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Library

Vivian Ponte-Fritz

Location:

Berkeley, CA

Recorded by

Annelise Finney

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Summary:

This interview with Vivian Ponte-Fritz took place Vivian's house in Berkeley, California on September 22, 2021. At the time of this interview, Vivian was a heritage Spanish teacher at Prospect Sierra Middle School in El Cerrito, California. She and the interviewer, Annelise Finney, are childhood friends. It was her second interview with the Education Narratives Project. In this interview, Vivian describes the evolution of her school's response to COVID-19 since her last interview with Annelise. She described ongoing debates at her school about mandating vaccination for teachers and students. Currently, her school does not require vaccination for either party. She talks at length about how the year of zoom learning impacted her students' mental health and her own feelings about returning to campus. She describes being a new teacher and how her experience of the past year has impacted her sense of herself as an educator and her thoughts about her future in the profession. Towards the end of her interview, she talks about how the George Floyd Uprising in the the late fall and early summer of 2020 influenced her teaching and her sense of the value of discomfort in the classroom.

Themes:
Remote technology
,
Leadership
,
Vaccines
,
Isolation
,
Politics
,
Protests
,
Trauma
,
Teachers
,
Mental health
,
PPE
,
Interviewer Bio:

Annelise Finney is a European American cis-woman, born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. She currently works as a radio journalist covering reparations in California and breaking news in the Bay Area. Previously she worked as defense investigator for public defenders offices in New York City and San Francisco. She is an alum of the 2016 Oral History Summer School. She is also an avid sewist, hiker and cook. 

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

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