FACE TO FACE WITH THE WORLD

Allowing Interviews To Transport & Transform Us
How Our Radio Blog Work Began...

 This blog was created in 2007 by TAMS eighth graders who left the safety of their desks behind and conducted a wide variety of interviews.

In 2007, we spoke with recent immigrants in an ESL classroom at Lyman Moore in Portland, invited adult immigrants to our high school podcast studio for longer interviews and visited the elderly at Wardwell where we taped fascinating conversations on a rainy day. We spoke to Shawna who escaped Cambodia during the brutal rule of the Khmer Rouge, Minh who left Vietnam with her family in a boat that was raided by pirates on her way to safety, and a retired medic who worked on a boat in Pearl Harbor and told the students about his grim experience fishing bodies out of the water.

In 2008, 8th graders began creating a variety of content for the First Ever TAMS Radio Collection. They hit the Main Street pavement the day after the elections to get the word on the street. They went to the mall to ask shoppers about how the economy was affecting their holiday shopping and finally we went to Barber Foods to interview 10 immigrants from around the world.

As a result of these conversations, we were able to travel around the world, reach back into history and consider dreams for the future. The students showed an enormous amount of courage as they reached out to strangers and honored their stories with intense listening and questions. They also enjoyed developing communication skills and working in a real world environment beyond the classroom walls.

Now that the eighth graders have graduated to the high school, this year we will continue to develop our podcast offerings with work from 9th, 10th, 11th & 12th graders.

Friday, November 14, 2008

Ferry Beach Ecology School Memories

This Fall the entire eighth grade spent an overnight at Ferry Beach Ecology School. The educational parts of the trip connected directly to work they are doing in Science with Mr. Hersey and indirectly to their next Social Studies Unit on consumption. Memories of a walk though the woods in the dark, family style meals, playing on the beach, staying up late in bunk beds, lessons on beach and forest ecology, eating carrots fresh from a garden, were all sweeter because they brought the class closer together.

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