Oral Historian for the Day
Oral Historian for the Day
About this Lesson
While conducting place-based oral history interviews for Jewish Neighborhood Voices, we learned a lot about how neighborhoods and places impact experience and memory; place-based oral history provides insight into individuals, families, communities, and historical moments that took place in that neighborhood. We wanted to share what we learned and to empower students to ask these questions themselves, so we developed the following guide.
Below is a resource for using "Jewish Neighborhood Voices" to teach students in settings such as classrooms and Hebrew school—or learners of all ages—how to conduct oral history interviews. With this guide, students can conduct an oral history interview on a specific topic of relevance to your curriculum.
For this guide, we have adapted the Interview section of the American Ancestors Family History Curriculum, which uses the language of “family member.” Students 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 here.
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”
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!
Sample Clips
"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..."
Expert Tips
1. Decide who you want to interview and what you want to learn.
2. Brainstorm open-ended and closed-ended biographical and thematic questions.
3. Send a list of themes or topics you want to discuss in advance. This can help your family member prepare answers and open up.
4. Ask questions in chronological order. Start with their childhood years and move towards their adult years.
5. Use active listening skills, and do not limit yourself to your list of questions. Ask follow-up questions to foster a conversation.
6. Memories of past events and people can be difficult to remember. Be patient and allow for pauses.
7. Some questions may be sensitive. When interviewing veterans, for example, try saying, "Please only tell me what you feel comfortable with."
8. Ask if your family member has any photographs or heirlooms that can spark their memory.
9. Record a statement before your interview that includes:
Your name
Family member’s name
Date of interview
Location of interview
Topic of the interview
Example: “This is Susie Smith. I am interviewing Jane Smith on January 1, 2026, at Jane Smith’s home in Boston, Massachusetts. Today we’re talking about her childhood in Chelsea, Massachusetts.”
10. Record a statement at the end of your interview that includes:
Your name
Family member’s name
Date of interview
An expression of gratitude
Example: “This concludes my interview with Jane Smith on January 1, 2026. This is Susie Smith, and I want to thank Jane for spending time with me today.”
Detailed discussion of Biographic and Thematic Questions
Interviews can consist of biographical and thematic questions.
Biographical questions are personal questions aimed to get to know the interviewee as a person: Where were you born? Who were you named after? What was your favorite subject in school? The interviewee can narrate their life story by sharing and describing memories to the interviewer.
Thematic questions are aimed to learn about a specific theme or topic the interviewer is interested in studying, such as immigration, careers, or a specific event in history. A researcher, for example, could interview several veterans to learn about World War II.
There is often overlap between these two types of questions, and that is okay! Oral history is about capturing it all.
Part 1: Introduce Interviews
Step 1
After introducing “oral history,” facilitate a discussion about the importance of oral history.
Use the guiding questions below to help.
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.
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!)
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?
Open-ended question
Closed-ended question
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?
Notes About Oral History and Verification
Photographs, heirlooms, or a trip to a childhood home can enrich an interview by triggering emotions and memories. The accuracy of information obtained from an interview depends on the memory of the person being interviewed. Researchers should verify their findings by gathering additional evidence to ensure the information they obtain is accurate. Multiple people can be interviewed to obtain different perspectives of the same experience.
Part 2: Guided Practice
Step 1
Let students practice interviewing a partner in class.
Step 2
Give them time to brainstorm four open-ended biographical questions to ask their partner. Have them write their questions on the back of an Interview Guided Practice Log.
Step 3
Give students time to conduct their interview in class.
Step 4
Check for understanding by reviewing their questions and by listening to their interviews.
Facilitate a conversation about the process they used for conducting interviews.
Part 3: Planning Their Research
Step 1
Students will now plan to interview a family member. If you are following the American Ancestors Family History Curriculum, tell them this is part of Step 4: Research and Document of the Genealogy Research Process.
Step 2
Give them time to brainstorm questions to ask their family members. They should record them in their Interview Research Log.
Step 3
Review expert tips for conducting interviews, such as asking follow-up questions to foster a conversation.
Step 4
Give students a deadline to complete their interviews.
Part 4: After Their Research
Step 1
Use these questions to debrief their research process.
Step 2
Students will connect their findings with other sources to result in a final project.
If following the American Ancestors Family History Curriculum, this will lead to the “What Does This Mean? Final Project.”
Guiding Questions Debrief
- Describe the process you used for your interview.
- Is there anything that surprised you about the process?
- What challenges did you have?
- What would you do differently next time?
- Did you ask open-ended and/or closed-ended questions? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each?
- Was this a relevant, accurate, and credible source of information?
- What was their purpose, main idea, and point of view?
- What was your summary?
- What meaningful connections did you make between your narrator and our larger topic?