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I had the idea of recording short excerpts of all of the students’ interviews and putting them together as an ‘classroom interview collage’ of some kind.  I thought it would be a nice way to literally ‘join’ the student’s experiences together and build a sense of community.  Not to mention, it would be a good way to incorporate technology.  By now, I have recorded all of the students in the class and I intend to play the final classroom interview collage for my students, and possibly even for their parents, during a Writing Publishing Celebration.

 

To make the recordings, I pulled each student from class for about five-ten minutes to conference and record important details from their interviews.  I regret that I am responsible for editing and putting all the pieces together. But, realistically, it would be difficult for my third-grade students to take the lead in putting the recording together. 

 

Something I noticed when I pulled each student from class to record their individual portion of collage is that they would often open up to me about the interview in a way that they hadn’t when they’d written their answers on the assignment paper.  In person, they would tell me about their mother’s cooking.  Or what it was like getting to spend the time with their family member.  Or what it was like getting to look through suitcases of photos.  Or how amazing it was, one boy told me, that his mother had come to the United States, left him in China, and then had the grandparents bring him over two years later.  In contrast to the quotes that we were recording into the class collage—which actually came off sounding a bit sterile and practiced—their personal anecdotes, told to me in these moments, on the side, were honest and authentic and interesting.  It was in these moments where I could tell that the interview experience had been meaningful to them.  I’d wished the other students were around to hear.  These were the kinds of stories and details that should have been shared in a full class discussion. 

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Bits of several family interviews

put together

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Marcus reads

from an interview of his mother

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Narisa shares less scripted details

 from an interview of her mother

 

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Even if the recording is not perfect, even if the kids don’t sound as interesting and authentic as they do in casual conversation, I hope that when my students hear all of their classmates’ voices represented in the recording, some of the stories the students shared with me but did not get to share with one another will come out.  I imagine that they will find common themes in family experience and that some of the connection and community building that I had hoped for will begin to emerge.  And playing the recording for the class could present an opportune moment to have the kind of class discussion that we did not get to have earlier in the unit. 

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