Are Masks In Our Future?

Administrator Interviews

I started by interviewing the two people we associate with being in charge the most. Mr. Skobel and Mr. Wallace met me in Mr. Skobel’s office, and we had a serious discussion on the topic of masks and Covid-19 in general. I first asked the most basic question I had written down. “How would you rate your knowledge on covid and the effectiveness of masks? 1 being not very good, 10 being I know a lot. How do you evaluate this?” Both Wallace and Skobel said they’d rate it about a 3. Skobel added onto his answer by saying, “I leave that to the professionals.” Which leads us to our next question, “As of August 23, it was rumoured that there were up to 60 kids quarantined. Many students are curious why a mask mandate hasn’t already been put in place. What’s your knowledge on this?” Both sat and thought for a moment before getting the words to come together. Mr. Wallace responded, “The thing about masks, and implementing them, is it’s not up to us. All of our [direction] comes from the Johnson County Board of Health.” Mr. Skobel expanded on this saying, “We have no direction from them yet; however, we do have a meeting with Dr. Edsell at 1 o’clock today to discuss the number of absences. We can say that the number of actual positive cases is low and the [transmission] rate at school is low. Most positive cases come from outside of school [sports, friends, family events].”

I also spoke to Dr. Edsell about the possibility of a mask mandate. When asked about his knowledge of Covid and the effectiveness of masks he stated, “I’d say an 8, modestly. Since Covid started to affect us in March 2020, it has consumed my life trying to find a way to keep our school and students safe.” Dr. Edsell hasn’t stopped doing research, talking to health departments, and other schools, to find ways to keep us healthy and safe. For now that means tracking positive cases and the spread in school. Edsell stated, “... if positive cases are above 4% we have to require masks, when [or if] the cases go below a 4% for over 5 days consecutively we can stop wearing masks again.” As of now (September 8) the Middle School is still wearing masks, as their positivity rates were above 5-8%. So far the highschool has an approximate 2% positivity rate. I also mentioned remote learning to Dr. Edsell and asked if our situation would be more similar to the conditions in March of 2020 or fall of 2020. “Our situation is a lot more similar to last fall. We are learning how to adapt more, and we’ve learned our best ways [personally] to slow the spread. We are staying in school. The remote learning was not effective and learning drops because we’re not experts in that.” Mr. Skobel, however, commented that we are not experts yet.

Teacher Interviews

After speaking with Indian Creek administrators, I spoke with two teachers whose classes are heavily impacted by masks.

Mrs. Carlson, a Spanish teacher at Indian Creek High School, and I spoke in her classroom about the effects of masks in a foreign language class. My first question to Mrs. Carlson was, “How do masks affect your classroom? Do you think it hurts the learning process?” “Absolutely. Personally, I’m more comfortable with teaching without a mask. It’s important for my students to see my mouth move when learning new words. It helps with learning how to pronounce words, especially in a foreign language.” As a follow up I asked, “Do you think it affects your ability to know how much your students actually understand?” “Yes, the masks muffle their words, leading me to question if they’re pronouncing the words right.

I also spoke with Mrs. Heavilin, the High School band director. Playing the majority of instruments requires students to push air out of their lungs, which results in both the breath from their lungs and, sometimes, the spit from their mouths to fly out of the instrument. When asked how they prevented this from happening Mrs. Heavilin told me they put “masks'' over the instruments. This doesn’t muffle the sound drastically but still isn’t preferable. When the students aren’t playing instruments, they would be required to wear their masks (if a mask mandate were to be implemented). I also asked Mrs. Heavilin how much she knew about Covid, and how she had learned so much. “I’d say, on a scale of 1-10, I’d rank about a 10. I’ve read multiple college studies on students and bands, attended seminars and listened to the people who are experts.”

Both teachers agreed that wearing the masks causes some type of challenge but there are solutions. They know that wearing masks is worth it if it keeps their students safe.