Student Interviews: A Simple Approach

One of the things I've really been missing during this year away from the classroom is getting to know my students...like really getting to know them. Prior to making student interviews a central part of my teaching, I would say I only sort of knew them. It wasn't until I started interviewing my students that I began consistently finding out about what mattered to them. Every day I learned about students' meaningful relationships, cute pets, childhood stories, pet peeves, and so on. These personalized details made learning vocab words and certain phrases highly memorable, but more importantly, this type of sharing allowed natural, genuine connections to be formed -- between me and the students, and between the students and one another. I'd come into class and hear students ask each other questions like:

• Hey, what did you guys end up naming your puppy?
• So, did you have to babysit your cousins again?
• How did the tournament go?

Before doing these interviews, I would say my classroom was welcoming, but not in the same way that it is now. Before, I'm not sure all students really felt known by me or by one another. There would sometimes be a class (or two) where something was off. Despite how hard I worked at lesson planning and how determined I was to bring my A-game, a few students weren't "bought in" and I'd feel nervous that my lessons could be derailed by sarcastic comments or lackluster effort. But I can honestly say that these interviews, and the warm environment of belonging they've helped create, have made that nagging fear vanish. Walking into class and connecting with my students feels joyful.

I was first introduced to the concept of interviewing students by my colleague Darah Harper, who attended a session on it at NTPRS in Chicago in 2019 (a conference that's since stopped running I believe). She raved about it and insisted we try doing interviews. I felt unsure: what if students didn't want to talk about their lives? What if the conversations got awkward and didn't go anywhere? What if? What if? What if? But we went for it and WOW -- game changer.

I write in detail about my approach to these interviews, which I call "Star of the Day," in my book. There are as many ways to interview students and do follow-up activities as there are teachers, but I made a change last year that I think is worth blogging about here. I streamlined my process into something short and sweet that can work for all types of teachers and classes: middle school or college level, big class sizes or small ones, standard-level or advanced...this approach can work.

My new take on interviews came about after I returned from maternity leave. Since I was coming back late in the school year, it was decided that I wouldn't get my old classes back. Instead, I would cover for a colleague who was coincidentally going out on leave just as I was coming back. I got 60 new students with six weeks left of school. In order to build rapport, I did one short interview a day to start every class.

Each interview covered the following questions, pretty much in this order:

1. What is your full name?  Do you have a nickname?
2. What is your birthday? How old are you? What grade are you in?
3. What things do you like?
4. What do you really dislike (aka pet peeves or other aversions)?
5. Share a picture (emailed to me in advance)

I also had:

• A student notetaker -- This person listened attentively and filled out a template on Google docs as we did the interview. We kept this document running over time so each day a new "star" was added. Later I would drop in the star's picture for reference too. The doc was great to refer students to when I played review games about people in the class. Think True/False, Kahoot, Back Atcha/Ping Pong, etc. It was also great when I wanted to remind myself of student information before writing their final report cards.​

 

• A student artist (or several, if there were lots of kids who liked to doodle) -- I'd save up about five drawings at a time and then I'd put the drawings on the document camera and we'd have fun recalling past conversations and details about students. 

In terms of the interview process, I asked all the questions at first, then as kids grew used to the routine (after about a week, really!), I involved them. "What more information do we need?" "What else do we need to know?" and kids would say things like, "When is your birthday?" "What do you like to do?," etc. I think the best part of these mini interviews came at the end when we looked at the student photo submission. To ensure students remembered to send me a pic, I emailed them the day before their interview (a complete schedule of who was going when had already been established with them) and said:

¡Hola!

Just a reminder that you're tomorrow's star! We'll start class with your interview. I'll ask your name, birthday, likes and dislikes and then we'll look at a pic from your life and I'll get some participation from the class on what they see.

You don't need to do anything besides send me two pics via email -- I'll just pick one photo, but I like to have two options.  

I'm looking for real pics from your life that are interesting / meaningful to you in some way / will produce some good discussion.

I look forward to receiving your two pics and learning more about you.

Hasta mañana,

Ms Lodge

These interviews gave me a way to connect with students of all kinds, especially the reserved ones. In the clip below, I'm interviewing a student who transferred to our high school from a new school and was very reserved in class. After this interview, there was so much for all of us to say and laugh about with him. He doesn't like his middle name and didn't share it. He loves food, except kale. It annoys him that teachers are always taking kids' phones in the cafeteria. In the interview, he talks in very simple Spanish and gives most of his responses in English -- I was fine with that even though he's in a Level III class. What mattered to me was for all of us to get to know him. In this last part of the interview, he admits to having some pets and something funny came up that ended up being an ongoing joke in our class. 

If you're on the fence about doing interviews, try it! Start small, and maybe stick small! You could try this same approach -- 5 questions and a picture! I promise it leads to awesome results.