Oral Histories (Class A)

(In-Schools Program)

Dec 3,2013, 8:10 AM - 9:45 AM @ Mission High School

Mission's freshmen are learning about the power of oral history. Hear from the teacher, Ms. Riechel, about this amazing project:

Dear tutors,

My name is Aimee Riechel and I teach Ethnic Studies at Mission High School. Thank you in advance for your time and effort. I really appreciate your willingness to come into my class and I am excited to work with you. For this project, you will be visiting Mission High School, located at 3750 18th Street, easily accessible from either the J line, the 33 or the 22.

The freshman Ethnic Studies class you will be working with is finishing up an identity unit, which has specifically focused on issues of race, culture, ethnicity and nationality. The project we will be working on  is an oral history assignment. Students will interview a family member in order to recount a story of that person’s identity in these same terms.

Students will first develop interview questions then type up a transcript of the actual interview. I will ask each of you to work with students to help develop good interview questions, then help students create an oral history by picking the best parts of their interview and deleting the parts you don’t think are interesting. I would appreciate if you would help guide students on how the transcript should be broken into paragraphs and how each idea should be broken into sentences. You and the students will pick the best stories the interviewee told, eliminate all the questions, and cut and paste on the computer.

I would ask that each of you meet with 1 to 3 students, having each student read their essay(s) out loud. Then, if you could work individually with each student in your group, giving appropriate feedback/ helping with glaring errors or awkward syntax/ and giving your overall impression of each essay. Feel free to mark up their papers! While you are doing this, the other students in your group will be working with each other, continuing their peer editing and working on second drafts.

Thanks again in advance.

Aimee Riechel

Grade: 9th

Address:
3750 18th Street