Oral history interview of Andrea Henkels Heidinger, conducted by Elizabeth Giraud (transcript)

Andrea Henkels Heidinger discusses her experiences teaching art and the shift to online education during the COVID-19 pandemic. She also talks about attempting to make art during the pandemic.

ANDREA HENKELS HEIDINGER Salt Lake City, UT An Interview by Elizabeth Giraud 14 October 2020 Utah Covid-19 Oral History Project UUM_UC19 J. Willard Marriott Library Special Collections Department University of Utah Salt Lake City, Utah HEIDINGER, ANDREA HENKELS b. 1970 Andrea Heidinger was born in Philadelphia, PA., moving as a baby to Salt Lake in 1970. She has a Bachelor’s degree in art and a minor in Environmental Science from Alfred University in New York, a Master’s degree in art from University of Idaho, and a Master’s degree in education from Westminster College in Salt Lake City. She is an art teacher at Granger High School in West Valley City, Utah. She teaches ceramics, 3-D design and sculpture, and drawing. She describes the challenges of teaching art on-line, the intermittent shift from on-line to classroom teaching, and the difficulty of keeping students motivated when they’re not physically in school. She is also an artist, focusing on using post-industrial waste in sculptures. Keywords: Teaching, Granger High School, art, sculpture, 3-D design, drawing, Covid. THIS IS AN INTERVIEW WITH ANDREA HENKELS HEIDINGER ON OCTOBER 14, 2020. THE INTERVIEWER IS ELIZABETH GIRAUD. THIS IS THE COVID -19 ORAL HISTORY PROJECT, UUM_UC19, FOR THE UNIVERSITY OF UTAH COVID19 DIGITAL COLLECTION. THIS IS THE FIRST OF ONE INTERVIEW WITH ANDREA HENKELS HEIDINGER. IT WAS CONDUCTED OVER ZOOM IN SALT LAKE CITY IN THE INTERVIEWER’S AND INTERVIEWEE’S RESPECTIVE RESIDENCES. Andrea Heidinger: Yes! Now it looks like it is. Elizabeth Giraud: ARRGGHH. I hope that doesn’t happen again. This is kind of always my big fear. AH: I was like, “Oh she’s not going to like that!” ‘Cause I understand that. EG: So anyway, I’m here with Andrea Henkels Heidinger. Thank you very much for agreeing to let me interview you, Andrea, for the Utah Covid-19 Digital Collection. This is a statewide effort part of Marriott Library to record the experiences of Utahns during the pandemic. I just have to hit my recording button – just a second. So if you wouldn’t mind introducing yourself and spelling your name and we’re recording here from Salt Lake City. AH: OK, my name is Andrea Heidinger, Andrea Henkels Heidinger. A-N-D-R-E-A H-E-N-KL-S H-E-I-D-I-N-G-E-R 1 EG: Thank you. Thank you so much. Would you mind, you know, I've known you for many years -- our families knew each other-- you have such an interesting life why don’t you talk a little bit about your background, how long you’ve lived in Salt Lake, maybe a little bit about your art work, and your path to becoming an educator. AH: So I was born in Philadelphia and my family moved to Utah when I was just a baby. So I grew up in Utah and then I went away for school and then I did more school and seasonal work then I went away for about 15 years and then I've lived in Utah for a little under 20 years again. EG: Great. AH: Yeah. EG: So first you pursued art -- that was your beginnings, right, after high school and your education and your educational pursuits and then you ended up becoming a high school art teacher. AH: Yeah, I didn't become a high school art teacher right after school that's right I got a degree in art and then I got a master's in art and I taught. I also worked for the Forest Service and the Park Service because I was in environmental science minor and I pursued that for a while and then I went back to school when I get back to Salt Lake. I did a variety of jobs mostly in the education field in natural resources and I went back to school at Westminster for a graduate degree in education. EG: Great. How long have you taught at Granger High School? AH: This will be my tenth year. EG: Oh wow, so you’re a veteran! What is it like teaching art at Granger High School can you give me an idea about what your day is like, how you structure of your day? And if you could 2 give me…I know you’ve taught different mediums of art and you’re now teaching sculpture and three-dimensional art. AH: So that’s my specialty I taught ceramics for years at Granger and I definitely like ceramics and I was trained in ceramics. I actually ended up developing more expertise in sculpture and 3D design and I also teach drawing sometimes. A typical day at Granger would be three to four 90-minute classes depending on my schedule. The numbers enrolled in my classes are anywhere from 25 to 40. Usually I have what we call two to four preps – now I have five preps. That means I have five different courses that I have to prepare for ‘cause they’re not the same subjects. EG: It sounds pretty hectic. AH: It is pretty busy. There’s a lot of kids, a lot of personalities, a lot of materials to switch one thing to the next and be prepared enough that you can do that easily and yeah, yeah, it’s pretty interesting. EG: So how do you…do you kind of clump them up in groups like maybe ability or interest in such a big class or do you just try to circulate throughout the class and give every student a few minutes of your time? AH: Yeah that's more the deal -- to circulate and speak to individual students and work with them from where they're coming from. Sometimes we do group work and collaborative work and sometimes they actually do peer reviews depending on the level of students that I'm working with and things but generally the ideal world is to get to every kid as an individual and work with them. EG: It sounds like your days are pretty full. 3 So when did you first become aware of the pandemic? Can you describe how it dawned on you that things might change or what were your first thoughts about this? AH: I have a colleague that actually has a daughter who is actually compromised in terms of... she has a single lung so my colleague knows about this -- and she has been following the pandemic way before it was ever on my radar. I even listen to the news but it really wasn't a thing. So interestingly enough she would be watching this progress and suddenly it was maybe within two weeks when they decided to shut down the school and go into distance learning. Like really two weeks – I though okay it's going to happen. Before that it was kind of just really theoretical and then when it happened it was…The day before it happened it was just really interesting to say to the kids “Take all your materials” and try to set them up with some stuff and make sure we had what we needed ahead of time but not knowing when we'd come back or what that was going to look like it was hard to prepare completely. But I do remember telling my students but there was a big chance that we wouldn't see each other next week. And I remember telling them that that it was really important for them to record in their sketchbooks because this is an opportunity -- it's unprecedented – we’ve never had anything like this. EG: So would they turn these sketchbooks into you-- have you seen those? AH: No…yeah…no… So last spring very little got turned in so no -- it would be interesting to ask for them now -- it never came to pass I remember telling them.. EG: That would be great to see those! That would be very interesting. AH: I know it would be. You're absolutely right and I still have some of those I still have some of those same students so I could press that issue now, again. That's a good thought EG: Well…it would just be interesting to see them and it was a good idea for you to tell them “you’re in this interesting time why don’t you record what you've been doing…” So I 4 remember to buy for myself I remember so March 13th is when school closed for two weeks if I recall correctly and then March 20 the decision, I believe, was made to close. I don’t know if that’s just for Granite -- I have that in my notes somewhere. But it seemed like where I work it closed for two weeks and somewhere in my mind I was sort of thinking “In two weeks we’ll be back and then it wasn’t, I mean, did you feel that way? Once when you told the students “You’re going to be home for awhile” at that point did you think “No, we are really shutting down, you know, for a long time.” Do you remember? AH: No. Everything seemed very temporary although we had a little bit of a situation at our school that made me think maybe we wouldn't be returning right away and that's because we were hit with the earthquake add a few things happened in her school that that needed fixing before kids came back -- not really serious stuff ‘cause their school is pretty newly built – it’s just about 7 years old. But there are a few things that happened. So that combined with a pandemic was like “ Oh, we're not going to come back and so it was like until mid-April. I think we all thought we were going to come back at some point, for sure. EG: Right. So how did you end up making the shift, to teach online to keep up with your students? What did the district people or your principal say? How were you instructed? Or were you? Or was it sort of “just do the best you can?” AH: Well, first we had to mobilize to get the students to pick up Chromebooks make sure they had ifi and stuff. I mean we really never did that perfectly but we did the best we could. Students could come for a short moment – get Chromebooks get whatever supplies they needed and sometimes I’d even drop them off but most of the time students would pick them up and I would come in one day a week and so that was kind of up to us. But one thing about us is we had a really good technology librarian person that she actually would have weekly meetups. Actually 5 she had daily meetups with us on Google meets and she would teach us different technical skills, different aspects of Canvas and all different types of platforms from the internet that we could use to engage our students. So I learned a lot. Every day we would meet at 10 and we would talk about what’ going on. Anybody who wanted to could get on this meet up and learn a new skill and then she’d save it so we could watch the recording later and then she’d see that ... and then we'd watch the recording later. So that really, really made a difference. Pretty neat! All things considered I think the school did the best they could in the quick way it went down. EG: Art is so hands-on. I mean did you shift your lesson plans? Did you I mean how did you what did you end up teaching the kids or trying to teach them and changing your lesson plans for them? AH: Well, there’s a lot of there's a lot of choice involved and it just depends on what the students can do for themselves resource-wise, too. So yeah, I had to change it up a lot. I mean at that time I was teaching mostly ceramics so I would make sure they got the supplies if they could, if they could come pick them up. At that time I wasn't really delivering supplies so much so...There’s just too many students! But anyway…and then a lot of them were not around and the weather got nice and they really disappeared -- it was crazy. But anyway students that couldn’t or didn’t have supplies would have the choice of doing like online research and reports that way or they could do…or they could actually simulate with other materials so I gave them a whole bunch of choices and potential scenarios that they could do. (14:43) EG: Well, it sounds like you had to be really really flexible. It sounds like you did have support from your school on this, like you said that the tech support? How do you think overall was the atmosphere of other teachers [for] what they were teaching? Did you did you communicate 6 with…[did you] have any sort of Faculty wide meetings or commiseration? Anything like that? Do you do that as regular basis in normal times? AH: Nothing was normal about the experience. In the end we didn’t actually have…I’m trying to remember…most of our information was delivered to us through email and with the exception of those Tech meetings I don't think we actually had any faculty meetings, yeah it was kind of tragic but we had we actually ceased a lot of stuff. We couldn’t have a lot of activities with the students. We couldn't do anything the same. So everything went online. We had our annual art show -- it was virtual, online. For graduation we had like a distance graduation it was outside. So everything was changed and a lot of the decisions were made in smaller groups they had committees that would work on Zoom so it was really changed. People really tried to do what they could and I think teachers were supportive of each other. Lots of emails would go out in a group like how would you deal with this? But you know we really really suffered because the kids just disappeared. Trying to get them to finish up was really really hard – super-impossible. It was depressing. Most of the teachers were depressed. I mean, but we had each other and we’re a good faculty…I felt really good about what we were seeing and what the administration was trying to do and everyone was just doing their best. (17:24) EG: It sounds like... I think everybody…well I mean obviously the people in healthcare – they risk so much but I mean when I hear about education and teaching and parents having to home school suddenly thrust into this homeschooling situation ...Getting kids to learn, even kids who really want to learn is just really challenging. I think that education is just a sector of the society that’s just been hit so hard in the pandemic. What was it like this summer? I mean in school ended, and then you came back, and then I know Granger and Olympus got shut down but now you’re back. What is all the shifting 7 around? I think we're all hoping that we're all hoping… I think just probably leading question I'm not supposed to ask questions …but it's like you think “Oh, maybe a couple more months, maybe three more months, maybe next year this time this will be behind us. But it seems like from what I've read about schools and Granger High and I think today some of the Canyons District I believe shut down. So when you get these outbreaks it kind of throws off. Is it hard to get back up to speed? I mean, what is that like or are you used to it? AH: Ummm, It’s different now because we're a little bit more prepared for it. I don’t think it’s a good norm…I’m not used to any of it because the truth is right now the way that it is is I teach distance learners that choose to be distance learners at the same time as teaching live students and it’s actually really hard because a lot of different platforms. And some kids go and disappear for a week because he got quarantined so there’s a lot of coming and going as it is anyway. And you’d almost think it’d be easier because with distance everybody’s online. I kind of thought maybe it would be in some ways because we were well-prepared, the students had stuff. I told my students to always take care of their stuff so they have their stuff all the time. And they have their Chromebooks and hot spots have been given to people who didn’t have them before. You would think it’d be easier but this semester kids disappear just like they did in the spring just as though they got a fall break. You know, it just sets us back, yet you know it's the safe thing to do. As a teacher I had wanted to do hybrid teaching so we had half the kids back so we were able to distance a little bit more. But it's not realistic under our conditions to have any distance between students. Students don't want to socially distance -- which I understand – they’re kids, you know. So the fact that we came back all together was going to be kind of a recipe for what’s going on now. We’re going to come together and yet get sent home and then 8 come together. It ends up being a pretty complicated issue as I understand it because there's so just many reasons to have all the kids there but ultimately I just don’t think this pandemic will come to an end with that kind of behavior, obviously. I think it’s going to take kids not having sports. It’s going to take us going to a hybrid schedule. DISMISSED? But as a teacher who loves my job as being around kids it’s heartbreaking. No matter what happens it’s super heartbreaking. EG: Right. AH: I mean the kids are awesome! But now they’re like, so well-behaved when they’re in class—I think it’s somewhat due to the masks because it sort of subdues a person…I think honestly they don’t want to be dismissed. They actually want to be in school. They miss their friends. They want to learn in person, so many of them. The distance learning works for some but for most students they want to be there, you know, I think. EG: Can you tell me tell me a little bit about the hybrid teaching -- I’m unfamiliar with that.(23:03) AH: There’s different models for that. The model that was floated would be that …so it’s get complicated…it wouldn’t be much easier, necessarily. You wouldn’t miss any quicker???. But the way it would work is we have A and B days at school. You’d have half the A day kids come to your A day classes and then half your B day kids come to your B day class at the beginning of the week and then the other half comes at the end of the week and then you still have Friday for interventions and student help and personal meet ups and stuff like that. But instead what we have is …I think that they created choice so that students could be on-line learners or in-person learners four days a week and then the fifth day is for teachers to meet with their distance learners either in person or whatever they’re most comfortable with and prep and work on stuff. 9 And our particular population at the beginning of the school year – maybe 10 percent of them chose to do on-line learning but actually, for over-filled classes that doesn’t do anything to the numbers in terms of people in the classes. I mean, we’re already at 3,200 enrollment in a normal year and it’s not…it’s not great. It’s pretty big. But now, honestly, less kids are coming but I think it’s the dismissal …the momentum was lost. We are also a Title One school and many of our students are in free or reduced lunch and many of our students are on the margins. So they end up having to work or watch their siblings when their parents have to work if they’re lucky enough to have a job so there’s a lot of challenges for sure. (25:49) EG: You've mentioned that to me before -- about the students and the population that they draw from and that demographic. How has Covid, I mean, has it heightened those challenges for your students. Did you notice that in their performance or like you said maybe some kids have just have just fallen through the cracks so they’ve disappeared at least for a while. AH: Yeah, I've noticed it. I mean I have students who have contracted Covid and they haven't come back and their families are still sick and then I have other families who have lost their jobs as a result. There’s a lot of stories. I’m finding that a lot of kids are open to telling me their stories now. One of my students was telling me that their Mom is now the sole breadwinner. Their dad lost his actual shop because of covid but then he actually went to his religious community and they all helped him buy a new shop and he just started that shop again. But then she suddenly realized “Oh my gosh I'm a senior and I really can’t afford student debt but I really want to go to college.” And they’re thinking of leaving the country – going somewhere else. And then I have students who are sick. It’s just…it’s tricky. And many of them live in multigenerational homes so that’s a challenge too because they can all get sick really easily. EG: It must be really heartbreaking, 10 AH: It is heartbreaking, it’s hard, especially since you can see a light in these kids. They want to be here and they want to succeed. And then other kids you can see that they don’t have a light and you’re really lucky every day that they make it to school(28.31)…to be anywhere else and to do anything else. EG: Have the parents reached out to you? Do you have any communication with them…on a very frequent basis? AH: So you know, high school is a [funny?] time because you can loop the parents in or you can lean out of the equation a little bit but I decided when I went through a whole group of students you know when they were no shows at the beginning I called home. That helped a little bit. I ended up leaving a lot of messages because for one reason or another during the day. Sometimes it's hard to contact parents because I don't always have a translator but the school's been really good about supplying more of those because we had to rally a lot in the springtime to try to get people to understand what’s been going on. Some parents are super-receptive and once they hear from me they get their kid in line but then others don't have much control over their kids at all. It all depends. It’s a complete range of what’s going to happen from one kid to the next. But I’m probably more in touch more with the parents and the families than I ever have been, yeah, for sure. EG: Do you think --- what are things... that sounds like it might be one of them... but what are some things that you think would be positive that would come out of this experience in your teaching and what students are learning? AH: I think that one of the things that students are thinking more positively about school. I think that they see it as a place that they are learning something, that they’re missing out. I think that they really missed it in the end. I think there's a lot of good, well, not a lot of good, but 11 some. That's the best part, though, honestly now that less of them are coming since the dismissal and everything I'm getting to know the ones that are coming really well like you know what I mean, more little groups, little clubs of different classes a little bit better and they're getting to know each other a little bit better so I think that's good too. I think also that knowing the technology -- you know I'm not really a big fan of technology and certainly not a big fan of technological art. I'm like, hands-on, get yourself dirty in the media but I do think as a teacher I should know most of the technology so it's good that I had to ramp that up and understand it. It's good that the kids have had to ramp up their understanding of it ‘cause obviously they're going to need those skills. And the platform we use is a platform for higher education, canvas, is used in higher education too, so it's not going to be new to them and if anything they might know more tricks than their profs when they go to college if they go to college. So I think there's a lot of, you know, good things, all things considered, you know, it's a terrible situation, in my opinion, but there are some good things yeah. EG: What are things that maybe…you used to dread about teaching or little things. And then when this happened did you think “Wow, I’d give anything to have that again.” I’d give anything because it would mean things were normal. For me it was “I’ll never complain about going to the gym again.” Of course that has sort of fallen by the wayside. But you know, things change, they shift, and you realize that maybe you took things that were ordinary for granted or maybe you didn’t really want to do them and then maybe all of a sudden you think “Wow, I used to complain about that and now I miss it.” Are there any things like that that come to mind? AH: I think that I didn't complain about it so much but I would get really tired, especially towards the end of the term or different times of the week or whatever. I’d get tired of students coming in after school a lot – “Can you stay? I want to work on this or work on that…” I loved 12 it ultimately because I wanted them to stay and work on their work and find success but you know I could get so exhausted and now the school's a ghost town at the end of the day and they all have to go home and no one can stay and it's really frustrating -- that part's really frustrating ‘cause you know sports are allowed to continue but clubs it’s not encouraged and that’s heartbreaking. So I have some students who stick around but really it’s not encouraged it’s like now there's not like a good way to do that… So I love that I think that's probably my favorite… you know… the thing I miss the most… I like being around the students after school that's something I really do miss though it really was tiring sometimes. EG: So can we shift for a minute because you're also an artist and you work with postconsumer sustainable art and I just wondered if in this time of maybe being home more if you are at least maybe over the summer if you have been able to pursue your art and if this time has informed your art in a certain way? AH: So no. So I started a work and I got the armature done and that’s as far as I got this summer. It was a really stressful spring -- it took a long time to decompress you go from like really trying everything you can to get these kids over the line and to engage and everything and then kind of like last year most of us felt like a failure so that took a while to course out and other things came up. So I got an armature done and that’s just sitting there in my garage and just waiting for me to put my post? consumer spin to it and so that was unfortunate and so if I ever get back to doing my own stuff I do know that it’s informing me for teaching my students it’s because I collected so much stuff that I’ve been giving it to them to use and we’ve been doing post-consumer stuff a little bit at school and that’s been fun but I do know that if I ever get back to doing it there’s a lot of commenteering that can be made across the world in take-out containers and single-use stuff that has skyrocketed and the only thing that seems to be positive 13 in our school – they even stopped picking up the recycling at our school – I really don’t understand what happened there – but they did end up getting refill stations instead of water fountains because that we've been picking up the recycling at our school??? they did end up getting refill stations instead of water bottles because of Covid so now we have refill stations and then they gave all the kids water bottles which is cool. It’s going to be really interesting to see if I can start working at it anytime soon. I mean, ironically the other thing is I’ve been contracted to write some distance learning curriculum for my district so that took a lot of time over the summer too so yeah, here I stand! We’ll see what happens…I know what I’m going to do, I just haven’t finished it. EG: Maybe I should clarify this a little bit better by saying that your art has focused on postconsumer waste using post-consumer waste and artifacts from consumer life and you create three-dimensional art from those from those objects, right? AH: Right. EG: So maybe you’re the best person for me to ask this question…I put it in my notes beforehand …I don't know if you had any time…the other person that I'm interviewing had absolutely no idea what I was talking about when I mentioned this…I had set you a Post it of the website for me to sign up to go swimming at Steiner and that Post it became so so important to me and so I were going to donate something physical to the Marriott Library that expresses what happened to me during the pandemic and that was a positive thing because it really made summer very bearable for me is it got me into the portal to register. Is there something like that…I mean it doesn’t have to be like that but something …that if you found something like that five years from you’d be “Wow – I forgot about that – that was the list I made or that was the email I got or…(40.16) 14 AH: Well one thing I do is when I'm on meetups and I need to do this with students because I told my students that this is a good practice because actually I teach drawing right now-- I teach one period of drawing-- anyway probably if I find this because I've been doing these drawings of our family’s Zoom meetings and I’ve been doing them on every paper … I mean, a couple of them ended up in this sketchbook. I’ve done these family Zoom meet things…just draw different people. Probably I imagine I’m never going to assemble them…I’m never going to show them to anyone one – they’re never going to be more than just my own diary of what was going on and what might have been said or who was at the Zoom meet and I have to say I have them in small books and I have them in big books and I have them on just straight paper and I have them in just a notebook and they’re kind of all over the place and I was looking at them the other night and I was like oh! I have them in this book too! So that’s one of those things I’m going to find later and I’m going to be like “Oh my gosh! We used to do that!” Or we might still keep doing it ‘cause the one thing that everybody’s talked about is that we’ve never been more in touch with each other than we have now. And I do feel like it’d be really fun to do this on some of my student meet ups, ‘cause I do have some students who do actually meet up. It used to be in the spring I’d wait for them and I’d sit here and be doing other work until some kids would come to a meet up and nobody would show sometimes, you know. But now I feel like “It’s a thing,” you know, it’d be fun to record some of those faces coming in. EG: That sounds like it’s something that you’ll really treasure in the future, and also your family and maybe we should say that you come from a large family and before we started this you said that who’s ever available shows up at this. Have you ever had everyone come or is it AH: We had one for my father, for his birthday EG: Ah, that’s nice, that’s great. 15 AH: Yeah, and sometimes grandchildren show up and sometimes they have their greatgrandchildren there.. EG: Oh that’s good, that sounds wonderful. AH: Yeah, it is pretty cool. EG: Is there anything else you would like to say about teaching or your art or anything related to the Covid-19 period that we’re going through? AH: Well, I do wish…I feel like, uh, at this moment in time that we’re making this tape the situation’s getting worse in Utah instead of better and that scares me. Honestly I think right now this rotating in and out of school and if we ever not want to be in this rotation I feel like something’s got to change. And if nothing changes with our behaviors it’ll have to be a vaccine. Right now I think this could go on for quite a while, is what I’m thinking. It’s going to be different. I talk to my students about this quite a lot. We’re forever changed, I think, and we’re going to get more forever changed. And I miss the idea that we may never shake hands again, we may never give a casual hug again. And dating! Imagine what dating is when you’re young…going all the way is now kissing...that’s going to be a big deal! It’s like whoa! You guys kissed! You’re getting committed now! It’s like wow! I mean I just feel like there’s just so much more to come, it’s just crazy. And so to feel so fragile…the whole thing it’s just a really weird time right now. EG: Do you feel like your students, I mean, you said that they miss school and like, all kids carp about school but then it’s not there and you want to go and like you said, they miss it. Do you feel like they are pretty committed to trying to wear masks. You said it’s hard for them to social distance and I can understand that but do you think there’s a sense of responsibility within them about doing what they can to not get infected, to not spread the disease, the infection. Or are 16 they sort of like we’re young, we’re sort of invincible. I don’t know what to think any more when I read the paper about this. AH: I think kids are actually more reasonable than their adult counterparts in some ways ‘cause they’ll listen and they’ll see the examples that are put in front of them but the problem is they’re getting so many mixed messages. Even in schools…the teachers…I really believe my school is overall we’re a really good team, you know, and we all want what’s best for kids and I think we try our darndest. But I think that, um, you know, opinions are obvious you know, like wearing a mask or not wearing a mask. When kids see that, you know, that door gets opened, that choice, you know what I mean. If everyone was like “This is what we do,” if everyone was doing it absolutely, 100 percent, all the time, every kid was seeing it…I just think that you’d just see a few outliers but now I think they get mixed messages. Plus I mean allowing them to play sports, like getting sweaty in class and they’re near each other without wearing masks is kind of like not a…it says to them “Well, yeah, you aren’t invincible. We’re your parents and guardians and we’re letting you play this sport without masks and stuff” so yeah, I think we’re giving them mixed messages. I’m nervous for that and I do think that to a degree they are teen-agers and they’ll think ?? get it and the teen-agers that I have that I know they have gotten sick all have had cases where they 100 percent recovered. Their families might still be suffering but they recovered and so I think there is an invincibility about it, about them but the problem is it’s bigger than them…that’s tricky. EG: Do they feel optimistic about the future or do they feel like what you just said, “This could just go on for a long time and I think you mentioned they are forever changed, so… AH: Well, you know, I think for us on our end of the spectrum of age. We see it as forever changed but their life is changing all the time and change is more constant in their life than it 17 might be in ours – I’m just going to throw that out. I think that they’re pretty comfortable with the idea that it could change again and that where’s the optimism comes and that’s why I love putting myself with high-schoolers. I mean, quite frankly, they’re interesting. They’re not always as resilient as I’d hoped in some ways but they’re sort of always resilient in other ways because most of them see the temporary nature of all situations, I mean, most of the time. They take things really seriously but in other ways I think they do a really good job moving through life and I find it a joy to be around them. I don’t know that I could do another job, you know, I don’t work from home and when I did work from home teaching them in the spring it was the most depressing thing ever so it’s good that I have to go to school even when we don’t have students on Fridays we have to be there and I think that’s been good for me ‘cause ultimately I think it’s given me more hope, personally. EG: Well, that’s great. Well, I’m sorry that like you’ve said sometimes it’s been so heartbreaking but it also seems like you’re resilient and that you’re making the best of it so I don’t have any doubt that you’re a great teacher. AH: We’ll see if it stands the test of time! EG: It’s good -- the compassion that you have for your students really comes through and also that I know that you love art and you impart that. Not all kids can be the standout academic student or the jock or the Homecoming queen and I think that what the arts provide young people is something that’s really really important. So I’m always a big advocate for arts teachers even though I never took an art class in high school. AH: What? EG: I know! AH: You have such a good eye and you’re so appreciative. 18 EG: It’s a regret of mine. Is there anything else you’d like to add, Andrea? It’s been a pleasure talking with you. AH: This was a great experience. You know reflective practice – it’s good to have this at this moment in time. EG: I really appreciate your helping me out with this school assignment. Oh, I probably should have said this at the beginning that I’m doing this for the Oral History class that I’m taking which is History 7010 at the University of Utah with our professor Matt Basso. I should have said that at the beginning but this is my first interview. Hopefully he’ll overlook that. So anyway, how about if I sign off now and we can talk for a couple of minutes after. Thank you very much, Andrea. END OF INTERVIEW 19 20