Overview of Interview

Through Patricia Quick’s experiences, this interview offers a unique viewpoint on the evolution of technology and societal change across several decades in educational systems. She was a teacher for 42 years and experienced how the classroom has changed over the years as well as college. Patricia Quick shares insightful information about her experience as a teacher adjusting to major changes in teaching strategies and resources throughout this interview. Mrs. Quick opens the interview by discussing her undergraduate experience, which was very different from what is typically seen today. Back in 1963, she was enrolled at Virginia’s all-girls Radford College, where she followed rigorous dress regulations and behavioral requirements. Her story brings to light the strict gender expectations prevalent at the time and the significance placed on educating women for conventional roles in society.

Throughout the conversation, Mrs. Quick talks about how she switched from using typewriters to teaching in the classroom to using computers. Her commitment to her work and her students was shown by the fact that this change prompted her to spend the summers learning how to use new technology. Her flexibility and dedication to lifelong learning are impressive. Throughout her lengthy career, Quick has also discussed how student views have changed. When computers first came out, children showed a keen interest in learning, especially keyboarding. But as time went on, she saw a decrease in the students’ passion for studying, which she attributed to larger changes in educational priorities and societal values. In all, this interview puts Mrs. Quick’s experiences in the larger framework of societal transformation and highlights the joys and difficulties of working as a career educator.

Biography 

Pat Quick, my interviewee is a female that was born in 1944 and 80 years old. She is from a small town in Virginia and was a computer teacher for 42 years from 1970 to 2012. She has experienced a lot of social changes in the classroom over the 42 years from the way the students act to the technology change. She grew up a single mother with 3 kids. One of them being my dad Jeff and his two siblings Heather and Brandon. From the oldest child to the youngest there is a 13 year age difference. 

Transcript 

Hailey Flint 0:01
Hello, my name is Hailey Flint, and today is March the 14th. I’m interviewing my grandmother on technology and school systems social change. Could you please start by stating your name and your profession?

Pat Quick 0:13
Patricia quick and I was a teacher for 42 years and I taught elementary and high school.

Hailey Flint 0:22
Could you please talk a little bit about what it was like when you were an elementary and high school?

Pat Quick 0:31
When I was an elementary, it was not my field. So I felt that I wasn’t qualified, although I really was, I taught the fifth grade and I had to do a lot of studying because I wasn’t trained in the fields that they offer to a fifth grader. So I had to do a lot of homework myself.

Hailey Flint 0:56
That’s awesome. Can you talk a little bit about what it was like going to college?

Pat Quick 1:01
Oh, that was quite an experience. I went to then it was Radford college [located in Virginia] , that was an all girls school. We were not allowed to wear pants across campus, any kind of a pants, we had to wear skirts or dresses and if we went across for gym class and had shorts, or any kind of a long pants on we had to wear a trench coat over top of it. To cover it up. We were served on our meals, we all ate together but we ate eight people a table and they serve us our meals like they do at home. Where they bring them to the table in a bowl and you served yourself out of the bowl. We didn’t have any lines to go through or anything. Whatever was in those bowls is what you ate for your meals. We were required to dress properly for a woman, we’re not allowed to go out in bathing suits anyplce place, unless we went on our balcony of our dorm and laid out there on the balcony. We could not lay out in the yard where there were men around although we had no boys in school, and I couldn’t have a car. Virginia Tech [Located in Viriginia as well] was not too far away and it was 90% boys and a few girls and the boys would come over on campus. If we wanted to date we sat in the parlor, he checked in with the parlor head, the lady that was the head of our parlor, and we would sit and talk to each other for a date. Could not go downtown with him to a movie and if I had been dating him ever since in high school and the only time we got to have real date is when we both went home.

Hailey Flint 3:10
That’s crazy. It’s very different from what it’s like today.

Pat Quick 3:13
That’s exactly right [notting her head with a smile].

Hailey Flint 3:15
Could you talk maybe a little bit what it was like in college becoming a teacher? Was that different?

Pat Quick 3:19
What do you mean? Was it different?

Hailey Flint 3:23
Like going to college today and trying to become a teacher. What was it like back then trying to become a teacher? I’m sure like what you had to learn and stuff was very, very different.

Pat Quick 3:36
Well, we had subjects that were related to teaching and there were all girls in the classes. If you wanted to be in a co-ed school, you had to go to Virginia Tech. But Radford was geared towards teaching that was the main course there, because they were trying to teach women how to be out in the teaching world. So we took history, we took all different classes like that, math, things like that, but we also have a lot of education classes on how to teach and what to expect from the students and how to handle them.

Hailey Flint 4:20
That’s awesome. Can you talk about what the biggest change you saw in the classroom from when you first started teaching to the end of your career was?

Pat Quick 4:29
Yes, because I taught for so long and it was the attitude of the students. They did not seem to care as much about learning as to when I started teaching. Especially keyboarding because then computers were coming out and they were more interested in learning. So finally, they changed me over to teach computers. I had never taught or have been on a computer and I had ot buy one and learn how to use it on my own before I could teach it. So I did that during the summer months.

Hailey Flint 5:11
That’s awesome. Well, since we’re talking about computers, can you talk a little bit about what the biggest change from a typewriter to a computer was?

Pat Quick 5:18
Oh gosh, the typewriters were all manuals. Then we went to the electric typewriters, and then we went to computers and it was totally new for me. I was on the Apple Computer, and totally new and I knew nothing about it. So I worked a lot at home, learning how to use an Apple computer and teaching and Learning how to teach the Apple computer before i, you know, could teach it to the kid. So I spent one summer learning myself so I can teach it in the fall.

Hailey Flint 5:54
That’s crazy.

I remember you once telling me about a crazy story when you were teaching. Do you mind sharing that?

Pat Quick 6:02
No. I was teaching a class. All of a sudden I heard a commotion in the hall, went out in the hall, there was two girls fist fighting. I got between them and push them apart and took them down to the principal’s office. And he told me, he says I cannot believe you got between those two girls, because they could have hit you too. I said, No, they didn’t. And I said, here they are. So you take care of them.

Hailey Flint 6:29
[laughter] Not your responsibility anymore.

Pat Quick 6:31
Thats right! [laughter with a big smile]

Hailey Flint 6:33
Could you talk a little bit about how the overall social events changed in school systems?

Pat Quick 6:38
Well, I don’t know how they do it today. But if they had any kind of a dance, the kids had to get tickets ahead and we had to supervise them while they were in there. So we would have the dances in the auditorium, or not in the auditorium, but in the gym and we would have to sit in there and make sure that they weren’t dancing too close and they weren’t doing any dirty dancing. So we had to be there. Teachers had to be there to supervise that.

Hailey Flint 7:12
Was there any like dress code or anything for these type of dances?

Pat Quick 7:15
Oh, it was dress code for everything. Not just dances. Yes, you couldn’t be, You couldn’t show very much of yourself as a girl. You couldn’t have on clothes that were suggestive or any type of thing like that, yes. Even for classes.

Hailey Flint 7:36
That’s crazy. What about how sports have changed?

Pat Quick 7:40
The Sports, I don’t know that much about. Sports, I know that they had tryouts for sports and I went to the games that they had. But I don’t know how the sports program is, you know, compared to what it was because I didn’t deal with sports at all. Yeah.

Hailey Flint 8:03
You play basketball when you are were younger, didn’t you?

Pat Quick 8:06
Yeah

Hailey Flint 8:06
How about basketball? Because I think I remember you once telling me about how basketball has really changed over the years.

Pat Quick 8:13
Well, I when I started playing basketball, the Fishersville [our hometown] library was a school. And you can go up the steps and directly in front of you with the, actually went up the steps, directly in front of you was a auditorium and that’s where they played. The girls played half court. They couldn’t run up and down the whole court. They had to stay on their half of the court and you had forward on both sides and you had the guards on both sides. So when girls played sports, even when I was playing in high school, I was only playing half court, I couldn’t run down the court like they do now.

Hailey Flint 9:04
That’s very different than how it is today.

Pat Quick 9:06
Yes, very

Hailey Flint 9:07
When you transition from typewriters to computers, how did that affect your lesson plans as a teacher?

Pat Quick 9:14
I had to change them. Because I had to go from manual to electric, which was completely different and I had to relearn how to do everything and show them how to do it on the computer that was electric because I was used to doing everything on manual.

Hailey Flint 9:32
So just like the students had to learn how to use a new computer you did as a teacher as well which took a lot of time to learn and jump right back to teaching to students.

Pat Quick 9:43
That’s right. I had to spend my summer learning in order to be able to teach it in the fall. I got the books that they were going to use and I went through all the whole book during the summer during my vacation to learn how to do the electric compared to what they did on the manual. Yes.

Hailey Flint 10:01
That’s a lot of dedication.

Pat Quick 10:03
[laughter]

Hailey Flint 10:04
So to wrap all this up, do you ever regret teaching as your profession?

Pat Quick 10:09
Never, I loved being with the kids, I love learning new things, and experiencing new things and I just like being around kids. That’s why I did it. I like being around kids and they were growing up. I like to help them grow up. Thats what I’d like to do.

Hailey Flint 10:29
That’s awesome.

Is there any words of advice you’d like to give future teachers?

Pat Quick 10:36
Just make sure that you like students and can cope with students and what they’re going to do. Because students have a whole lot harder life than the kids did when I was teaching. And they are much more in tune with the world because of technology than they were when I was teaching. So just to be in touch with the world and know what’s going on. So to see how it afftects them.

Hailey Flint 11:10
Most definitely. Well, thank you so much for allowing me to talk to you and to be willing to do this project with me.

Pat Quick 11:18
I am tickled to death to help my granddaughter. I love her so! [ huge smile and laughter]

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Research/Bibliography 

This website was extremely helpful as it went into depth about some of the big changes in the classroom over the past 50 years. Not only did it talk about teaching in general it also talked about the way technology has transformed in the classroom as well. It talked about how computers have improved over the years in education and how that has affected the approach teachers take. Based on the era I am doing, an interview on this website is helpful because it talks about changes in the classroom from the past 50 years. Looking at the timeline of my grandma starting and finishing her career this is perfect timing. 

Latham, Saundra. “15 Ways Classrooms Have Changed over the Past 50 Years.” Cheapism, Cheapism, 24 Oct. 2022, blog.cheapism.com/classroom-changes-over-time/. 

Throughout this website they examined the evolution of technology adaptation. A guy named Joe provides us with a timeline of the introduction of technology and educational settings by mentioning ditto machines, Mainframe computers, and the gradual inclusion of desktop computers. It helped to shape my understanding of the pace of which the classroom changed and the technology.  This article is helpful to my era in particular because it gives me someone else’s experiences within school systems over the years.

 Annis, Rose. “Tech in Teaching: How Technology in the 70s Transformed America’s Classrooms.” Gizmodo, Gizmodo, 27 June 2012,

This article is going to be helpful to me and my interview as it gave me a background of the diversity of teaching. It talks about how back in the early 1900s most teachers were male but over the decades how roles have reversed. Most teachers now are females and it is looked at as a female profession. It also talks about how women being a teacher could help shape the way they raise a family in a beneficial way. It helped me to understand the way that teaching could have changed the way she looked at a family and the way she grew up. Lastly, it talked about what it was like for woman to go to college back in the day and how strict it was. This was helpful to me as a lot of me and my grandmas interview was about her experiences in college and how much times have changed. 

LeQuire, Shelby. “The History of Women as Teachers.” The Western Carolina Journalist, 4 May 2016, thewesterncarolinajournalist.com/2016/05/04/the-history-of-women-as-teachers/. 

Reflection

During the follow up conversion with my interviewee I got to think more into depth about our conversation. Although I did not gain any more knowledge other than what we had talked about before, I thought about it in a different way. I reflected on the concept of school systems and colleges today and how they are so different from back then. My grandma’s switch from typewriters to computers was one notable feature, requiring her to modify her teaching strategies and devote personal time to studying new technology. This showed her love and dedication to teaching by hearing how much time she spent outside of the classroom to better her understanding of the technology to provide the students with the highest quality of education possible. My grandmother’s experiences also highlight the more rigid gender roles and social rules that prevailed in the college and early teaching years. The process gained in promoting equality and inclusivity in schools is shown by these contrasts with the more liberal and inclusive climate that exists in education today. Furthermore, the continuous process of learning about the past through these kinds of interviews emphasize the significance of intergenerational communication. We may close the generational divide, promote understanding, and recognize the accomplishments of our ancestors by interacting with elders and recording their stories. All in all, our conversation made me fortunate to know where the school systems are today, with being able to wear what we want as well as hangout with any gender of our choice.