Introduction
By Kim Campbell

“I just want to close my door and teach!” is a common complaint of many secondary teachers who find that the preparatory, administrative and extra-curricular duties of teaching often eclipse actual time spent with students. I have been fortunate to be able to “open the door” and teach English through community service. I was lucky to have a principal, J.R. Collins, who supports cross-curricular projects and gives me the freedom to innovate in team-teaching situations. With Oral History Project Head Mitch Mendosa’s guidance, we were able to place interview teams from two of my ninth grade English classes in the homes of fourteen elder families of the Anderson Valley community.

Interviews were sometimes conducted on campus, and this year, elders were able to visit our computer lab where classes met for transcription. Picture an elderly couple and the Oral History teaching staff standing amidst twenty-five teens typing on the keyboards of brand new iMacs. The teens are transcribing primary source history in the elders’ own voices with a word processing program. The elders’ old black and white photos will later be scanned and retouched with a digital imaging program. Additional technology will enable us to produce a book and a CD. I find a powerful synergy in the coalescing forces of the old and the young with technology.

Transcription of the interviews provided spontaneous opportunities to teach both grammar and history. How do you punctuate dialogue when three people are interrupting each other? What do you do when someone speaks in a run-on sentence? If we hear a grammatical error, should we correct it or leave it intact? How were one-room schoolhouses run? How do you dowse for water? What was ranch life like before the Rural Electrification Project? How did the Valley change when many young men were fighting in World War II? What were the dating practices of teens in the thirties and forties? This typifies a slice of one day’s curriculum generated from the project; concurrently, we studied the autobiographical form of writing, reading Sandra Cisneros’ and Victor Villseñor’s memoirs and writing our own autobiographical incidents in the form of essays and poetry.

I hope that my students will continue to ask about and listen to the histories of the elders in their families and community. I believe they have discovered the value of writing down their own memories. When these teens are elders themselves, they will have an extraordinary experience to share with our future generations.

To purchase this book..