Oral history is a way to actively involve students in thinking about and understanding history and our world today. It allows teachers to bring the cultural and historical experiences of students and their families directly into the classroom and the learning process. In many schools, it creates possibilities to enhance the multicultural nature of social studies curricula. An oral history class project has the potential to become the centerpiece of class discussions on recent U.S. and global history.
There are different methods to introduce students to oral history projects depending on the interest and academic level of the class. Students can bring in and discuss family heirlooms that allow the class to examine cultural similarities and differences. Classes can complete family histories that help students pinpoint where their family's story has intersected with broader historical events. Classes can also read oral histories to figure out what questions the interviewer asked the subject, and to allow students to think of questions they would like to ask.
Students can participate in oral history projects as individuals or in cooperative learning teams. However, a heterogeneous cooperative learning format is strongly recommended. It helps students learn how to work supportively in groups, and it allows them to learn more about their teammates' families and cultures. Cooperative learning teams of three or four students can create their own interview questionnaires, or use questions prepared by the class or the teacher.
Interview subjects can be neighbors, family friends, members of senior citizens centers, participants in church or veterans' programs, and older school staff members. An entire cooperative learning team can interview one person, the team can interview a member of each student's family, or students can interview their family members by themselves and then meet to write their reports together.
Open-ended interviews using prepared questions as starting points encourage people to tell stories about their past. Sometimes during an interview, students ask all of their prepared questions, sometimes only part of their questions, and sometimes they think of new follow-up questions in the middle of the interview.
Before teams do their interviews, it is useful to conduct a practice interview in class. One of the student teams can interview a staff member, a family member, or a community resident. The practice interview teaches students how to conduct open-ended interviews that stimulate interview subjects into telling their stories.
Students can take notes during an interview, or audio- or videotape them. When the interviews are completed, cooperative learning teams can work together to write their findings up as biographical sketches or in a question-answer form. Team members compose, write, and edit the reports together. Sometimes interviews are conducted in languages other than English, and students need to work together to translate what they have learned.
Interview subjects should be asked for permission to include their stories in student magazines. Magazines can be used as student-created texts to teach about the Great Depression, World War II, the Civil Rights movement, the problems of workers in modern America, and the hopes and problems confronting immigrants and ethnic minorities. Follow-up activities can include trips to local museums like the Ellis Island Immigration museum in New York City or the creation of a school exhibit using family photographs and artifacts. Students can also become involved in checking personal testimonies against primary sources and history books. They can discuss the subjectivity of our knowledge of the past and the importance of examining multiple sources before arriving at conclusions.
