STUDENT
RESPONSE
The information that students collected in their family interviews touched on many concepts and topics we had covered in class: push-pull factors, language, new neighbors.
Here are some quotes from the students’ interviews that show the kind of information they collected and how it aligned with the other sources we studied:
‘The most difficult thing was not speaking English’
‘It was hard to start a new school’
‘She moved from ESL classes easily’
'A new tradition she learned is to create a sense of family with your friends’
‘Because she won the diversity visa lottery’
‘He left his family’
‘Her family tries to incorporate traditions from China’
‘She left for a job’
‘At the beginning it was hard to adjust with the new culture and new environment.’
‘He left to go to college’
‘The language was an issue. Being in a completely new environment with no friends and family was hard’
‘She built a family, she became fluent in English, and she has a great job. She also has a lot of friends'
‘She left to get a better life and to help others’
‘She left all her sisters, brothers, and parents and friends’
‘She is proud because she is bicultural’
‘She had to leave me and her mom and dad behind’
‘Seeing my children being successful’
‘We wanted to come to America because it was the land of the free’
‘I was very afraid for years. For the last seven months of the war, my family was in hiding’
‘I didn’t speak English at all’
Student response to the assignment was generally positive. In a survey that I distributed, twenty students said that they liked conducting the interview, three students said that they did not like completing it, and one student said that she kind of liked completing it.
Here were some of the responses I got when I asked why they liked the project. About half of them mention something about a family member in their reason for liking the assignment:
‘It was quick and simple but gives a lot of information’
‘Because I got to learn how hard it was for my mom’
‘I liked hearing someone’s life’
‘I loved it. Because when I go to my dad’s house I get lots of sweets.’
‘Because it didn’t feel like a test but it felt more open’
‘Because I got to learn about their immigrant story’
‘I loved getting to know most of my stepdad’s life’
‘Because now I know more about my family member’
‘Because I am learning about a friend’
‘My mom works a lot and it was fun to spend time with her’
And when I asked who they would choose to interview if they could re-do the immigrant interview assignment, and interview anyone, they gave me a variety of answers.
Some students said that they would still interview a family member:
‘I would still interview my mom because she has the best story and I get an excuse to spend time with her’
‘My Seoul grandmother’
‘My neighbor’
‘My aunt’
‘Someone from the class’
‘My great grandma’
‘A different person in my family’
‘Someone who went to Ellis Island’
‘My grandpa’
‘My dad’
Four students responded especially strongly to the assignment by taking an extra initiative above and beyond expectations.
One student, Maryam, not only interviewed her mother but also took the initiative to create a poster timeline of her mother’s journey from Ethiopia. She attached family photos, brought in Ethiopian money, and presented the poster to the class one afternoon. That afternoon at dismissal, when I told the student’s mother what a great job she did, her mother laughed, shrugged, and said: ‘She wanted to do it, so I said, okay, go ahead.’
Maryam's poster timeline
of her mother's journey from Ethiopia:
Another girl, Dana, stained her interview pages with sepia-colored tea and made a small photo album, with captions, of her Great Aunt’s childhood in World War II Slovakia, where her family was persecuted for being Jewish.
A closeup of Dana's interview
on tea-stained pages:
"We left three years after the war, in 1948. I was 16 years old."
"I came by boat. We stayed in the bottom of the boat, but I was on deck when we arrived, and saw the Statue of Liberty. Immigrants no longer stayed at Ellis Island at that time, but we did go there."
“We left my cousin Oscar and his wife Susan. They moved to Israel, and then Australia, and then eventually they came to America too. The rest of my family was dead.”
A close-up of a photo
from Dana's family interview assignment.
One struggling writer was so motivated that he uncharacteristically took over a page of notes during his interview of his French-African mother.
I would even go so far as to say that Alejandra used the assignment to connect with her estranged father. When he picked her up from school the other day it was the first time I’ve seen him at the school. Alejandra screamed out ‘Papi!!!’ and dashed across the schoolyard to collect her brother and go meet her father.
A quote from Alejandra's survey
about spending time with her dad:
"I loved it"
"Because when I go to my dad's house I get lots of sweets"
While some students were enthusiastic about the work, not all of my students felt that way. Two students conveyed that it could have been designed in a way that was more inclusive. For example, Gabriel told me during class discussion one day that the answers he got from interviewing his dad were ‘kind of boring.’ I assured him that it was okay and that the data you collect during interviews won’t always be exciting. ‘Yeah,’ he replied, ‘but the questions were more geared towards country-to-country moves than city-to-city moves.’
A close-up
from Gabriel's interview.
Gabriel makes a good point. One solution would be for me, in the future, to spend more time in the unit demonstrating that city-to-city moves can also involve culture exchange and culture shock. Another alternative would be to allow the kids to interview anyone in their community who had the experience of leaving home—in case this would give them the opportunity to conduct a really interesting interview; or I might consider bringing immigrants from the community into the classroom and having the students conduct the interviews all together. While I like the idea of students using their own family in the assignment, I felt badly that some students felt their interviews were boring.
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