Picture of the Mind

 

Teaching for the first time, during COVID-19, has already produced its challenges in unprecedented ways. Unlike many of my cohorts, I elected to teach my GTA classes in person, as online-only classes disorient me when it comes to gauging students’ attention. But teaching in person has offered quite a similar obstacle.

While the concept of wearing a mask in public is nothing new at this point, wearing one while instructing a body of students who are also wearing masks proved itself a challenge immediately. The great Roman scholar Marcus Cicero once stated, “The face is a picture of the mind with the eyes as its interpreter.” And to this point, it’s wild how much difference a mouth makes. Only being able to see a person’s eyes creates an uncanny valley effect where you might think you’re seeing a different emotion or intention than the one being displayed – it could be a real smile or a fake smile. So to this effect, students peering at me through vacant stares from the backend of (seemingly-infinite) rows of desks has me questioning if anything I’m saying reaches them, mentally or spatially. That same stare can mean a hundred different things: they’re lost in their own thoughts, maybe preoccupied with whatever they did last weekend or are looking forward to doing this one. They probably just haven’t gotten enough sleep and my examples of how to construct a thesis don’t hold enough tangible sway to wake them. Or perhaps my enunciations aren’t clear from inside of my own mask. Or maybe my insecurities are trying to get the jump on me – students are bored at the constant drone of your under-stimulating voice – they have a distaste for the shirt you’re wearing – they just don’t like you. Swallowing these fears from moment to moment can be tough, but I’m getting better at mentally pushing through the awkward silences, learning to not let them faze me because they’re only natural.

In regards to Cicero’s quote, it’s hard to get a window into the mind when that window’s bottom half is covered up (who said eyes were the windows to the soul? Lies.) I guess it takes a pandemic to recognize just how uniquely every facial twitch, wrinkle of the lips, or deadened yawn are all working in unison to excavate and convey the moving, thinking, reacting soul underneath.

Day one already feels like it was months ago, where I mumbled and stuttered over every line of the syllabus while a room of masked youths stared in uncertainty at their masked dictator; all the masks blanketed the room in an oppressive, even sinister atmosphere. Or maybe I’ve been watching too much Watchmen. But a few weeks in, and the off-kilter tension of those first classes seems to have subsided as I get to know my students. Sure, I won’t ever be able to tell just how much I’m actually getting through to them than I would in a pre-COVID-19 world, but so far, they’re engaged and doing the work so I guess I can’t ask for more than that. Still though, if the face truly is a picture of the mind, I eagerly await the day (if it comes) I can interpret the whole picture.

 

 

J Q. Salazar is a South Florida native. After doing a four-year stint in the US Air Force, he earned an AAS in Screenwriting for Film at the Colorado Film School and a Bachelor’s in English at CU Denver. He is currently attending FAU for an MFA in Creative Writing. His first publication can be found here.