I’ve been going through old lessons, and I came across one of my best ones from the past that I just lost sight of. Somewhere around eight years ago, I used the StoryCorps questions and had students go home and interview an adult in their home. When students came in after doing the assignment, we talked about the experience. Many of them shared that they had a real conversation with an adult in their life — this assignment took them out of the daily conversations and gave them time to listen and the adult time to be heard.
One of my students called me over after we debriefed as a group. She told me that she interviewed her mom and she ended up learning that her mom was married for a few years before she was married to her dad. Her husband died, and she was a widow in her mid-20s. The mom ended up getting out photos of her previous husband, sharing photos from when they dated, their wedding, their life beginning together as adults. My student was 17 when she had this conversation with her mom, and I never got the feeling that her mom was trying to keep this from her. It simply felt like there had never been the right time to talk about it. This interview opened up that time.
Yesterday, I was talking to another mom who was interviewed the day before by her daughter. She said that it was an amazing experience from the parent side because it gave them time to talk about things that helped her daughter see her as a person outside of being a parent.
Our hope is to be able to use clips of these interviews that my students do and create our own audio stories on our website. That is in the works!
Here’s the assignment and info that I give students:
You are going to interview a parent or guardian (it could also be a grandparent, aunt, uncle, etc., that you are close to.) Before the interview, figure out which questions you want to ask from the StoryCorps handout and check out these recording resources:
Before you start interviewing, let your interviewee know that we are going to use some of these audio stories for our own Story Corps series. Would they be willing to have us use this? They can also decide this after the interview!
Then, do the interview and record it!
Written By: Tracy Anderson
