Items
Date is exactly
11/30/2021
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11/30/2021
Melinda Ruzich Oral History, 2021/11/30
Melinda Ruzich is a 20-year veteran kindergarten teacher from Hibbing, Minnesota, a rural town 229 miles (about 4 hours) north of Eau Claire. Melinda is also undergoing treatments for breast cancer, and she has been immunocompromised for the entirety of the pandemic. In her interview, Melinda discusses how her cancer treatments impacted her ability to teach during the early stages of the pandemic in 2020 as well as how her job has changed over the past 20 months. Melinda shares how childhood development has evolved at the early childhood and kindergarten levels and how her role as a teacher has shifted. Melinda also discusses how parents and the public have interfered with her (and other teachers in her district) abilities to teach in schools safely. She discusses her school district’s mask mandate and the public’s response and pushback to vaccinations and masking in the small, rural community in Northern Minnesota. -
11/30/2021
Erin Voss Oral History, 2021/11/30
Erin Voss was born and raised in Colby, Wisconsin, and is currently a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In this interview, Erin discusses how COVID-19 has affected her life as a senior in high school at the beginning of the pandemic and as a college student currently. She discusses COVID-19’s effects on her mental health, family, and schooling. She shares differences she has seen in small town Colby compared to a large city like Madison and their responses to Covid. She touches on what her advice would be for people in the future to respond to a pandemic while keeping in mind mental health, students’ ability to learn, and cautions to take.