Instructors teaching during this unprecedented time in history must find ways of engaging students from behind the mask. As a result of the pandemic, my colleagues and I have discovered that students do not respond or participate in the ways they once did. In the classroom, students have become silent spectators, hiding behind the mask, making it a challenge for instructors to engage and for students to be successful. We have struggled mightily to overcome this challenge of engaging students who are in the midst of pandemic survival. This article explores some useful classroom strategies that can be utilized to engage the "pandemic student." It is only through persistence and dedication to student engagement that instructors will be able to reach students in this "new normal" of education. Instructors may have to put to rest old strategies (or at least revamp them) and find new tools and activities to employ to reach behind the barrier of the mask worn by the "pandemic student.