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Library

Anna Padgett

Location:

Remote

Recorded by

Daniel Horowitz

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Summary:

This interview with Anna Padgett was conducted on August 8, 2022 remotely via Zoom. Anna is a kindergarten educator based in New York City. Anna spoke first about her new apartment, reflecting that she'd lived in 3 different apartments over the last 2 years and spoke about the struggle and work it took to buy the current one, an affordable unit in downtown Manhattan. This brought her to all of the transitions of the last two years: switching schools, acclimating to lockdown, her daughter applying for high school in NYC, among others. She spoke about the constantly changing guidelines, saying that the upcoming school year is quite opaque, but that she's just resigned to following whatever leaders come up with. The pandemic is still a large part of her life, and she said on a recent trip to Mexico, she tested and tested and moved plans around. She spoke about how music has been a big part of her life, not just in the classroom (she said she never stopped singing to the kids even though she was told to). She has been playing some shows recently, and it was special to make time for that after the absolute chaos of the last 2 years where at moments she felt that music was out of her life. The Education Narratives Project she said, was a very major part of her reflective process - she said her therapist of more than 20 years retired at 83 in the middle of the pandemic - and that she really had no other outlet. She said it just hit her, when she was back, exhausted, from her trip in Mexico just how long these last 2 years have been.

Themes:
The beginning of lockdown
,
Remote technology
,
Leadership
,
Touch
,
Isolation
,
Loss
,
Teachers
,
Interviewer Bio:

Daniel Horowitz was born and raised in New York City, making extended forays to Boston and New Orleans, only to return to teach and work in his hometown. He holds a degree in Media Arts from Northeastern University, a Master's in Creative Writing from the New School and is currently enrolled at the CUNY Graduate Center in the Biography and Memoir program. In New Orleans and coastal Mississippi he has been conducting a long-term oral history project on the lived experiences of climate change. For the last four years he has taught and learned alongside children at forest schools, first in Prospect Park and then at NOLA Nature School in the Couturie Forest in the City of Dreams, egrets, alligators and all. He currently teaches Science and Gardening in Red Hook, Brooklyn.

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

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