Story Corp Reflections

I listen to a lot of podcasts.  I subscribe to quite a few - see this post on recommendations.  One of my favorites is Story Corp.  For those who don't know, Story Corp has been around for over a decade, with this mission: "StoryCorps’ mission is to preserve and share humanity’s stories in order to build connections between people and create a more just and compassionate world."  Last year, they began an initiative to have students record interviews using their app to interview parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, neighbors, etc. during the Thanksgiving holiday.  They reached out to schools with the goal of having "an entire generation of stories recorded and preserved in one weekend."  

I missed it last year because listening to a lot of podcasts means rarely being current with any of them.  This year, however, I was ready.  I partnered with our 8th-grade history and English teachers, and we created a cross-curricular assignment.  Our students have a weekly blog, so we began by having them choose a person over the age of 50 that they wanted to interview and explain why on their blogs.  Then, the history teacher helped them write questions based on the age and experience of their chosen person.  I required only one question:  "What is the most important invention?"  Some students altered it a bit, to "What is the most important invention in your lifetime?" while others let it mean for all time, and I think some let the interviewee interpret the question for themselves.  

I had already had my students blog on what they thought the most important invention was.  As you might expect, I got a lot of answers involving phones and the internet, but I also got an interesting variety of other suggestions.  A diabetic student believed that synthetic insulin was most important, and a lot of students said that they really valued air conditioning.  We gave them from November until January to record their interviews because we knew that some of them may only see these people at holidays.  When they turned them in, each teacher had a different follow-up to the assignment.  Mine was another blog post.  What did your interviewee say was the most important invention and why.  Many of the interviewed said the printing press, something none of the students had thought of for their posts.  Quite a few talked about the wheel. That is my personal choice as well because none of the subsequent inventions get to you without it.  Some said the car, a valid choice to be sure.  I was surprised by how many said space travel.  If you would like to read any of their stories, their blog links are here.

These have been enjoyable reads for me, but it was really the act of interviewing that was the important part of this assignment.  If the teachers never listened to or followed up with the interviews (which, of course, we do), it would still be a valuable assignment.  Asking people of another generation questions about their perspective can only broaden our own.  Taking out the earbuds long enough to find out what your grandmother did while your grandfather was in the army or how your uncle started his own business or what your neighbor contributed to the world before becoming your neighbor has value beyond any academic standard.  This is the value of StoryCorp, and I look forward to assigning this again next year.