Masks at school drop off....

[QueenofmyPrinces]

My son is in Year 2 and during school drop-off there is a 1 way system and staggered starting times to allow for 2m spacing. There are usually about 3 members of staff manning the gate to make sure the correct distance is kept between parents.

However, my son was sent home tonight with a letter from the teacher to say that all parents are now required to wear masks at pick up and drop offs.

I don’t know how I feel about it....ok, it’s no hardship at all, but it feels like now it’s yet another thing we are being instructed to do. Day by day it feels like we are losing more of ourselves.

I know that sounds dramatic and in the middle of a pandemic it sounds ridiculous....but it’s just never ending isn’t it.

Our children are all mixing with each other every day, with no social distancing, yet we have to wear a mask to follow a one way system that keeps parents 2m apart anyway that takes only about a minute to enter the school grounds, drop the child off and leave the grounds.

It feels like there’s no end in sight and between this and the Rule of 6 it feels like we are slowly having our rights taken away from us.

I know I sound silly.....but I’m just fed up.

I have been following the rules from the start but this just feels like the straw that broke the camel’s back for me.

I wonder how long it will be until teachers are wearing masks in school and then our children will be too....

Like I said, I just feel a bit down about it all.

I think you’re just having a bad day and a moment.
I get those too. Then I tend to snap out of it because we haven’t really got a choice have we?

I don’t mind wearing a mask at pick up, in fact I welcomed it. I know longer have to inhale other people’s cigarette smoke.

I can understand you feeling down yanbu but just wear the mask it's the same at my ds school it's not a big deal .

Yes, I know what you mean.

But it's important to separate out your personal annoyance at feeling bossed around from what is actually a good thing for people to be doing.

The number of schools with partial closures because of suspected or actual cases has risen surprisingly quickly. So it ought to be pretty obvious why they are buttressing precautions around aduits.

I completely empathise with your arguments but I do agree with the masks in playground rule. We have it too.

My reasons for agreeing are:

1. Teachers and school staff are putting themselves at risk to educate our children, the least we owe them is compliance with measures they suggest to mitigate risk.

1. Masks do prevent virus transmission - anything helps to get us back to normal.

1. Masks act as a physical reminder that we are in a pandemic. Parents have a tendency to group and chat (me too) but masks help to deter this.

It feels more depressing because the end is not in sight.

The introduction of masks on school drops offs now means we will be wearing them for months and months to come.

The restrictions and impactions on our lives are only to get more frequent and heavier and I just don’t see how and when it will end.

It feels like our freedom is being chipped away at, bit by bit - we are being told what we can and can’t do and we have no say in it.

The direction our lives are heading in scares me a little - we are at the mercy of a Government who have no control over the Covid situation, yet have a lot of control over us. I feel like this is just the tip of the iceberg. I imagine it won’t be long until we are told we can’t even leave the house unless we are wearing a mask.

I just don’t like the feeling of having no control over my own life anymore....God, I’m now even being told I can’t stand and talk to my parents in the street if I have my children with me.

The level of power the Government have over us and the manner in which they can give us rules to live by that we have no option but to follow, just leaves me feeling uneasy.

At my DC's school it is mandatory for parents to wear masks at drop off and have been told not to congregate anywhere or go in any school buildings. The children also have to wear masks going round the school.
The teachers requested this to help them feel safe. The majority of parents are ignoring this rule which I think is so disrespectful to the school staff who are putting themselves on the line. It makes those of us wearing masks feel really stupid, but I will still wear one.

Meanwhile parents are congregating in large groups, despite being told to drop and go. They have been told not to walk their dogs around school. Parents are ignoring this with some even bringing their puppies to school to show all the children, resulting in large groups of parents and children gushing over puppies!
I am a teacher myself at a different school. It's really scary being a teacher in a global pandemic. How are we supposed to get the children to follow the rules when their parents don't?

We've been asked to via email to all parents but also told that school can't enforce it. There is no social distancing on site at drop off and pick up. Everyone is crowded in like cattle. Seemingly not giving a shit, the areas are small but there could be enough space if people tried. No staggered timing, nothing. I'm one of very few parents wearing a mask every time. Adults are at more risk than the kids. It's no bother for me to put a mask on.

Day by day it feels like we are losing more of ourselves.

It's not a hardship to wear a mask for 10 minutes. I wear one to see my class out to parents at the end of the day because I have some very anxious parents. It's got nothing to do with 'losing more of myself', it's just about protecting other people.

There is no social distancing on site at drop off and pick up. Everyone is crowded in like cattle. Seemingly not giving a shit, the areas are small but there could be enough space if people tried. No staggered timing, nothing.

I don’t blame you for wearing a mask in those circumstances - it must be very frustrating to see people act in that way.

I know it’s no hardship wearing a mask, of course I will wear one now it’s been asked of us, but when the school and parents are doing everything they can to maintain social distances, and it works really well, are we now being asked to wear masks too?

It just feels like nothing is ever enough and where will it end?

It’s bad enough going to the supermarket and seeing masked faces everywhere but to now have to see it at the school gates too? 100s of faces covered.....I don’t know, it just seems so cold.

The school run is about the only place some people get to see a variety of human faces, see real smiles and be able to take in and enjoy full facial expressions and now that’s being taken away from them too.

I think that’s why it feels like we are losing our identity - we are now all just faceless people and this is how life is going to be now for a very long time.

It just feels like nothing is ever enough

The body of evidence on the use of masks to reduce transmission iof this virus has been growing. It's not a case of this being heaped on just to piss people off, it's a genuine and worthwhile measure

and where will it end?

when transmission rates are reliably low enough, possibkymsummer only if no vaccine.

Unless you want big peaks to continue indefinitely?

Accepting what that means for NHS, schools and the economy.

@QueenofmyPrinces

I can empathise, I feel similar. It’s removing the every day small nuances of communication between people. No one can tell if I’m smiling or not under my mask, I haven’t got enough wrinkles yet . So I tend to just walk on by now.

I think wearing masks at drop off and pick up is what we all should of been doing from the start.
The school gates are terrible, yes we have staggered times to go in, so that's a lot better, but parents are congregating way to close to each other just like nothings going on, forgetting about the pandemic.

How long until pupils and teachers have to start wearing masks I wonder....

They brought this in at DC's last week. I was fine with it until I realised I couldn't kiss my DC goodbye whilst wearing a mask. Obviously, I am still wearing one, but it did make me a bit sad.

They brought this in at DC's last week. I was fine with it until I realised I couldn't kiss my DC goodbye whilst wearing a mask. Obviously, I am still wearing one, but it did make me a bit sad.

I hadn’t even thought about this - My son always gives me such a big cuddle and a kiss when I drop him off

@QueenofmyPrinces

How long until pupils and teachers have to start wearing masks I wonder....

Very soon, I hope.

Ridiculous that they don't already at the rate schools are sending classes home to isolate.

Very soon, I hope. Ridiculous that they don't already at the rate schools are sending classes home to isolate.

Absolutely!

But that would involve the Government back tracking and admitting they were wrong and I can’t see them readily wanting to do that.

I understand how you feel. You say it feels like our freedoms are being chipped away at and that is exactly what is happening. People will say it’s justified and that beating the virus is worth these compromises and even if that is true it’s right that you should be aware of and worried about these changes. I find it much more worrying anyone who is happy to walk into this new normal without a moments thought

I wear one because we have been told we have to, but it’s off again the second i step off school property

I'm with you OP, one hundred percent.

But I tell myself, it can't last forever, it just can't!

@QueenofmyPrinces

How long until pupils and teachers have to start wearing masks I wonder....

It depends on whether parents are taking precautions out in the community, doesn't it? Schools don't exist in a vacuum - if covid is being spread in the community due to people not following the guidance, then it will spread in the schools.

@Sunshine1235

I understand how you feel. You say it feels like our freedoms are being chipped away at and that is exactly what is happening. People will say it’s justified and that beating the virus is worth these compromises and even if that is true it’s right that you should be aware of and worried about these changes. I find it much more worrying anyone who is happy to walk into this new normal without a moments thought

Who said anyone is happy? Most people understand the reasons which is to control a deadly virus and reduce it's impact.

Day by day it feels like we are losing more of ourselves.

I hear you OP. This sums up very eloquently the unease I feel about some of these measures. On paper wearing a mask in this situation isn’t a big deal, but when taken together all of these restrictions make all of our everyday human interactions simply functional - no casual chatting, no smiling at acquaintances in the street; it’s head down and get on with it. I notice it in shops now, where I see most people shuffling about miserably, not chatting at tills etc. For some isolated people this would have been the only social contact they had every day; now that’s gone too.

I too worry about where this is taking us, how social cohesion, which wasn’t exactly great to start with in the U.K., will be affected long term; what impact the increasingly mandated mask wearing and lack of small social interactions might have on developing babies and toddlers (I admit that we’re regularly irritating some of the more militant rule followers by insisting on taking toddler DD into shops and cafes and encouraging her to chat and interact with the staff - we’re getting out fair share of glares for allowing her this small freedom but I feel it’s worth it to support her social development). As a former primary teacher I fully expect an increase in children’s social; behavioural and communication issues to be flagged up by schools in a few years’ time.

Priti Patel’s comment yesterday about two families not being ‘allowed’ to chat when meeting in the street summed it up for me. So much of this is inhumane and it will be very difficult to undo the very real but often intangible damage that encouraging people to view their friends and neighbours as potential disease vectors is doing to our mental health and wider social and cultural life.

Just do what you have to do and don't over think it. You need to do your bit like everyone else and reduce the risks, in this case in an educational setting where a whole year might have to isolate if there's a connected case.

Just do what you have to do and don't over think it.

Or as the Government world say: “Do what you’re told to do......”

I will wear the mask, I have done since it was first introduced it, but as for not overthinking it? I think as a society we need to question how much control over our lives we are going to let the Government have.

I mean restaurants are open, pubs are open, people are back in offices, staff in supermarkets don’t have to wear masks, secondary school pupils don’t have to wear masks etc and it’s fair to say not much social distancing goes on in a lot of those places in my experience.

I don’t think parents not wearing masks for the 60 seconds it takes them to drop their child into school in a socially distanced manner is what’s going to be responsible for an increase in cases.

Like I said I will wear the mask but as for how much difference it will make....well, that’s everyone’s personal opinion I guess.