The ETSU Little Buccaneers program provides daycare and learning to the children of students at the university. It is a part of ETSU’s Clemmer College and provides future teachers with hands-on experience with children.
Since reopening during the pandemic, the program has been following all guidelines recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in order to keep themselves and the Little Bucs safe. This includes, but is not limited to, social distancing, frequent hand washing, sanitizing of equipment and mask wearing.
Small children have short attention spans and rely on facial cues from grownups in order to process things and learn. Masks, especially thick ones, have a way of muffling the sound of our voices, making it hard to understand what others are saying. Children are at a disadvantage in terms of perception ability, distance from the speaker (in terms of height) and most of them are unaware of how to tell someone that they did not understand them and need something to be repeated.
Thanks to a grant funded by the Association of Infant Mental Health in Tennessee, the Little Bucs program will be implementing clear face masks in classrooms so that young students can better understand and respond to teachers.
With the clear face masks, the children can experience a slight fragment of normalcy that they used to experience pre-pandemic. The director of the program says that they expect to enroll around 45 children this semester, and the grant will provide masks for up to 30 teachers and graduate assistants.
In addition to the clear face masks, the program is also introducing coloring books and stories that talk about COVID-19 in a way that the children will understand. Children may have a difficult time understanding why everyone they see covers up part of their face.
