Oral Histories - Kingsbridge International School

In October 2007 four classes of 11th graders at Kingsbridge International High School in the Bronx completed an interdisciplinary project on oral histories – the passing down of experience through language. Overseen by Social Studies teacher Tim Ross, the project explored ties between personal, community and global history while developing the students’ analytical, creative, and language abilities. Kingsbridge purchased various materials for the project, including documentaries, accompanying music, digital recorders, and art supplies.

Mr. Ross began with close study of two films, Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah and Ken Burns’ The War, pieces focused on the Holocaust built with personal narratives of its contemporaries. Lanzmann presents subtitled interviews of Jewish survivors, Polish bystanders, and German perpetrators, while Burns examines the period through the lens of four American towns and their “witnesses.” The students enjoyed the diversity of viewpoints, and many related personally to the stories of ethnic clash and family hardship. A Japanese-American’s recollection of discrimination after Pearl Harbor, for example, sparked a class discussion of racial tension within countries.  

The students approached the material from several angles. They wrote analyses of the interviews, but also studied The War’s music by Norah Jones and stepped back to reflect on war through metaphor. The metaphor assignment inspired the students, who created phrases as diverse as “War is a nightmare,” “War is like a soccer game,” and “War is a dying flower.” The different approaches converged in a mosaic project, for which the History and Art Departments collaborated. The students enjoyed the project’s freedom of expression, combining the verbal and the visual to create individual pieces. The works were finally presented to the school community in a gallery show, where students voted on “Most Creative” and “Most Informative” to recognize the outstanding mosaics.

The final phase of the project had the students shifting from viewers to interviewers. Their goal was to elicit from an adult in their lives the same type of narrative they heard in the films’ models; they would then transcribe the interviews and translate the texts from their native languages into English. The students studied interviewing techniques and practiced their questions with friends before conducting the interviews, preparation time which many found valuable. The students did not anticipate the wealth of discovery from the interviews, however. Many were surprised – and moved – by their subjects’ stories, which ranged from tales of childhood mischief to accounts of failed marriages.

The translation element of the project carried great benefits for the students, expanding their vocabularies and highlighting the structural differences between languages. Direct translation rarely worked, said one Dominican student: “The sound in English, it’s no good. You have to find words with meanings almost the same.” The oral translation project had come full circle: the students had developed academic skills while forming lasting connections to their own personal histories.

Tim Ross has been teaching at Kingsbridge International in the Bronx for three years. Before teaching in New York City Schools he was part of the Peace Corps Fellowship at Columbia University. A teacher of both United States and World History, Mr. Ross enjoys the diversity and collaborative spirit at Kingsbridge.