By Maggie Meosky and Priya Pindiprolu
Mrs. Fey-Daly has been a part of our Soc. department for many years. She currently teaches Global 1, Women’s History, and AP European History.
When asked why she decided to become a teacher, Mrs. Fey-Daly answered, “I just wanted a history that was more representative of the people that were in the classrooms. I always feel the need to right wrongs. I don’t know how well I do at it, but I insist on trying. That’s my motto in life.”
Any past or present student of Mrs. Fey-Daly knows the passion she has for teaching. So it’s not surprising that Mrs. Fey-Daly wouldn’t want to be in any other profession. When asked what other career she could see herself in, Fey-Daly replied, “It’s hard for me to imagine and I’ve tried to think about it…. But really what would I do because I really have a great career. I’m really lucky. It’s hard work, but it’s something I love.” It probably helps that she’s a self-professed history nerd. In fact, Mrs. Fey-Daly told us the nerdiest thing she does, “Probably where I look the nerdiest, is when I go to my mailbox and my BBC History magazine shows up, and I’m like, “Oh my God!” My children look at me like I’m an alien from another planet. Every time, I flip to the end to do the crossword and I actually read the whole magazine backwards. I don’t know why, but it’s just a weird quirk of mine.”
Mrs. Fey-Daly also has an immense love of all things French. When asked where her love of this culture developed she answered, “I like languages as a whole. I’ve taken French and German and Russian. There is something really fun about being able to understand someone in their own language and then from there… I travelled to Europe with my grandparents when I was sixteen. And, I just loved it. I don’t know how to explain it. The more I read it, the more I studied it, the more I liked it. And then I drive people crazy with it all the time.” As a history and french nerd, it makes sense why she loves to teach AP European History.
Mrs. Fey-Daly loves to teach exactly what she teaches this year. She says, “The only AP class I wanted to teach is AP Euro. I love being able to teach women’s history. I love teaching freshmen. So, there’s nothing else I’d want to teach.”
If Fey-Daly could travel back in time to any event in history, she said she wouldn’t want to mess up any timelines, however, “ I would just love to see Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, to see what they’re actually like together. Do they really love each other? Do they really hate each other? I would love to be in the Tudor court, at that time, too. It would have been fascinating. From the end of Catherine of Aragon to the end of Anne Boleyn. I would really love to see how that all played out.”
Mrs. Fey-Daly is also very much a fan of 19th Century reformers such as Lucy Stone and William Lloyd Garrison. She said her favorite historical figure is Lucy Stone because, “A lot of other reformers get more press, like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. But Lucy Stone’s last words to her daughter were, “ Make the world better”. And I can’t think of a better motto for life. Everyday you try to make the world a little bit better.”
As Mrs. Fey-Daly is a dedicated runner, we asked what her favorite type of music is, she responded, “I’m definitely more of an alternative, punk, pop kind of person. My son does make me listen to rap music. I do like Drake, he’s kind of my guilty pleasure. It’s mostly old alternative, by that I mean 80s and 90s alternative and grunge. What I run to is a big mix of Panic at the Disco and 1975 and that kind of mix. Plus, I throw in Beyonce because you should run to Beyonce. It just seems right.”
At the end of the interview Fey-Daly gave a few words of advice towards other vertically-challenged individuals, “Stand on chairs, if you want to be able to see over [the partial walls that line the Soc. office]. If you do stand on a chair, make sure you have a person to spot you.”
