“Why don’t you mask every day as an immunocomprised person?” Kyle asks.

It is the second to last day of the school year and I have finally built up the courage to ask my director of human resources for accommodations. Two weeks since my last bout of COVID; two weeks since I sent a feverish email desperately asking for support from her. Five years since I got my first vaccine and 3 years since we have unmasked in schools. I’ve drafted bullet points for my ask: can we reduce my teaching load?, can I get a bank of sick days that I can use only with a doctor’s note after I run out of sick days? Equity is not equality… I have it scribbled in the notes as a reminder that a person with a disability may need more sick days than a person without.

I pause to consider how to answer her question. But every time I try, math floods my brain. In the 19 years of teaching, I have had flu A 16 times, flu B 2 times. I have had hundreds of colds, shingles 1 time, COVID 3 times, countless depressive episodes. I’ve had pneumonia 1 time, walking pneumonia 1 time, strep throat 5 times. I got my period 160 times, sprayed my nostrils with opioids for the endometriosis pain, and went to work. Bled through so many pads from not being able to go to the bathroom when I needed to. Worked 100s of days with migraines and headaches.

“I am a teacher”, I start and stop.

I am a teacher. Often it is this sentence that brings me joy, pride, confidence because of how hard I have worked to become an effective educator who could build relationships, plan and deliver a curriculum about how to be kind in this world. How do I explain the layers of identity wrapped up in that one sentence, and how do I explain that covering most of my face is not an effective way to do this job? That when I crack a joke to lighten the tone in the classroom, students cannot always see that it is a joke, if they only see my eyes. How surprised I was when my students took off their masks to eat during the pandemic and I could see their full expressions and the type of connections we built during that short outdoor time when we could be unmasked.

“We need you to do the basic functions of your job and being here is one of them. When you get sick, you can’t be here and therefore, are not performing your job. As a teacher, your students need to see what you are doing and hear you, right? A mask does not hinder this.”

“My entire job is about building trust and relationships”, I stammer out, heart racing, mind frozen. I rack my brain to explain why wearing a mask every day is not optimal as a teacher. Beads of sweat form on my upper lip. I get tossed back into October 2020, teaching all day in an N95. Looking out at my students all masked. Staring into a screen with half the class online from their bedrooms. The trauma is not yet healed, but it should be right? It’s been years. I should be over it and moving forward and now we know that masking works, so why wouldn’t I mask every day when others don’t?

I attempt eye contact with Kyle to coerce her to see me. Really see me. I inhale deep and try again, “I work at a predominantly white institution, as an Indian immigrant. I need my students to see my expressions and read my tone. They cannot do that if I mask” I say, frustrated and shaky. “I will not wear a mask every day; my doctors have not said I need to mask everyday at this job, only during flu seasons, which I do and I mask at all large indoor gatherings” I reply indignantly.

That week, I co-host a gathering of people to discuss resistance and before we begin, we casually introduce ourselves. Many I’ve gathered in the room are teachers and we are exhausted this time of year, venting about the demands of our job.

“But teachers get summers off, federal holidays, winter and spring breaks. You don’t get to complain!”

We are at a friend’s house and she is jokingly, seriously, pushing back on teacher privilege. I smile and nod. “Summers off is a luxury,” I say while my chest burns with delineations of what happened just recently and how my paychecks are now docked because I ran out of sick days and still got sick enough to have to take four more days off; how every time I see my paycheck, it is a reminder that it feels like my fault that I get sick, that I take days off when I am sick. How the system is flawed and I cannot change it and so for the next several months I will receive a paycheck that has subtracted $400 from it and how this will make me feel inadequate as an adult who is a veteran teacher. How the eight sick days I get each year are not nearly enough to cover what an able bodied person needs, let alone an immune compromised one. Instead, I sit silently and nod that yes, having summers off is a privilege.

I could mask every single day. I could remain six feet apart from all students and faculty. I could push my body to go to school when I am not feeling well like so many others do. The could’s are the punishment I choose for myself at four am on days when I awaken in a feverish swirl.

It’s easy to see my badge and think teacher, educator, summer’s off, winter break, spring break. The cost is high. Not my paycheck or my bank account, but the number of days I’ve been sick.

So no. I will not wear a mask every day. Not because I want to get sick, but because I need for this country to see me fully. A teacher. Underpaid. Summering. Overworked. With Winter Breaks. Spoken down to by students and parents and administrators. With Federal Holidays off. Deciding at 4 am after having been up the entire night with a high fever, if I should take the Dayquil and go in because I am out of sick days. With Spring Breaks. Getting tiny paychecks that are even tinier, penalized for taking more sick days than allotted.

I will not mask my face or my identity. If you choose to see me, see me fully as a teacher with all the nuances that come with this title.
Unmasked.