HOW I HANDLED
CHALLENGES
My concern that the assignment might exclude Black students confronted me when Shawn told me that he absolutely couldn’t find someone in his family to interview. He is one of the Black American students that I’d had in mind when I initially worried about aspects of the project. When Shawn came to me with his problem, I encouraged him to try and find someone in the family to interview; that surely someone had moved cities or homes at some point. ‘They’ve always lived in Philadelphia.’ He told me. I suggested that he ask his mom for ideas.
On the day that the assignment was due, he hadn’t completed it. ‘I told you that I didn’t have anyone to interview,’ he explained. And he was right that he had told me. I felt badly. I didn’t know whether he couldn’t and didn’t complete the interview because no one in his family was available to help him complete it or because something in the assignment was uninteresting or uncomfortable for him.
In the end, I suggested that he interview a good friend of his in the class who had moved to Philadelphia from Harrisburg earlier in the year and who could speak knowledgeably about the experience of moving homes. This seemed to work out fine though I can’t say for sure whether it ended up being as meaningful of an experience for him as interviewing a family member might have been. But I knew there was a connection between these two students and I hoped that it would still feel special.
For some students, logistical problems got in the way. Soon after assigning the project, two students told me that they were having trouble finding someone to interview or that their parents didn’t have time to help them. One student, Roger, told me that his mom was very busy studying for a test and that his dad comes home too late in the evenings to sit down and be interviewed. ‘He can find time,’ my cooperating teacher assured me, when I asked her what I should do.
I approached Roger and told him that I knew his parents were really busy but, ‘was there a day during the week when they had some free time?’ When he mentioned that Sundays were quiet, I asked if he could try to carve out fifteen minutes on Sunday to interview one of his parents. I assured him that the assignment really shouldn’t take long and that I really wanted him to be able to complete it. I felt pushy. But in the end, Roger completed the assignment (though he left a few questions blank).
For one student, family tension posed an obstacle. Alejandra told me that she really, really wanted to interview her father because he had moved here from Mexico and she knew it would be a great interview, but that she doesn’t talk to him too much and her mother might not let her do it. I could see how much she wanted to talk to interview her father for the assignment and felt, perhaps selfishly, excited for the opportunity that it would give her. I encouraged her to keep trying to see if it would be possible.
Lo and behold, Alejandra came in one morning, announcing, ‘Ms. Kover, I did it! I got to interview my dad.’ We exchanged a celebratory high-five. Later, she revealed that she’d actually cried and pleaded to her mother in order to be allowed. When I learned this, I was impressed by her determination and proud of her victory. But I also couldn’t help feeling guilty about assigning something that might have been the cause of family friction.
Some students came across challenges and solved them on their own or with their parents’ assistance. For example, one student, Carli, interviewed her babysitter instead of a family member. Her babysitter, who picks her up from school every day, is from Colombia. I supposed that she had made this choice, in spite of the assignment description, because she really wanted to interview someone from another country and feels close to her babysitter. A couple of students told me that they had used the phone and Facetime to complete their interviews. And I could tell that at least two students’ parents had written out the answers to the questions because writing quickly and neatly did not come easily to their child. In these situations, the strong parental involvement at Penn Alexander certainly contributed to the success of this assignment.
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