The Great Thanksgiving Listen

All too often younger generations dismiss older generations. There is much to be learned from the experiences and wisdom of generations older than us.  As a youngster, I wanted to learn more about my heritage because I was told that I had a great great grand-father who was the Chief of an Indian tribe.  For years, I prodded my maternal grandmother trying desperately to get a piece of information that would help me figure out this family mystery.  Regrettably, I never got that one little morsel necessary to unlock the lost history, now gone forever.

Story Corps is encouraging teachers and students to take advantage of Thanksgiving, the holiday known to bring families together, to learn.  Utilizing the FREE Story Corps app, teachers encourage (or assign) students to interview a grandparent or another family elder.  The stories are uploaded and archived in the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.  Students will unlock family history, ghosts in the closet, fascinating stories while engaging family members.  The project is for students 13 and under, but can you imagine the younger ones participating as well?  Adapt this to younger students simply using the recording feature on smart phones or other technology.

To help educators, StoryCorps created a FREE Teacher Toolkit containing:

• Background information for teachers
• Lesson planning guide
• Follow-up activities for students
• Permission slips
• Worksheets
• StoryCorps probing questions

Start now prepping students for this lifelong learning experience that could become a yearly event in their respective families creating a genealogy masterpiece for future generations of the family. The “Great Questions List” included in the Teacher Toolkit is a great place to start practicing in class for the big assignment.

Information for The Great Listen