My class, 5-C was assigned to interview an immigrant and tell their story through a video. First, we had to find someone to interview. I chose Kate, a family friend. The project required two reflections, an interview, and a video about the interview.

Preparing for the interview took a lot of steps. For example, we had to make a list of 20 questions and then narrow them down. Some of my questions were what is your daily life like and what opportunities were presented when you came here. I considered questions that were open-ended and that provided an answer that is very detailed and informative. When coming up with my questions I thought I should try and add something to each question that would make each response better. For example, How? Or please explain. When adding either of these words it makes the interviewee have to explain. Some o resources that were helpful were my sister because she did this project so I can ask questions. Also, another helpful part of this project was feedback. I got a lot of helpful feedback from my friends on ways to reword the questions, make them sound better, and make them in a presentable order where they would make sense and connect. Also, reading about the young immigrants and doing the Ellis island Scholastic interactive tour gave me a point to of look about the questions and also some background on immigration.

Conducting my interview was very exciting. I was excited to learn Kate’s story and also get to learn about what it was like. I conducted my interview over the phone and I also recorded the audio so I would be able to go back into the interview and write down anything I missed. It was important to record it because it is very hard to type as fast as someone talking and to also be accurate. My interview went over expectations because my answers gave me a lot of information and they also gave me what I needed as well as extra information which was very useful. I learned a lot of things about conducting an interview. For example, interviewers have to be very good listeners to catch all of the details. Also, they have to be very precise when they are writing down so they don’t misinform. One of the most interesting things I learned about Kate was that she came here more recently. This was interesting to me because most of the immigration stories I have heard have been a long time ago. Talking to Kate twice was very helpful because I would be able to access more information. I liked my questions because I was able to get a lot of information but also to learn a lot about someone’s story and the challenges and many other things they faced during their immigration.

All in all, doing the Immigration interview project was both very fun and informative.