Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Getting Hammered.

I am your host, Mary Catherine Ham, and we are doing something a little bit different today,

as we do sometimes when Vic, my co-host,

avails himself of some personal time or a vacation. We got to have somebody else in to fill that

gap. And I'm very lucky to have with me today, Karen Vates, who is a friend online, but never in

real life yet someday, who covers literacy and curriculum issues.

And as you guys know, I talk about education regularly. Karen is one of the folks who,

during the COVID school closures, I came to trust as somebody who was willing to speak out

and an expert in a specific area and very trustworthy as somebody who

could give me straight information. So I thought she would be a great person to have on the show.

Karen Veitz, welcome. Thank you. We're very glad to have you. And I would like to do a little bit

about like how did you end up doing this work or becoming sort of one of the

COVID school closure activists, for lack of a better term? Gosh, becoming a COVID school closure

activist just came from, you know, maybe the through line between all of my advocacy is that I'm, you know, I'm a research dork. And so, you know, maybe the through line between all of my advocacy is that I'm, you know, I'm a research

dork. And so I think during the pandemic, my way of dealing with the anxiety of what was

happening was just to read a lot. And if you wanted to find the information on whether or not

we could reopen schools.

You could find it.

We happened to be talking on a day that Dave Zweig's book is coming out,

and he's writing up for all of us how very much the European nations knew

and any close watchers knew about our capacity to reopen schools.

So I was just reading a lot.

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