Anna Siegal

This interview with Anna Siegal was conducted on August 4, 2022 remotely via Zoom. Anna was the Executive Director at Red Hook Playgroup, a progressive community-based early education program. In this interview, Anna shared that she had submitted her resignation and left her position at the end of Spring 2022. Much of the interview described the institutional, physical, and labor aspects of burnout. She described an experience of out-of-body exhaustion, and how this is triggered by the thought of going back to school in a new job. She brought up Monkeypox a number of times. She also shared how her role in school leadership became separate from curricula development, education, and teacher management, among other roles. Anna shared concerns about what the mass resignation means for education as a whole including budgetary redistribution and described how teaching requirements are being loosened in different states to overcome the teacher shortages, including giving veterans a pass from all requirements and licensing. She described the role of schools, teachers, and media as being primary arenas for mediating different, very loaded conversations about what is happening day-to-day in this country.