Alanna Navitski

This interview was conducted on November 23, 2020 remotely via Zoom. Alanna Navitski is the director of a small, experimental early childhood school called Catskill Wheelhouse, in Green County, NY. In this interview, Alanna explains how, as a small, private program in the Catskills, they have adapted to COVID-19 by moving most of the schooling outside. Alanna shares that the hours and the confidence of being able to plan had still changed significantly, which affected teachers' sense of certainty and reduced school to roughly 3 hours per day due to licensing considerations during COVID-19. Alanna repeatedly asked why it is so hard to move a system, citing examples of the stress and strain of moving all teaching and standards from a classroom to online, instead of shifting the whole idea of education at this time. She named a number of different ideas and projects under way where the Catskill Wheelhouse program will intersect with food security, farming, mutual aid and other community initiatives happening around the area. Throughout this interview, Alanna comes back to how difficult it is for educators making minimum wage to have no job security or predictability right now. Alanna also shares about how families began asking who else was in their kids' class (children of essential workers etc.) and how they had to make decisions about lines of privacy they would cross to inform concerned families. While the fall felt relatively 'normal', Alanna says that winter feels like spring 2020 all over again in terms of the uncertainty and chaos of so many unknowns in terms of resources and scheduling.