WILL KINCAID

Oral History Interview

StoryCorps URL: https://archive.storycorps.org/?post_type=interviews&p=2362425

Student Reflection

a. I learned that recording a oral history interview can be very tedious, and things do not always go as planned. The aspect of this project that was most challenging for me was having to make new questions and finding a new person because the first person I was going to interview ended up getting COVID-19. I know this is not a normal issue for people, but besides me having to change my interview last minute was creating the questions for the interview because I wanted to get a different view on how teachers teach during this pandemic. The aspect I enjoyed the most about this interview was getting to be a little creative with it and getting a side of the story that is not talked about a lot. Teaching is very different during COIVD for special needs kids. 

b. I learned about how hard and different it is to teach special needs children during this pandemic. It is hard to teach the students that need face to face attention, and that it to fix some of the problems my interviewee would have one on one meetings. One more thing that I learned that I did not know before was that some special needs kids can go in when they need to, and not on specific days like everyone else. 

c. When I heard that we had to an oral history interview I was nervous because I am very shy, and I do get very nervous doing assignments like this. When the interview started getting closer and closer I started getting more and more nervous, and once I figured out that the original person I was going to interview hade COVID and that I needed to find a new person I got extremely nervous. During the interview even though it was my mother I was still nervous, but after I was done with the interview and I submitted it to Story Corps, I was relieved. 

d. This oral history interview is linked to Inquiry Based Thinking because in the assignment we had to create creative and unique questions for our interviewee to answer, and we had to use some of our previous knowledge for us to formulate our questions. The questions that we made during the assignment helped make this assignment inquiry based thinking.

e. I do not have any recommendations for if my instructor does this again because I feel like the way my instructor did this was very nice and smooth. That is why I do not have any recommendations for the next time.

f. I would like to tell a future FYS student that this project/ assignment that they should not push this assignment off last minute, and that they should take their time making their questions and to some research on their topic to help with the interview. One last thing that I would tell them is that they should always expect the unexpected because I know I was not prepared to have to find a new person to interview last minute.