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Library

Margaret Funkhouser

Location:

Remote

Recorded by

Nicolette Lodico

Listen to full interview
Full interview, track 1
Full interview, track 1
Full interview, track 2
Full interview, track 3
Clips from this interview:
Basic Services
Thriving
Boundaries
Learners
Student Led
Summary:

This interview was conducted on July 15, 2020 with Margaret Funkhouser via Zoom conference from her home in Natick, Massachusetts. Margaret is an educator and the Director of Writing, Film & Media Arts at the Walnut Hill School for the Arts in Natick. Walnut Hill is an independent boarding school attended by students from all over the world. She discusses her unique experience of learning about the virus in late 2019 from students with families residing in China or other countries in that region. She also discusses how she and her colleagues pivoted to a virtual learning environment, with the added challenge of having to teach students in time zones across the world. Her students' well-being has been at the core of her work since the school closed. Margaret is a mother of two school-aged children whose learning she has overseen in addition to her teaching responsibilities. In addition to being an educator, Margaret is also a poet and writer.

Themes:
The beginning of lockdown
,
Remote technology
,
Leadership
,
Problem solving
,
Protests
,
Trauma
,
Teachers
,
News
,
Mental health
,
Private schools
,
Boarding schools
,
Teaching across time zones
,
Interviewer Bio:

Nicolette Lodico is an archivist and knowledge manager who specializes in helping people and organizations—particularly those whose work supports the public good—establish sustainable practices for managing both what they create and what they know so they can make informed decisions, be transparent, and minimize risk. She helps organizations tell the story about their work, to reflect on and learn from past work and share that knowledge with those who will benefit, and to provide opportunities for future researchers and historians to examine and evaluate this work. Currently, she is the director of global information and knowledge management at the Ford Foundation where she is overseeing a comprehensive, multiyear oral history project to gather the reflections of key former staff. She also is the former president and emeritus board member of the Technology Association of Grantmakers, a non-profit organization that cultivates the strategic and equitable use of technology to advance philanthropy. She earned her M.L.S. from the State University of New York at Buffalo.

Additional Info:
Interview language(s):
English
Audio quality:
Medium

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