The eyes don't have it: Masks upset classroom communication

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-produced “wah wah” of the Charlie Brown TV specials while protecting themselves and their students from the 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 how they 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 expressive with my eyes. He's looking at me and I'm not sure if he thinks I'm mad 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 all wearing masks.

It also will be more difficult for student to...