Music Monday - Masked Music Teaching

In Western Australia, teachers and students returned to school today after a snap lockdown of the Perth and South-West for the week before – the week which should have been the first week of term. 

For this past week, Western Australians have been very diligent about mask wearing. After 10 months of not needing to wear masks, it was almost as if we as a community thought, “Right, let’s put these masks on and make sure we don’t have further community spread”. And this was based on one case of Covid-19. 

The strategy warranted an article in the New York Times last week.

At the end of the week, after no further cases emerging, the South-West region had all restrictions lifted and the Perth region had lockdown lifted, but with some restrictions – masks to be worn in all public places, 4 square metres distancing between people in any venue and the maintenance of 1.5 metres between people elsewhere.

And so, I returned to my secondary school singing teacher position today.

Music teachers of wind and voice had been given permission to have their students out of masks during lessons. I found that a challenge, given the ongoing research into the aerosol transmission of Covid-19 and the heightened level of aerosol involved in singing. I elected for my students to remain masked.

Each lesson started with an acknowledgement that our masked situation was a good reminder of what life has been like for most of the rest of the world for nearly a year. The students got it. I got it. Masks are incredibly annoying.

Because it was week one, I was able to avoid a certain amount of singing by talking through the course outlines and assessment procedures. I recorded backing tracks on piano for those students who needed it. We sang some muffled scales through our masks. One group tackled their first set song. The lessons were not significantly different from what I would usually do in week one.

One aspect of mask wearing that I hadn’t thought of is how little you see of a person’s features in a mask. I met a new class of year 8 students and really would not recognise them again next week – masked or unmasked.

It is highly likely that we will all remove our masks in WA at 12.01am on Sunday the 14th February. If so we remain incredibly fortunate and should not forget it.

But what if we had to do many weeks of music teaching in masks? Class music is fine. Many instruments are fine. I guess I’m asking my voice and wind instrument colleagues from elsewhere about strategies they are using. What do you do?