Moving Stories: Sharing What We Heard

Sharing What We Heard

An essential first step for all students to take after conducting an interview is to reflect on the experience. Consider having students respond to the following prompts:

• What did I hear and learn about this person’s story?
• How is this person’s story different or similar to my story or my family’s story?
• I wonder what I would be like if I had experienced some of the things this person or their family have?

In a large group consider allowing each student to share some of their response. Encourage students to share a quotation from their partner’s words directly. A particularly moving teaching strategy you might adapt for this debrief is a town hall circle.

Another way to encourage students to learn about each other’s stories is to have them listen to a set number of answers, or interviews, from the Moving Stories website and to have them record their responses in a journal or in a class discussion. One strategy that might be particularly apt for this kind of debrief would be a fishbowl discussion. Here is a link to a description of the fishbowl teaching strategy. As a prompt for the discussion, ask students:

• What similarities did they notice between the stories?
• What differences did they notice?

What themes, dilemmas, or challenges did they notice from across the different stories?