Humanities Center

Students were welcomed into the Humanitites Lab and asked to embrace the concept of being honest, open, and accepting with themselves and their classmates. This groundwork is important to creating a safe and open environment where students know they are all accepted. Our first week focused on identity, how our identities affect our places in society, as well as how society affects how we express our identities. Students determined the differences between visible and invisible traits for themselves, and created Identity Portraits that represented who they were on the inside and out. These were displayed on the windows of the classroom to represent how Diversity is Our Strength.

This rotation, we focused on the power of telling someone else's story. To inspire us, students learned about Storycorps, a non-profit organization whose mission is to record, preserve, and share the stories of Americans from all backgrounds and beliefs. A critical component in learning about the importance of sharing someone else's story was learnnig how to conduct an interview. Students learned how to be active listeners in order to effectively conduct an interview with someone and learn the unique story they have to share. Students practiced these skills with partners and with guest speakers in our classroom to try to create a space where the interviewee felt safe, accepted, and that their message or story mattered.

Continuing with the theme of Story Corps, students chose someone from their lives they would like to learn about more. With a plan to interview over the November break, students prepared by gaining permission from their interviewee, choosing specific questions that would give them more information, writing a script with their questions and potential responses, and engaging in mock interviews with partners.During their interviews students used devices such as iPhones, iPads and their Chromebooks to record their interviews. If the interviewee was not comfortable with being on video, they recorded the audio using WeVideo.

Many students chose parents, grandparents, and relatives both far and near that they felt a close connection to, or they wanted to learn more about their past, upbringing, or experiences in life.

It was quite impressive to see the amount of students who had their interviews completed following break! This really proved the priority they placed on learning more about their interviewee, and how committed they were to accomplishing their project.

The final week of our time together was spent editing their interview footage using WeVideo to create a interview documentary to share with the class.

Students needed to include an introduction for their videos, background music, narration, and an outro.

The final two days were spent sharing their interview documentarie with classmates where we celebrated their hardwork and productivity. It was such a wonderful experience to learn about one another's important people and the stories they had to share. It truly demonstrated the power of storytelling and how no story is too small to tell!