Glenda Funk 03/07/2021

Glenda Funk, a retired teacher from Chubbuck, Idaho, discusses what it meant to become a teacher in the late 1970’s, with very few options available to women. After 38 years of teaching, she retired at the end of 2019, just before the COVID-19 pandemic impacted education. She speaks of the adjustments necessary to teaching following the fake news and alternative fact push nationwide and recognized that while the public viewed teachers as heroes at the onset of the pandemic, this view would (and did) shift. She passed time in March and April in online writing communities, both blogging and poetry. She feels educators are facing the important issues of censorship and introducing diverse voice to classrooms while learning to decolonize their classrooms. Because of her close proximity in living and teaching to a Native American reservation, she has first-hand knowledge of the effects of the violent history the English language has played on the colonized continents.