Sample VOW Workshop Agendas

Sample Agenda: Middle/High School Students (2.5 hours) 826 Valencia Young Authors’ Workshop: I Can Speak It, I Can Write It “In this world there are talkers and there are listeners. A writer is both”.

—Laura Best “Everyone has a literature inside them.”

—Anna Deavere Smith “When I’m writing, I’m concentrating almost wholly on concrete detail: the color a room is painted, the way a drop of water rolls off a wet leaf after a rain.”

—Donna Tartt 1. Intro to oral history: what is it and why does it belong in a writer’s workshop? It’s a legit form of writing/storytelling! Also, mention “people’s history” and who does and doesn’t “have the mic” in our society? VOW operates within these two ideas.

2. Brief Intro to Voice of Witness (mention “danger of the single story”).

3. Draw “high-tech diagram” about the lack of stories being heard around the world.

4. Mention that you will be writing and sharing stories with each other—what happens at YAW stays at YAW). Cliff takes 90 seconds to debunk his “official bio.”

Framing ideas: Our work as writers, oral historians, journalists, etc. begins with curiosity and questions: empathy (what is that word, I hear it all the time) and inquiry. One of the six habits of empathic people is intense curiosity about the experiences of others (and ourselves!) For fiction, personal narrative, journalism, non-fiction and more. These concepts converge in the quest for detail! Today, we will explore these ideas through inner monologue (or subtext), and the highly personal and individual world of sensory detail (sight, sound, taste, smell, physical environment). We all experience our inner and outer (physical) world in a way that’s all our own! Let’s use speaking, listening and writing to tap into that!

Inner monologue/subtext: Things that people or characters are thinking, but not saying out loud. Things that are felt or suggested, but not spoken. You’ve heard of “reading between the lines?”

1. Read Chasing the Harvest excerpts (Oscar Ramos) and (Heraclio Astete). Ideally, playing audio while students read along. We could also do popcorn reading, silent or partner reading. Before reading, mention de-brief/reflection questions.

2. De-brief/reflection: What kinds of details did you notice? In Oscar’s story, how did he use inner monologue? Was it his, or was he imagining speaking for someone else? How was this connected to his desire to help his students? For Heraclio, what kinds of sensory detail did you notice (sights, sounds, voices, smells, environment, weather, taste)? How did it affect him? What made you curious about Oscar and Heraclio’s story? What would you have asked them in an interview?

Sample Agenda: Middle/High School Students (2.5 hours) 826 Valencia Young Authors’ Workshop: I Can Speak It, I Can Write It Writing/Storytelling Prompt: (What students write will be shared with their partners).

Prompt: Think of a time when someone needed your help. First, free write about what happened. Don't worry about grammar, spelling, or getting the sentences just right -- just get your memories down on the page. Describe these three things: 1. What you observed 2. What you did or didn't do 3. What the outcome was Intro and Practice with open-ended questions: The art of crafting questions that inspire stories using the written prompt from your partner. Remember your curiosity! Think of questions that will inspire your partner to share a story with a strong beginning, middle and end. For example, “what happened next?” is a great question! Share “Question Bank one sheet.”

• • • • • •

What were you feeling when...

What were you thinking about when....

What were you hoping for when...

What did you see...

What did you smell...

What did it sound like....

Sharing Stories: (If you had a meaningful story to share with someone, what would you need to feel safe, to feel brave?) and Practice interview. Make sure you take notes on what your partner says during the interview (highlights, things that surprised you, things that made you curious).

Interview debrief and sharing your notes from the interview with your partner.

Return to writing prompt: Based on what you said during your interview and the notes your partner took, what would you add to your story? How can your verbal storytelling enhance your written storytelling? Take a few minutes to do some more writing!

Closing: Questions about VOW, oral history, first person narrative, etc.

Sample Agenda: Community College Students (1 hour) City College of San Francisco English 1A Course “Sometimes I walk down the street and I look at all the people I'm passing and I think, damn, all these stories walking right by me. So, so many stories that I will never know. All the heartbreak, all the joy. There's a line of William James where he says something like (I've been trying to refind this quote for years and so who knows maybe I made it up?) if all you took all the thoughts of all the people in a single city on a single night, your head would explode. I think this sort of work makes a little bit of dent in this idea. You know what I mean? You get a little closer to people you never knew and never were going to know.” —Peter Orner •

Introduction to VOW, mission statement, education program (5 minutes)

•

Listen to audio of Oscar Ramos reading an excerpt from Chasing the Harvest o Discuss reactions to narratives, questions for narrators, connections with stories, oral history vs. journalism (15 minutes)

•

Introduce oral history interview technique with the question: If you had a meaningful story to share, what would you need in order to feel safe, to feel brave? o Open-ended questions o Follow-up questions o Levels of inquiry o Sensory questions (20 minutes)

•

Ethics of sharing stories o Honoring the narrator’s voice o Anonymity and privacy o Types of media for sharing stories (10 minutes)

•

Q&A (10 minutes)

Sample Agenda: Graduate School (2.5 hours) Voice of Witness & USF: Human Rights Education: Pedagogy & Praxis “You can’t tell a single story of any place, person, or people. There are many stories that create us. The single story creates stereotypes. There are other stories that are just as important to tell.

The problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete.”

—Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie “Everyone has a literature inside them.” —Anna Deavere Smith “Sometimes I walk down the street and I look at all the people I'm passing and I think, damn, all these stories walking right by me. So, so many stories that I will never know. All the heartbreak, all the joy. There's a line of William James where he says something like (I've been trying to refind this quote for years and so who knows maybe I made it up?) if all you took all the thoughts of all the people in a single city on a single night, your head would explode. I think this sort of work makes a little bit of dent in this idea. You know what I mean? You get a little closer to people you never knew and never were going to know.” —Peter Orner “Waddy Moore, former president of the United States Oral History Association, wrote in 1978: ‘Scratch an oral historian and you’re just as likely to find a folklorist, sociologist, economist, someone from the field of communications, medicine, government, business, literature, entertainment, and so the list goes on.’ Moore’s intention was to criticize the lack of proper training among alleged oral historians, and he was absolutely right. But from another angle, he was in fact listing some of the things that an oral historian needs to be in order to be good at this trade.” —Alessandro Portelli Agenda: 1. Framing oral history as pedagogy (empathy, inquiry, dignity, and the skills and habits of mind that promote it). A somewhat formal structure (oral history) for a very human endeavor. Promoting the many applications for oral history in education, advocacy, and human rights. Reference stories from Inside This Place, Not of It (10 minutes) 2. Takeaways or reflections from last week’s “interview” with Ashley Jacobs, narrator from Inside This Place, Not of It (5-7 minutes).

3. Communication Brainstorm activity (20 minutes): addressing the cultural norms, power dynamics, mutual value, insider/outsider, representation, and “positionality” that are present in oral history.

Prompt and share out: If you had a meaningful story to share with someone, what would you need in order to feel safe, to feel brave?

Sample Agenda: Graduate School (2.5 hours) Voice of Witness & USF: Human Rights Education: Pedagogy & Praxis

4. Oral history interview questions (10 minutes): How can I inspire a storyteller to share life experiences in a detailed, nuanced way?

• Open Ended Questions • Follow Up Questions • Levels of Inquiry • Sensory Questions 5. Practice interview sequence: Think of an experience or memory from your life that you’d have an interest in exploring during an interview. Something confusing, something joyful, funny, or challenging. Write about it for 5 minutes, and then share it with a partner—who will then create 3 interview questions that will create and opportunity for you to elaborate or explore in detail. Your partner will do the same (10 minutes).

6. Partners can ask each other basic clarifying questions, and generally have a nice (preinterview) chat. Try to save your questions for the interview! (5 minutes) 7. Partner interviews (30 minutes) Break 8. Interview debrief and introduction to Palestine Speaks co-editor Mateo Hoke (5-7 minutes).

9. Oral history interview strategies & questions, including “reports from the field” with Mateo Hoke (25-30 minutes).

10. Transcription and Editing introduction with handouts, and perspectives from Mateo Hoke (15 minutes).

11. Pair share/group share out: How has our process today impacted your narrator choice or upcoming interview? What considerations apply specifically to your narrator? (10 minutes).

12. Questions/comments/reflections with entire group (5 minutes).

13. Brief discussion of final project logistics/concerns (5 minutes).

Sample Agenda: Professional Development (2 days) “Empathy School” at Kirkwood Community College Day 1, Monday, 12-6pm: Theme: Mutual Sightings—Supporting a diverse student population through creativity, empathy and cultural competency.

(25-30 minutes) • Welcome to empathy school! (Embodied generosity, curiosity, and courage) • Commitments • Short Ice Breaker • Introduce VOW (Mission, EDU program) • Step up/Step back • Idea Garden (project, unit, and activity ideas) • “Compost Pile” Theme: How can we honor and incorporate the experiences and stories our students into the curriculum and into the ways we teach?

(40 minutes) • Unpack/Discuss VOW excerpts.

• “Chalk Talk” activity with prompts on poster-sized post-it notes related to: o How do we create the capacity to listen to challenging stories? o How can these stories help us better understand the lives of our students? o What do we do with this information? o What are you curious about? What would you ask these narrators if you had an opportunity to interview them?

• Modeling ways of discussing/responding to stories that honor multiple learning/language needs Theme: Strategies for teaching and learning with ELLs and more (30-40 minutes) How the oral history process addresses the “hard skills” for written and oral communication: • Speaking and listening • Interviewing • Transcribing Sharing curricular tools to use for teaching ELL learners. Reading in small groups, audio recording, other tools, ways to break down ideas when language is a challenge. Kirkwood participants share ELL strategies—especially for non-humanities teachers.

Sample Agenda: Professional Development (2 days) “Empathy School” at Kirkwood Community College Break (15 minutes) Theme: Story and empathy-based activities that can be used in humanities and nonhumanities classrooms.

(45 minutes) Refer to activities in handouts. So many ways to learn who our students are! We need to create more opportunities for “mutual sightings.” We will do one of these with the group, and share a lesson plan or two (especially for Math and Science teachers). Activities will connect to scaffolding the skills for oral history (Speaking, listening, crafting story-inspiring questions).

Save time for short de-brief and discussion of various applications.

Theme: Cultural competency and proficiency.

(45 minutes) Discussion of successful ideas on campus to build on. Discuss the differences—competency is individual, and proficiency is institutional. Brainstorm ways in which our process during the workshop can advance competency and proficiency at Kirkwood. Participants will discuss in small groups and report back.

(60 minutes) “Memoir Mixer” “Speed dating meets oral history.” Have some snacks. Remind all participants of the “autobiographical sketches” they have received from their partners in order to prepare for tomorrow’s interviews. Conversation cards on the table with good opening questions (What were you like as a kid?) sprinkled with other questions (What is your story of coming to Kirkwood?). Before parting, remind participants about laptops, earbuds, etc.

Sample Agenda: Professional Development (2 days) “Empathy School” at Kirkwood Community College Day 2, Tuesday, 9am-4pm.

Theme: Empathy in Action & Bringing the work back to the classroom (2 hours, 30 minutes) Student/Faculty Interview Day. Gathering, intros, etc. Work through recording and downloading logistics. Participants to have an hour of interview time (30 minutes each). This is the “mutual sighting.” Short 10- to 15-minute debrief afterward.

Lunch @ 11:45 (one hour) (70 minutes) Transcribing: “I did the interview, now what?” Erin introduces the programs needed for transcription, the importance of capturing everything in the first draft, then everyone will spend a block of time (30 minutes) listening to their interview and transcribing a section that stood out to them. This also connects to oral history and literacy theme. Focus on how to listen to clips, find detailed stories. Afterward Erin will go through VOW editing/transcribing handout to model what the next steps would be if this were a complete transcription.

(40 minutes) Ethics of publicly sharing stories. Some may not want to share publicly, but what other options exist? Make space for students to be able to self-identify beyond their culture, language or country of origin. Look at the whole person. Refer to the dominant culture’s power to “name things.” Who is the looker and who is being looked at? Issues of agency and representation.

Examine a few oral history case studies.

(15 minutes) Media Options for Oral History: Given the choice of “delivery system” for your oral history project, how might they be edited and shared? What are the next steps? Media options? Photo essays? Bulletin boards in Commons? Student curated work? Public events? Plays. Podcasts.

Websites. Readings. Events in newcomer communities?

(45 minutes) Final Idea Garden Module: What does this looks like in your classroom? Work in groups, work in pairs, how to create a rubric? How do you grade it? How much time will it take? Need to build in time to work on a lesson plan, but have to grapple with those questions. Then they’d walk out with that lesson plan. Refer to Stagg, Clovis Community College, and other sources for lesson plans/rubrics.

Large group share out. Some last snacks. The “Compost Pile”. Everyone will walk away with the lesson plan or unit, but also for their next steps.