This oral history interview is an intimate conversation between two people, both of whom have generously agreed to share this recording with Oral History Summer School, and with you. Please listen in the spirit with which this was shared.
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This interview with Margaret Funkhouser was conducted on June 29, 2022 remotely via Zoom. Margaret is the Director of Writing, Film & Media Arts at Walnut Hill School for the Arts, a private boarding school focusing on the arts. In this final interview, Margaret reflected on the ways in which the pandemic created openings at her school and in her own teaching to reconsider some long-standing practices and conventions that were no longer serving students or teachers. She expressed feeling recommitted to her work despite burnout. For most of the conversation, Margaret speaks to teaching and classroom practices in general, rather than Covid-related reflections or anecdotes. Margaret closes the interview with a thought for her past self, something she wished she knew when the COVID-19 pandemic began: "You won't be behind. There's no behind."
Maddy Russell-Shapiro is a podcast producer based in the Bay Area and New York City. Previously, she worked with several California nonprofits focused on expanding access to higher education, including Mission Graduates in San Francisco and Mount Tamalpais College at San Quentin State Prison. She attended Oral History Winter School in 2017 and hosts a narrative nonfiction podcast about tenacity titled Relentless.
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