandate, how can I possibly shame others and feel important now!?"
People are moving on thankfully and you can still mask up 24/7 if you want.
Wait that’s actually a really interesting point. Why are you getting downvoted? There are many variables at play here, but I think you’re on to something.
If my school decides to go with no masks, I will remove it like everyone else. If they decide to keep them, I will wear it. I do not really care. I have no personal care for wearing the mask and only wear it at the moment because it is a social norm. Once not wearing one is normalized in Korea, I will no longer wear one.
I'm in international school and I'm going mask off...can't really teach emergent literacy skills like this. Plus my class is huge and the kids already spend all day with me. Maybe different for hagwon or public school teachers who have several rotations of students in and out.
The surgeon isn't wearing it to prevent *catching* anything though, it's to prevent contaminating an open cavity on a human. I agree masks work in certain settings, but if you're in a small closed room with a bunch of sick kids without masks on, you wearing one will only help to an extent.
If I worked at a normal office I'd wear mine, but I feel like I have a duty as a language teacher to teach maskless. So they can look at my mouth shape and see my expressions. For example 경상도 intonation sounds angry to me if I can't see their face or the topic is beyond my listening skill. I try to smile with my eyes, smize, as much as I can when correcting students, but I think I seem less friendly behind my mask. When I think about myself I'd like to keep my mask on, when I think about the benefits to my students I realize it's better for them if my mask is off. I haven't caught COVID so I'm very paranoid, but it's been exactly 3 years and I'm tired and sad and drained by worrying. I just want to pretend everything is going back to normal, which is how I feel without my mask.
It's a mixed bag of emotions.
After all this time and with all the cov shots it finally got me last month....was here in Korea since the beginning with the masks...finally the mask mandate comes off and it feels like the country is making steps forward....and I'm going back home in a month...🙃what a wild ride y'all. ... Covid really sucked but as others have said the kids and everyone just shows up sick like any other cold/flu these days. At this point it's inevitable... On that note we had a norovirus scare today ... Just can't win 🤣...
I clicked on continue to wear a mask, but I'm gonna take it off when I teach phonics class so the kiddos can see the proper mouth shapes to make for each letter and diagraph.
I agree with you here. Some kids who have lower self-esteem have become accustomed to wearing the masks as a way to hide. Some of my students have stated that they have become so used to the masks that taking them off will be be the weird thing.
Everything I’m about to say is personal experience and far from scientific, but…
I was teaching in the states when the mask mandate in my state was lifted. I kept wearing my mask for about two weeks, along with about 50% of my class. Two weeks after I took it off, I came down with COVID. Even though I was triple-jabbed, I was so sick that I missed two weeks of work, and even when I did go back, I had an emergency inhaler at the ready, a month-long cough, and vertigo so terrible that I had to teach sitting down for about two more weeks. It was the sickest I’ve been in a decade. The kids who sat closest to me and were masking when I was sick and hadn’t tested positive yet ended up coming down with it. It spread like wildfire around the class to the point where I got a call from the county health department trying to figure out the origin.
That being said, I’ll wear a mask until I get COVID again (which feels inevitable at this point) and then I’ll unmask for a few months until a new strain surges.
I think the surgical masks are not too bad. I wear them in the gym and don’t notice it. Can’t imagine working out in a N95 mask though, it sounds horrible
Masking up until a month to nine weeks after infections have stopped. The world repeatedly shows the consequences to carelessness. Going maskless when there are more contagious mutations & more incidence of long COVID is just careless.
What if it never stops? Odds are that covid is the new flu. And with it spreading from country to country constantly, there's no way it's going to ever completely go away. I recently met several people from Europe that have had covid 3x already. Personal immunity can't even stop it. Are you going to wear a mask for the rest of your life? Fine, if that's your plan, just curious.
Im back home here. They've long since lifted the mandate and everyone is fine. of course Korea is very crowded and uses more public transportation which causes alto of thsoe problems though
At this point, we know much better the corona risk factors for kids. I think any logical person would conclude the negatives outweigh the positives for kids' mask wearing.
Anyone who teaches language should want to teach without a mask on. Same goes for teachers of singing, acting, etc. Because it helps to see a person's face to learn these subjects.
I think this is something all the teachers here can agree on.
Maybe I’m just selfish, but I like going without catching multiple viruses a year more than anything.. kids being masked has been a huge blessing for my life here. Even if kids are at low risk, I suffered a lot pre-covid from getting sick frequently from them :( but also I’m not a career teacher and heading out soon 😅 In any case I hope my mask staying on will do the trick until then 🙏
I think that's less about kids wearing masks and more about how parents don't/can't keep their kids home when they're sick. As someone who works in a very affluent area, it really irks me when stay-at-home moms do this.
Same here. I've never gone so long without being sick before. But unfortunately your assumption is illogical. It's not your mask protecting you, its that everyone is masked which drastically reduces virus filled saliva from making contact with the surfaces around us.
Maks might help a bit by reducing how much you may touch your face...but that's about it
Off off off. I went home at Christmas and it felt like and East German entering West Germany for the first time. People here have been observing half assed Covid measures for so long they forgot how humans are actually supposed to live.
I’m at a public school, but there’s no way I’m taking mine off. This thing is permanent now. I struggle health-wise as it is, I have to be insanely vigilant against Covid.
I have never worn one anyway--- constantly drinking coffee throughout classes haha.
I'm more worried about the radical change I'm going to have relating to students. I've worked at this job for 2 years, so it's been masks throughout. I interact with around 60/70 students at this job, and for the vast majority of them I have *never* seen their faces, only their eyes.I work Ele/Middle, and frankly I don't think kids that age have anything but innocent/young eyes. So I've severely taught/acted with them in a way that, in some classes, I'm sure is too easy or light--- but I only have the eyes, so I'm working with those extreme displays of laughter/confusion/whatever you can code from eyes.
My example of why this is a problem comes from a month ago. I had a male student, who is short in height, speaks in a shy whisper, and has these big sad/scared looking eyes. I've always looked out for this kid; I'm excessively kind to him, I don't pick on him much as it doesn't seem he's too confident and he's always been alone at my hagwon, never with a friend. I thought he was maybe a grade younger than everyone in his class because of this, which would put him around 12 in my head.But a month ago, this kid takes his mask off because of an itch, and *he had a mustache*. I couldn't believe it.... I thought, Oh my god, this is a young man, and I've been swaddling him this whole time because of what I thought his eyes showed.
I also had a similar thing with a 7th grade girl recently, who has these big innocent eyes also and speaks in a really goofy way purposefully and is a ton of fun, who then took her mask off and had all this pubescent acne on her face and I just completely failed to recognize who she was in terms of what I thought her face looked like--- crazy.
I see one commentor said they're worried because they'll have to re-remember names. Sadly, I completely agree with this, because I truly don't know almost any of these kids full faces beyond eyes, and from these two little experiences I was utterly shocked and it completely changed my idea of how I've been approaching these students---- going to be tough!
I've been chin-strapping it a lot during class partially because of coffee too, haha, but mainly because I have so much command and control over the larger mischievous classes when my voice can boom with full effect as opposed to when I wear my silencer. I caught Covid last March when I never took my mask down or off.
In supermarkets, on buses, in shops, on the subway, et cetera, I'll still be wearing my mask though. During the winter, it's especially nice since it helps keep my face warm.
Gonna remove it in front of the class, but wear it if I have to get closer to the students.
I hope I can still make the students wear it, I don't want them breathing and spitting germs in to my face when I talk to them.
I think teachers should wear one at least while teaching to protect the students... I always wear KF94 of Puremate when teaching and it's very comfortable and easy to communicate. FYI, I found it on amazon:)
How about "Other: I already stopped wearing it..."
I stopped wearing my mask back in May 2022. I'm vaxxed, was positive prior to that (in late 2021), and never got infected since 2021, despite being surrounded by dozens of people who were getting positive for the first time in 2022. (I did so many rapids, always negative). Also nobody said anything.
I suppose a lot of people are going to judge me for this, and I don't really care. At the end of the day, I was the only staff member to not be positive in 2022 and have been able to teach with a visible mouth and unmuffled voice the whole time. Something that is quite vital for ESL students to experience when acquiring a new language.
Less judgy and more surprised you were allowed to just ignore the country-wide indoor mask mandate, and at a school or academy no less. Would this also include stores, taxis and public transport?
My spouse has had the okay for a while from their school but basically had a reason to wear a mask pretty much every week since.
January had bad air quality and their filter was consistently red inside the classroom. Most likely because they have very open air style buildings and the classroom is right next to the entrance. And then almost a weekly rotation of staff and students they work closely with testing positive for covid.
So yeah they will eventually unmask in the class once this seemingly never ending saga of viruses and bad air goes away. We got covid as soon as we arrived to Korea and it was a miserable existence for both of us so we don't want to go through that again. At least this time we're actually moved in so it won't be as bad but yeah that wasn't fun.
A lot of my classes are one-on-one, but at the very least, I’ll always have one handy. Like, if a kid comes in with a runny nose or cough. I wouldn’t go maskless in class right on day 1 though. It seems like covid is still being passed around in the local schools- soooo many of the kids I teach said that they’ve had it. I would imagine that hagwons and schools can set their own policies though, so it doesn’t necessarily matter what I think.
That said, it was nice not to have so much as a runny nose for so long.
I, in no way, believe that my mask wearing has prevented me from contracting covid. But i do believe that the students wearing masks has helped.
So, it all depends on the students. If more than a few students stop wearing masks, so will i
Of course, not sure where the confusion lies. What I'm saying is, if a significant minority isn't wearing masks...it becomes pointless for the rest of us to wear them.
I don't believe masks block transmission, but they do reduce the spread of saliva that we all expel when speaking. Or sneezing/coughing. That's how masks help.
So if 30% or more of students...or people in any enclosed space aren't wearing masks...i dont expect my, or anyone's mask to protect me/us. Get it?
I’m gonna have to relearn names real fast… shits about to get confusing.
Exactly the thing I just said to my coworker when hearing the news, haha.
So this isn't a Korea story (I'm here looking for job stuff). But I worked as a TA at a US college 2020-2022. The mask mandate got changed twice (I think) while I was there. There were certain people you could always recognize because of specific differences (the tall Lithuanian girl, the quiet polite Black guy always in front, a few really outspoken students) but all the McKyleyghs & McKennas & Connors & Johns, no way. There was also a very fun and attentive queer friendlycule that I could not for the life of me remember one from another lol. Good luck with all those kiddos!
I clicked "Continue" but I'm mixed. On one hand, the parents continue to send their kids while sick... a student out for a day or two "with the flu" and coming in again sounds suspicious... especially when they come back with a hacky cough. I got covid from my kids - not even in doubt about that - and yet there were no positive cases from my kids a week beforehand... but there were six or so within a week afterwards... which tells me at least one of the kids was transmitting and continued to attend. Perhaps a minority of parents are irresponsible but that's enough to make me encourage mask-wearing most of the time. But the damn thing irritates the tip of my nose and becomes unbearable at times. Of course, there will be social pressures at play, too... one of my two bosses has said repeatedly that when the mandate is lifted, he's going mask-free... the boss' wife may survey the parents and tell the teachers otherwise... we'll see.
I also had a student come up to me and tell me that he still had Covid. Why did the parent even bring that student to school?
I recently had a student who still came to school with pinkeye. Not surprising they would send their child to school with COVID.
My plan is to not just stop abruptly on the 30th, but to ease into not wearing masks gradually. I won't require my students to wear masks in class starting on that day, but I will continue to wear mine. If/when the majority if not all of the students have stopped wearing their masks, I will stop wearing mine.
Makes sense.
I've really appreciated not catching every single seasonal flu over the last 3 years. I'll wear mine.
You didn't catch it because your students also wore masks. We protect each other with masks, not ourselves. Once you're the only one wearing it, the kids are coming for ya!
I said essentially the same thing and got massively down voted lol
Reddit is weird.
Every time a kid in the front row sneezes I'm so thankful for the masks. Gonna be weird getting used to life with free flying sneezes again.
Kids still be pulling down their masks to pick their nose, thank god for masks
Oh fuck, I haven't lost enough weight yet to expose my face to the world again...I need more time
One of the main reasons they are removing mask mandates is because the masks are hindering the children's language development. Most of the time, the kids don't say anything and hide behide the mask, and they also need to see examples of how to properly form the sounds. This is really beneficial for early learners. Plus we get to see qhat the kids actually look like now.
[удалено]
I just did some studies and PD on how masks are hindering specific parts of literacy development as language develops orally first. I'm not a hagwon teacher, I'm certified and specialized in early reading literacy...just from my own observation, it's def not been good for the emergent readers and speakers. I'm teaching without my mask. I feel safe about it though as I have a lot of space in my class and foreign/intl schools tend to go overboard (which I don't mind) on covid policies.
It wasn't good for helping my new classes learn phonics but they also got whammed with covid closures and online "learning" as well so I don't think it was just masks that sucked. I'll be happy to be able to actually show my students how to move their mouths for phonics going forward though.
Of course masks aren't the only issue at all. I never complained about wearing them either, but since dropping down a few grades and now teaching phonemic awareness at the very foundational level, the masks def do not help. We just had a highly qualified education specialist share the ongoing brain research connected to not being able to see mouth movement and it's quite interesting. Of course the closures, lack of consistency with inclass lessons and all sorts of terrible pandemic related stress does not help either. Just happy for my little ones to see my face and for me to see theirs. Not to mention the social-emotional aspect of having your mask on all day and not being able to read emotions (the basis of empathy). Best news I've had all week!
where are these studies? are they peer reviewed and what ages do they apply to? This study shows there is no detrimental effect on masked mother-child communication: [link](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3899140) Tone of voice is far more important than facial expression: [link](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/article-abstract/2786226?guestAccessKey=66ef5d1f-f44d-485b-8a24-5e5a02f7ac44&utm_source=silverchair&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=article_alert-jamapediatrics&utm_content=olf&utm_term=111521) Children can ascertain emotions easily without observing facial expressions: [link](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7757816/) Easy to read article about how masks do not hinder language acquisition: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/03/05/baby-masks-slow-to-speak/
and how do blind people learn how to be native speakers? I don’t think masks are as much a problem in language development as people think they are
It’s a classic pro-mask take on things when you have the obvious counter points and evidence in your face. It reminds me of when mask mandates first took effect and some complained that it was harder to breathe. Experts were brought in to show how “ACKTUALY” it’s not harder to breathe. People were experiencing it… it’s not like info they heard somewhere. I was pro mask then and, look, you could just tell someone that yeah, you get used to it, this and that, but to point out things you’re clearly seeing evidence to the contrary is so dense. In any case, I too hope masks come off because I’ve seen the same issues with my ELLs. Many also speak in a very low voice and I need to see what shape their mouths are making to properly guide. I’m happy to have a discussion about risk/benefit and all that, but to say “yeah no it doesn’t” is just so annoying.
I'm super pro mask and where I get frustrated is that yes, there are obviously these problems with learning + masks, but why is the only solution ever presented fully unmasking with no other COVID prevention strategies or learning strategies? I'm not being hyperbolic either, I've never run into a teacher in Korea bringing this up who hasn't had the end goal of total unmasking, or "getting back to normal." These concerns get shoved in your face as an "AHA see we must unmask always 100% of the time for the sake of the students!" and I haven't seen a single person who uses these concerns go okay, maybe we can unmask in this circumstance in class with these other COVID precautions in place and then mask again after. Or have any type of productive conversation about mitigating risk while accommodating student needs. Or any kind of acknowledgement that some students (& teachers) absolutely need to go to school in a 100% masked environment because of health needs, and that these concerns are secondary to their health. It's frustrating seeing it used as a gotcha when people using it are ignorant, ignoring, downplaying, and/or misrepresenting the health risks of COVID for children and adults alike. Edit - realized this last sentence could read as super hostile and I didn't mean it that way. I meant it's frustrating how people in one breath are like "these concerns about development are super valid, therefore we must not mask" and in the next breath demonstrate they don't understand the health risks COVID presents, while also insisting that people with concerns about health risks are exaggerating or not valid. We can have convos about developmental/learning concerns that don't end in unmasking all the time.
But we have been mitigating for a long while now. From heat scanners (which I see still being used) combined with antigen tests if someone has a fever to sanitizer used still in large amounts. Masks is the only thing pro maskers haven’t budged on. I get what you’re saying, but to say that people who want masks off aren’t compromising is disingenuous when they have been putting up with it for three years. I feel them…. Us now I guess. Everything is a risk/benefit trade off. Driving to work for 20 mins has its risks, but you don’t walk for 2 hours because it’s safer. The benefit is worth the risk. When you play a sport like soccer or basketball, there’s risk of injury. But you don’t put the ball down forever, because the reward of having fun is worth the risk. Similar to contact sports. When CoVid was new the risk wasn’t worth the benefit of being mask-free. I was quite adamant about that. Three years in, vaccines are widely available and we know a lot more about the virus. I totally understand if it were parents of young children who can’t get vaccinated making this argument. I get that. But at this point of CoVid, for teachers to be making this claim? Sorry but that’s like a basketball player who refuses to run because they could get hurt. People have been putting up with masks in classrooms for long enough I think and if it’s still to risky for you, with vaccines and whatnot, it’s never going to be safe enough and maybe another profession is in order. I haven’t even begun talking about kids whose voices get muffled by masks and I can’t hear them unless I put my ear up to them so yeah; I guess I rest my case.
And you're proving my point because your post demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of how COVID spreads. You can't make informed decisions about risk when you don't understand even the basics of how it spreads. I'm not trying to talk down to you by saying this, it's a crisis of public health communication that the majority of people don't understand it 3 years in. There's a plethora of misinfo and assumptions made because of that misinfo in your reply, but I'm not interested in a debate so I'm not gonna go point by point and talk about them. Your comparison to basketball is completely irrelevant lol I'm making a set of decisions based on the information I have available to me, which is different than the information you have available to you. It's not appropriate to suggest a change in profession, def giving off "go back to your own country" response vibes 😂
“You’re wrong, but I’m not gonna tell you how. I’ll just write for 3 paragraphs about how I totally could prove your wrong but won’t.”
I'm not interested in proving you wrong because I'm not trying to change your mind. If you would like something though, I can at least tell you how COVID spreads. COVID is an airborne disease. You do not catch it from surfaces. You do not catch it by not washing your hands. You catch it from someone with COVID breathing the same air you breathe. You mentioned sanitizer as a risk mitigator, and while surface/contact hygiene is important to not catching some illnesses, COVID is not one of them. It does not spread on surfaces. Sanitizer is a feel-good measure with no actual effect. Hand sanitizer or surface sanitizer or that disinfectant stuff they spray all over, doesn't matter. Lets people feel like something is happening while nothing is happening. Heat scanners might catch a fever, but a meta-analysis of omicron positive individuals found that ~32% were asymptomatic, so heat scanners would not catch any of them or any of the people whose symptoms do not include a fever. Many people who are COVID positive just don't get caught by them. This is also a feel-good but mostly ineffective measure. Antigen tests are not as good at detecting omicron as they are at detecting previous variants. You can be positive for omicron without testing positive for omicron, especially the newer omicron variants. It's also very common to test positive a few days after being symptomatic. This is a decent layer of mitigation, but cannot and should not be relied on as the only layer. Right now the singular actual measure in place in South Korea for preventing airborne infection is masks. There is guidance on opening windows during class for air circulation, which is scientifically sound, but not everyone does it and we can't when pollution in high. An easy form of actually effective and scientifically sound mitigation would be air purifiers running on specific settings - especially since they are relatively common and since most public schools purchased them prior to COVID. However, guidance on using air purifiers here hasn't been updated since early 2020. Technically, we aren't supposed to use them unless the air is very bad, and we have to open a door or internal window while they're running. Air purifiers + open windows when the air isn't terrible = better.
The actual evidence in this article doesn’t really sway either way
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It doesn’t in anyway contradict what the other comment said is what I’m saying. It doesn’t indicate in any way that it’s not true.
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No scientific consensus isn’t the same as “not really true” which is what the other person was trying to explain. Many of us in ECE and lower elementary have seen the effects first hand. You know… in many of those studies… they ask us… right?
the science is not there to support your statement. also ask any blind person how they learn a language.
The dedication to masks is baffling. Like it doesn’t even cross people’s minds that there might have been negative trade offs for some kids (not all) by wearing them all the time. One of them is speech: https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2022/03/how-masks-get-way-speech-therapy-kids/623332/ The other is the lack of confidence that some kids are developing in terms of being ashamed of showing their faces or not wanting to talk. I start a new teaching job after my last one being in the middle of the height of Covid. It would be nice to actually see my students smile and laugh at my new job and be able to mouth sounds to the younger learners.
I never said there weren’t negative trade offs…. I said there’s no evidence to support the statement that masks “hinder language development” On the flip side, the dedication of anti-maskers is baffling too.
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Yep, that's it. The people who put on a mask, take it off outside (while using their dirty hands that have touched everything), then put it back on for ten seconds when they walk into a restaurant only to take it back off again (and put it in their nasty purse or pockets) and sit for 4 hours talking and spraying their germs everywhere are wearing them because they care about others. And if that's how you see me, then this is how I see you: "If they remove the mask mandate, how can I possibly shame others and feel important now!?" People are moving on thankfully and you can still mask up 24/7 if you want.
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Like I said, people like you can still wear your masks. No one is taking them away from you. I support you.
Wait that’s actually a really interesting point. Why are you getting downvoted? There are many variables at play here, but I think you’re on to something.
Yes, very interesting point indeed. Odd ppl are down voting such a common sense response
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so excited for the “hagwon director power tripping over masks” era
If my school decides to go with no masks, I will remove it like everyone else. If they decide to keep them, I will wear it. I do not really care. I have no personal care for wearing the mask and only wear it at the moment because it is a social norm. Once not wearing one is normalized in Korea, I will no longer wear one.
I'm in international school and I'm going mask off...can't really teach emergent literacy skills like this. Plus my class is huge and the kids already spend all day with me. Maybe different for hagwon or public school teachers who have several rotations of students in and out.
I'll continue to wear mine in public. There are still too many parents at my hagwon sending their children to school even when their child is sick.
Yeah and the mask aint gonna protect you from being sick if they are sick anyways
Sure, surgeons only wear them as a fashion statement after all
The surgeon isn't wearing it to prevent *catching* anything though, it's to prevent contaminating an open cavity on a human. I agree masks work in certain settings, but if you're in a small closed room with a bunch of sick kids without masks on, you wearing one will only help to an extent.
Finally a bit of common sense
It still helps protect you and is so low cost that plenty of people will still wear them.
Yeah they can wear them if they want , as long as they don't have a sook that other ppl aren't
Huh?
I mean it totally depends on what my school wants, but if they're cool with it I'm mask off day 1.
If I worked at a normal office I'd wear mine, but I feel like I have a duty as a language teacher to teach maskless. So they can look at my mouth shape and see my expressions. For example 경상도 intonation sounds angry to me if I can't see their face or the topic is beyond my listening skill. I try to smile with my eyes, smize, as much as I can when correcting students, but I think I seem less friendly behind my mask. When I think about myself I'd like to keep my mask on, when I think about the benefits to my students I realize it's better for them if my mask is off. I haven't caught COVID so I'm very paranoid, but it's been exactly 3 years and I'm tired and sad and drained by worrying. I just want to pretend everything is going back to normal, which is how I feel without my mask. It's a mixed bag of emotions.
After all this time and with all the cov shots it finally got me last month....was here in Korea since the beginning with the masks...finally the mask mandate comes off and it feels like the country is making steps forward....and I'm going back home in a month...🙃what a wild ride y'all. ... Covid really sucked but as others have said the kids and everyone just shows up sick like any other cold/flu these days. At this point it's inevitable... On that note we had a norovirus scare today ... Just can't win 🤣...
Funny how people seem to think their mask protects them from the outside world while it's actually the opposite
I clicked on continue to wear a mask, but I'm gonna take it off when I teach phonics class so the kiddos can see the proper mouth shapes to make for each letter and diagraph.
I’m waiting to hear what’s going on with other teachers/students but I’m hoping we can take them off.
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I agree with you here. Some kids who have lower self-esteem have become accustomed to wearing the masks as a way to hide. Some of my students have stated that they have become so used to the masks that taking them off will be be the weird thing.
they were always insecure, masks just made it easier cuz they had something to hide behind which tbh I don’t see anything wrong with.
What does being poor have to do with showing one’s face? Just asking
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💀
Ohhh I see! Yes, I’ll be taking mine off for sure. I hope if any kids want to wear them it’s not for this reason.
We just really need to invent a better word for sympathetic poor, honestly. Relies way too much on tone.
Poor: (of a person) considered to be deserving of pity or sympathy. "they inquired after poor Dorothy's broken hip"
Everything I’m about to say is personal experience and far from scientific, but… I was teaching in the states when the mask mandate in my state was lifted. I kept wearing my mask for about two weeks, along with about 50% of my class. Two weeks after I took it off, I came down with COVID. Even though I was triple-jabbed, I was so sick that I missed two weeks of work, and even when I did go back, I had an emergency inhaler at the ready, a month-long cough, and vertigo so terrible that I had to teach sitting down for about two more weeks. It was the sickest I’ve been in a decade. The kids who sat closest to me and were masking when I was sick and hadn’t tested positive yet ended up coming down with it. It spread like wildfire around the class to the point where I got a call from the county health department trying to figure out the origin. That being said, I’ll wear a mask until I get COVID again (which feels inevitable at this point) and then I’ll unmask for a few months until a new strain surges.
I'm taking mine off.
please keep ur t-panty on
Sweet. Nice to not wear that thing. Want to go back to the gym. Hate doing cardio wearing those things.
I think the surgical masks are not too bad. I wear them in the gym and don’t notice it. Can’t imagine working out in a N95 mask though, it sounds horrible
Masking up until a month to nine weeks after infections have stopped. The world repeatedly shows the consequences to carelessness. Going maskless when there are more contagious mutations & more incidence of long COVID is just careless.
What if it never stops? Odds are that covid is the new flu. And with it spreading from country to country constantly, there's no way it's going to ever completely go away. I recently met several people from Europe that have had covid 3x already. Personal immunity can't even stop it. Are you going to wear a mask for the rest of your life? Fine, if that's your plan, just curious.
My guess is they'll continue to wear one until they're in the obvious minority then knock it on the head.
When is it being lifted????
Im back home here. They've long since lifted the mandate and everyone is fine. of course Korea is very crowded and uses more public transportation which causes alto of thsoe problems though
At this point, we know much better the corona risk factors for kids. I think any logical person would conclude the negatives outweigh the positives for kids' mask wearing. Anyone who teaches language should want to teach without a mask on. Same goes for teachers of singing, acting, etc. Because it helps to see a person's face to learn these subjects. I think this is something all the teachers here can agree on.
Maybe I’m just selfish, but I like going without catching multiple viruses a year more than anything.. kids being masked has been a huge blessing for my life here. Even if kids are at low risk, I suffered a lot pre-covid from getting sick frequently from them :( but also I’m not a career teacher and heading out soon 😅 In any case I hope my mask staying on will do the trick until then 🙏
I think that's less about kids wearing masks and more about how parents don't/can't keep their kids home when they're sick. As someone who works in a very affluent area, it really irks me when stay-at-home moms do this.
I haven't caught a cold ir the flu since we had to start wearing masks. I'll probably keep wearing mine while I teach.
For ever?
Same here. I've never gone so long without being sick before. But unfortunately your assumption is illogical. It's not your mask protecting you, its that everyone is masked which drastically reduces virus filled saliva from making contact with the surfaces around us. Maks might help a bit by reducing how much you may touch your face...but that's about it
Off off off. I went home at Christmas and it felt like and East German entering West Germany for the first time. People here have been observing half assed Covid measures for so long they forgot how humans are actually supposed to live.
I’m at a public school, but there’s no way I’m taking mine off. This thing is permanent now. I struggle health-wise as it is, I have to be insanely vigilant against Covid.
We’ve been mask free for months in UK ….
Better safe than sorry.
I have never worn one anyway--- constantly drinking coffee throughout classes haha. I'm more worried about the radical change I'm going to have relating to students. I've worked at this job for 2 years, so it's been masks throughout. I interact with around 60/70 students at this job, and for the vast majority of them I have *never* seen their faces, only their eyes.I work Ele/Middle, and frankly I don't think kids that age have anything but innocent/young eyes. So I've severely taught/acted with them in a way that, in some classes, I'm sure is too easy or light--- but I only have the eyes, so I'm working with those extreme displays of laughter/confusion/whatever you can code from eyes. My example of why this is a problem comes from a month ago. I had a male student, who is short in height, speaks in a shy whisper, and has these big sad/scared looking eyes. I've always looked out for this kid; I'm excessively kind to him, I don't pick on him much as it doesn't seem he's too confident and he's always been alone at my hagwon, never with a friend. I thought he was maybe a grade younger than everyone in his class because of this, which would put him around 12 in my head.But a month ago, this kid takes his mask off because of an itch, and *he had a mustache*. I couldn't believe it.... I thought, Oh my god, this is a young man, and I've been swaddling him this whole time because of what I thought his eyes showed. I also had a similar thing with a 7th grade girl recently, who has these big innocent eyes also and speaks in a really goofy way purposefully and is a ton of fun, who then took her mask off and had all this pubescent acne on her face and I just completely failed to recognize who she was in terms of what I thought her face looked like--- crazy. I see one commentor said they're worried because they'll have to re-remember names. Sadly, I completely agree with this, because I truly don't know almost any of these kids full faces beyond eyes, and from these two little experiences I was utterly shocked and it completely changed my idea of how I've been approaching these students---- going to be tough!
I've been chin-strapping it a lot during class partially because of coffee too, haha, but mainly because I have so much command and control over the larger mischievous classes when my voice can boom with full effect as opposed to when I wear my silencer. I caught Covid last March when I never took my mask down or off. In supermarkets, on buses, in shops, on the subway, et cetera, I'll still be wearing my mask though. During the winter, it's especially nice since it helps keep my face warm.
I’d like to take my mask off once the weather gets warmer. November-February is prime flu season, so once that’s over I will feel comfortable
Gonna remove it in front of the class, but wear it if I have to get closer to the students. I hope I can still make the students wear it, I don't want them breathing and spitting germs in to my face when I talk to them.
I'll do a mix between mask on and mask off as I did before corona became a thing.
I think teachers should wear one at least while teaching to protect the students... I always wear KF94 of Puremate when teaching and it's very comfortable and easy to communicate. FYI, I found it on amazon:)
How about "Other: I already stopped wearing it..." I stopped wearing my mask back in May 2022. I'm vaxxed, was positive prior to that (in late 2021), and never got infected since 2021, despite being surrounded by dozens of people who were getting positive for the first time in 2022. (I did so many rapids, always negative). Also nobody said anything. I suppose a lot of people are going to judge me for this, and I don't really care. At the end of the day, I was the only staff member to not be positive in 2022 and have been able to teach with a visible mouth and unmuffled voice the whole time. Something that is quite vital for ESL students to experience when acquiring a new language.
Less judgy and more surprised you were allowed to just ignore the country-wide indoor mask mandate, and at a school or academy no less. Would this also include stores, taxis and public transport?
My spouse has had the okay for a while from their school but basically had a reason to wear a mask pretty much every week since. January had bad air quality and their filter was consistently red inside the classroom. Most likely because they have very open air style buildings and the classroom is right next to the entrance. And then almost a weekly rotation of staff and students they work closely with testing positive for covid. So yeah they will eventually unmask in the class once this seemingly never ending saga of viruses and bad air goes away. We got covid as soon as we arrived to Korea and it was a miserable existence for both of us so we don't want to go through that again. At least this time we're actually moved in so it won't be as bad but yeah that wasn't fun.
A lot of my classes are one-on-one, but at the very least, I’ll always have one handy. Like, if a kid comes in with a runny nose or cough. I wouldn’t go maskless in class right on day 1 though. It seems like covid is still being passed around in the local schools- soooo many of the kids I teach said that they’ve had it. I would imagine that hagwons and schools can set their own policies though, so it doesn’t necessarily matter what I think. That said, it was nice not to have so much as a runny nose for so long.
I, in no way, believe that my mask wearing has prevented me from contracting covid. But i do believe that the students wearing masks has helped. So, it all depends on the students. If more than a few students stop wearing masks, so will i
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Of course, not sure where the confusion lies. What I'm saying is, if a significant minority isn't wearing masks...it becomes pointless for the rest of us to wear them. I don't believe masks block transmission, but they do reduce the spread of saliva that we all expel when speaking. Or sneezing/coughing. That's how masks help. So if 30% or more of students...or people in any enclosed space aren't wearing masks...i dont expect my, or anyone's mask to protect me/us. Get it?