Oral Historian for the Day

This guide is a resource for using Jewish Neighborhood Voices to teach students in educational settings such as classrooms and Hebrew schools – or learners of all ages –how to conduct oral history interviews! Using this resource as a guide, students can conduct an oral history interview on a specific topic of relevance to curriculum.

While conducting place-based oral history interviews for Jewish Neighborhood Voices, we learned a lot about how neighborhoods and places impact experience and memory. In addition to creating a rich understanding of a neighborhood, place-based oral history provides insight into individuals, families, communities, and historical moments that took place in that neighborhood.

Adapting the American Ancestors Family History Curriculum Interview section, this resource uses the language of “family member,” but is intended to apply very broadly for students; they should be empowered to choose someone to interview who has valuable insight to share on the topic at hand, whether that be their own family history, a historic event, or, as in Jewish Neighborhood Voices, the history of their neighborhood.

You can learn more about the American Ancestors Family History Curriculum that this guide has been adapted from.

Goals

Students learn about oral history and its value
Students are empowered to conduct interviews
Students connect to their history, community, and/or family through oral history

Advance Preparation

Determine the topic of student interviews, and whether they will be biographical or thematic, or both
Select and set up relevant Jewish Neighborhood Voices sample clips (there are some included in the lesson plan as examples!)
Obtain and plan for recording devices that students can take home (includes phones, audio recorders)

Key Terms

Biographical Questions: Questions about a person’s life and experiences
Thematic Questions: Questions related to a specific theme or topic, such as immigration, careers, or a historic event
Open-ended Questions: Broad questions that require an explanation and details
Close-ended Questions: Narrow questions that can be answered with a one-word, such as a name or date, or “yes” or “no”

Activity

Prelude: Introduce Oral History

This is “oral history”:

Introduce interviewer and narrator from chosen Jewish Neighborhood Voices interview and play sample clips from Jewish Neighborhood Voices

We are going to hear some examples of oral history from interviewer Andrew Fehribach and narrator Elaine Baskin.

Today, we are going to learn how to be oral historians!

Elaine Kellem Baskin, age 13, at the seaside in1948. Image Courtesy of Elaine Baskin.

"My father always had an accent"

"My father always had an accent, but I didn’t know that. Somebody called it to my attention years later, saying, “Your father has an accent.” I said, “No, he doesn't.” But with my grandmother, she thought she was speaking English, and because I was used to hers—but I would have people say, “What is she speaking?” It was a combination of English and Yiddish..."

"I thought everybody spoke Yiddish when they got older"

"The old people all spoke Yiddish. In fact, I assumed at some age, and I don’t know what age it was, that every woman had gray hair and tied it in a bun, in the back, and spoke Yiddish. Why she forgot English and spoke Yiddish, I don’t know, but I guess all the older women I knew spoke Yiddish. Instead of thinking that was their language, I just thought everybody spoke Yiddish when they got older! I do remember that. So, I kind of grew up bilingual..."

Part 1: Introduce Interviews

Step 1

After introducing “oral history,” facilitate a discussion about the importance of oral history.

Use these questions to help:

Guiding Questions (adapted from American Ancestors Family History Curriculum):

Why is it important to interview people about their experiences, including family members?
Who are ideal people to interview?
What kinds of questions are relevant to ask?
Should you ask questions that require one-word answers or questions that require an explanation and details?
When and where could you conduct the interview?
How could you record and preserve the interview?
What might affect the accuracy of the information obtained during an interview?
How could you verify this information?
How can interviews lead to new questions and avenues of research?

Step 2

Facilitate a discussion about the difference between open-ended and closed-ended questions, and the advantages and disadvantages of each.

Play the two following example clips.

Open-ended question

Closed-ended question

Step 3

Explain the difference between biographical and thematic questions. Share examples of each.

Option: Replay the two example clips.

Step 4

Review expert tips and play example clip of intro and outro statements

Ask students if there is anything about the intro/outro that they notice (and note, if they don’t, that the outro needs to include where the interview happened!)

Example Intro statement

Example outro statement

Broadly Define Family

Let students choose who they interview. They can interview anyone they consider part of their family. Ideally, they should prioritize adults who influence their life in some way and who can help answer their research questions.

Establish Criteria and Constraints

Have students conduct two interviews, one with biographical questions and one with thematic questions. Set up and debrief each interview separately. For thematic interviews, assign the class a single theme or topic that everyone must learn more about, such as immigration, careers, or a topic in your social studies curriculum. Have students share their results with the class: What did they learn on their own, and what did they learn as a class?