Unlocking the Power of Oral History
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Talking with older relatives and community members about their lives is a great way for students to build practical skills, develop new relationships, and unlock exciting historical stories. Learn how to lead an oral history project with your students, be introduced to JWA’s myriad oral history resources, and brainstorm with colleagues about how to bring inter-generational story sharing into your classroom or community.
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Unlocking the Power of Oral History
- 1. Sharing Stories Inspiring Change Welcome, and thanks for coming! Get Set Up 1. Adjust the volume of your computer using the speaker button (you should see a speaker icon in the top, black menu of your meeting room). Use headphones if possible. 2. Using the phone icon, enable your microphone using the drop-down menu (strongly recommended) or use the call-in information to join by phone. 3. Practice muting your microphone (the icon will be green with a line through it). If you are calling in, mute using your phone controls. Once the program begins, please stay mute when you are not speaking. 4. If you’d like to enable your webcam so we will be able to see you (the webcam icon will turn green). 5. Practice raising and lowering your hand. This will allow you to ask questions without interrupting the flow of the program. 6. Locate the chat box in the bottom right and introduce yourself to the group.
- 2. Yes! This program will be recorded. Recordings will be made available at a later date, or upon request.
- 3. Sharing Stories Inspiring Change
- 4. Sharing Stories Inspiring Change You Cannot Be What You Cannot See Who is this person? What did this person do? Why did they do it? Who am I? What do I do / What do I want to do? Why do I do it?
- 5. Sharing Stories Inspiring Change Two Short Polls
- 7. Katrina’s Jewish Voices, Joel Brown, Owner of Kosher Cajun restaurant in New Orleans
- 8. Sharing Stories Inspiring Change Oral History Builds & Diversifies the Historical Record
- 9. What does oral history offer to us (educators) and to our students?
- 10. Sharing Stories Inspiring Change Fosters Four Areas of Student Learning Emergent Learning: Pursuit of Personal Interest Skill Building Emotional Health & Growth Relationships /Role Models
- 11. Sharing Stories Inspiring Change Sharing Family Stories Makes Kids Resilient
- 12. Sharing Stories Inspiring Change Stories Help People Construct Identity
- 13. Sharing Stories Inspiring Change Components of an Oral History Project Collecting (Interviews) Sharing (Presentation/Preservation) Connecting (Project/Research)
- 14. Sharing Stories Inspiring Change Resources for Collecting Stories • In Our Own Voices • Resource for conducting life history interviews with Jewish women • http://jwa.org/stories/how-to/guide • Family History Tool Kit • Guide adapted for tweens/teens (for girls but anyone can use it) • http://mybatmitzvahstory.org • Museum of Family History • Lesson plan for creating a museum of stories and artifacts • http://mybatmitzvahstory.org/content/museum-family-history
- 15. Sharing Stories Inspiring Change Two people perform two roles • Narrator—the person telling the story • Interviewer—the person asking the questions
- 16. Sharing Stories Inspiring Change Generating Good Questions If you were interested in learning more about how and why someone became a Jewish educator, what would you ask?
- 17. Sharing Stories Inspiring Change Types of Questions 1. Closed-ended questions • For gathering facts • Have clear answers • “Who” “what,” “when,” “where,” “how many” 2. Open-ended questions • Elicit stories, feelings, and memories • “Tell me about…” “Describe…” “How…” 3. Both are essential
- 18. Sharing Stories Inspiring Change One-Two Punch Method • Switch off between open and closed questions • Draft extra questions • Follow the narrator’s lead and the interviewer’s interest/curiosity
- 19. Sharing Stories Inspiring Change Role Playing: What Not To Do
- 20. Sharing Stories Inspiring Change What Not To Do • Ask too many questions at once • Interrupt the narrator • Interrupt with “uh huh,” or “mmmm.” Instead use non-verbal communication to show you are listening. • Offer your own experiences or stories. This is not a conversation. • Express assumptions e.g. “Wow, you must have been so angry.”
- 21. Sharing Stories Inspiring Change Other Resources For Collecting and Sharing Stories • StoryCorps (http://storycorps.org/) • DIY Guide for National Day of Listening (Day after Thanksgiving) • http://nationaldayoflistening.org/downloads/DIY-Instruction-Guide.pdf • Contemporary Jewish Museum (http://www.thecjm.org/) • “Stories of Survival”: Creating and Exploring Oral Histories in the Classroom • http://www.thecjm.org/storage/documents/education/2013/Oral_History_Cur riculum_Resource-FINAL.pdf
- 22. Sharing Stories Inspiring Change Resources For Viewing/Watching Stories • JWA’S YouTube Channel • Women’s stories: activists, community leaders, etc. • http://www.youtube.com/user/jewishwomensarchive?feature=watch • StoryCorps • Stories collected and curated under a variety of topics • http://storycorps.org/listen/ • iWitness @ The Shoah Foundation • Searchable video testimony from Holocaust survivors • http://sfi.usc.edu/teach_and_learn/iwitness • This I Believe • Personal essays read aloud • http://thisibelieve.org/essays/listen/classic/
- 23. What else do you need to know? What ideas do you have?
- 24. Sharing Stories Inspiring Change From the Field: Susan Cohn, San Diego “It was truly an honor to get the chance to interview such an incredible woman. Molly has so much wisdom, knowledge, and wonderful stories. Molly taught me to live in the present, because the present is a gift. In doing this project, what was meaningful to me as a person, was that I got to listen to someone’s story. It inspired me and moved me to want to pursue what I want to do in my life.”
- 25. Sharing Stories Inspiring Change From the Field: Barbara Rosenblit, Atlanta
- 26. Sharing Stories Inspiring Change TWERSKY WINNER TELLS ALL With Twersky Award Winner Rabbi Deborah Bodin Cohen Thursday, December 11 @ 1pm & 8pm
Editor's Notes
- Jewish educators are essential partners. Educators are catalysts for bringing the rich and inclusive history of Jews in America to students of all ages and genders. Together we inspire (young) Jews to learn about who they want to be and what impact they want to have on the world.
- Now, the pendulum is swinging more and more towards collecting and sharing stories (moth, TAL, Storycorps). Technology is allowing us to capture and share history in a much more democratic way. This is also a fundamental assumption of our work at JWA: everyone needs to know these stories, and everyone is responsible for sharing them.
- Initially we conducted local projects in Boston, Baltimore and Seattle. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, of men and women. Why?
- It’s a powerful, if labor intensive, way to document personal and private experiences that inform the grand narrative gleaned from public records, written documents, etc. It gives a voice to people who do not appear in the historical record. (Other examples—ex-slaves in 1930s, H’caust survivors, African Americans)
- It allows students to ask questions that are important to them. They can build from their own perspective and curiosity. The interview (and the process created by the teacher) allows students to explore and investigate what is interesting to them within a framework that drives inquiry, analysis, and synthesis. In an increasingly digital world, story collecting requires sustained, active listening and face-to-face relationship building. It can give our students tools for developing relationships with people they might not usually interact with in this way. (i.e. Grandma doesn’t just host sleepovers and give presents) Also skills like writing, analysis, critical thinking. Emotional health and growth and role models are on next slides.
- A 2010 study conducted by Emory psychologists Robyn Fivush and Marshall Duke, and former Emory graduate student Jennifer Bohanek, was recently published in Emory's online Journal of Family Life. It showed that that kids who know more about their family history and about how relatives struggled and overcame obstacles have higher self-esteem and a greater sense of control over their lives. In other words, our life lessons can teach kids how to problem solve and prepare them for different situations they may experience.
- New York Times article from March 2013 talks about this effect beyond families as well, discussing how businesses, and even the military, are using story to build cohesion and shape identity. This is one of our main goals for students.