Interviews.md

Need Finding Interviews

Interview 1

• name: Michele Tine
• date: 9/23/2019
• occupation: Education Professor
• location: Raven 211
• interview partner: N/A

Potential Ideas:

• Some technology to aggregate reports and prior teacher feedback so that teachers have an easier time knowing the levels and previous experiences of new kids. Takes about 1 month for teacher to get acclimated to new kids and understand where everyone is. Huge teacher turnover rate.
• Technology for summer enrichment of kids - low-income kids have hard time accessing summer enrichement programs, hence the summer slide phenomenon. They start off the next school year worse than where they ended in the previous year. Higher income/middle class kids are able to attend summer camps, summer school, and start off the next school year more enriched, but low-income students aren't able to do that. More than just access, must have parent buy-in as well. (Why does the US have summer break?!). Lots of research done here: Reads for summer learning, James Kim; more than just giving students books.
• Textbooks: Textbooks are written in the reading level of the grade, but often in low-income communities, students are not at the expected level. Technology that helps translate textbooks to be the appropriate grade level would be really cool.
• Food in the Summer: If a family is near a certain poverty level, they qualify for free/reduced breakfast and lunch. This continues in the summer (federal funding is still there, but the family doesn't know that/it's stigmitized/etc., so technology that can connect that disconnect would be cool.

Hardest part of the day being a 5th grade teacher:

• Sometimes, lessons would fly and sometimes they would flop. A lot of the reason was because kids have experienced trauma, and they just can't focused when they, for example, saw an unwanted parent come back released for jail or they were abused the day before.However, the teacher wouldn't know that because there were separate social workers and psychologists who deal with that. However, it would be super helpful for teachers to be able to have the time to check-in emotionally with each student and have a better understanding of where each kid is at that day. She just had a hard time predicting when students would react positively and when they wouldn't focus, and it's because many of these kids go through traumatic situations.
• Teacher certifications differ state-to-state

Something surprising about the education system:

• Education in this country is often seen as a way of social mobility, but it's really not for a lot of low-income students and families. Classes are so much bigger, there is HUGE inequality.

Notes:

• Access to technology: they have access in public schools (1:1 laptop-child ratio), but often homes don't have internet

Record Any Observations

What were they doing while you asked them stuff?

• She was thinking about her answers, reflecting, but also seemed really passionate about the topic and kind of sad/exasperated at how broken the system is.

Any particular reactions / emotions during the interview or specific questions?

• Sad when reflecting on her students when teaching 5th grade, agreement that the system is really broken; acknowledge that we can look to other countries to see how we can improve the education system (Finland, etc.)

Reflect / Conclusions

were there any problems or stories that made you think, "how might we help __ do __?"

• The summer slide story was pretty interesting, and the story about teaching kids with emotional trauma was incredibly moving as well, because I understand how hard it is to focus in school when you have a million other things going on, much less with something that is so traumatic and emotionally scarring as some of the stuff that the kids that she taught had to go through.

what are some HMW statements you can draw from this conversation?

• How might we help teachers more quickly and easily understand their students' emotional and academic states?
• How might we enable low-income students to easily access engaging and effective academic enrichment during the summer?
• How might we adjust course materials to help students to learn more effectively and keep them engaged?

Interview 1: Class Interview

• name: Qirong Li
• date: 9/19/2019
• occupation: student
• location: LSC 200
• interview partner: N/A

Some potential questions to get you started

• What does your day to day life look like? Video games class --> novack is super long, reading the video games class reading in them morning, watch Japanese drama murder game, then here.
• What are the hardest parts of your day? In general/long term? Going to bed, can be very sleepy --> play with her phone; need to waste time before sleeping (don't want to sleep); ignore warnings set on phone; If she needs to get sleep, then she sleeps; sometimes she only sleeps 3-4 hours a day!
• If you had a lot of skills and money, what would you make or do? Funding for animal and environment protection; do some art; try to be a scientist inventing something cool;

Environment and animal protection --> animals can't help themselves, so want humans to help; can't revert once they are extinct.

• What is a time that you were pissed off at something? Usually not pissed off at something; Guy kept on sending messages --> didn't listen when she said stop, and started bothering her friends. Just stopped replying.

• What is a time you noticed a clever solution to something? Math or coding times. Happy to see a really clever solution; Watching League, collaborating in League; amazing to see collaboration

• What are some things you like? Texture of animal furs, desserts (must have desserts as part of dinner) (pistachio gelato)

• What do you dislike? Mosquitoes, people being loud when she's in the dorm

• Products that you wished existed? Instant mosquito killer, soemthing that converts your thoughts into texts or visuals (with protections)

• Could you tell me story about a time you were really happy this summer? Universal Studios --> chosen to pick a wand

• What was your best/worst/craziest/most memorable experience with food? Started cooking last summer, budapest in the fall (kept cooking), figured out one day that she was a pretty good cook. Not a lot of cooking experience before she started; learned how to do macarons.

• What would I find surprising about you? I would name almost all of her electronics.

Record Any Observations

• What were they doing while you asked them stuff? Thinking about answers, reflecting,

• Any particular reactions / emotions during the interview or specific questions? Really happy to recall Universal studios

Reflect / Conclusions

• were there any problems or stories that made you think, "how might we help __ do __?" Her thoughts on converting thoughts into texts/visuals was pretty interesting because it made me think about people who aren't able to express their thoughts by writing or typing, like people with ALS.

• what are some HMW statements you can draw from this conversation? How might we help encourage people to care more about the environment and animal protection? How might we help those who aren't able to express themselves as easily better communciate their thoughts?