2020 IN A FACE MASK

Who doesn’t miss the smiles of their students? Undoubtedly, the pandemic has taught us to communicate through our eyes, but at the cost of the possibility of seeing beautiful smiles that many times made our unbearable days a little more bearable.

But we are resilient and as the expression says: “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade” and this is precisely what we have managed to do so far by turning the mask into an instrument that in a way represents our personality as well as our identity.

Recently, our colleague Laura Sexton, who besides being an amazing world language teacher is a very talented artist, decided to make portraits of teachers wearing masks representing their schools. In my opinion, with this project, Laura has tried to make an important point; although we can no longer see smiles or full facial expressions of each other,but at the same time, we have the opportunity to express ourselves through the mask we choose to wear. Teachers love their profession and we are fully committed to the institutions we work for, and in each portrait drawn by Laura Sexton, you can see this pride, determination and the resilience that each one of us carries within ourselves despite the difficulties that we have been facing as educators lately because of the pandemic.

Here we can see some of the portraits made by Laura. You can find Laura´s art on Facebook, or Instagram as @SXTNimpressions.

We do not know what 2021 has in store for us, but we do know what 2020 had for us. We know that it was not easy, but at the same time we have learnt a lot about life. Will the things that we learnt  in 2020 help us deal with any situation in 2021 in a better way ? Let’s take the advantage of the masks and propose to our students an activity in which they can express themselves through their masks.

Activity: My 2020 mask (Can be done in the TL)

Objective: Design a mask that portrays all the important things that each student learnt in 2020.

Procedure: We give each student a template of a mask, this can be on a sheet of paper or digitally. We shall talk about the challenges and difficulties that we had to endure in 2020 due to the pandemic,next we ask them to decorate the mask with things that symbolize those difficulties. We shall tell them that we are doing this activity to remember that difficulties make us stronger and that the problems are events that help us have a better life in the future.

After decorating their mask, each student can present it to the class virtually and explain each item they included in it.

Use THIS royalty free face mask drawing in any Google digital tool such as Google Slides, Google Draw, Google Documents or Jamboard.

Little by little masks invaded the world and in the same way we became used to living with them. We know that behind every mask there is a hidden expression, perhaps a suppressed smile, perhaps a sad gesture. Let’s help each other make 2021 a fantastic year.

Hope you liked this post. I welcome questions and kind comments here or to diego@srojeda.com

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