Alex Bickart- #2: Interview & Storytelling; Goal Setting

Part 1:  For no particular reason I chose to listen to Brian Reed's presentation on "the craft of storytelling," and boy am I glad I did. This video was as enlightening as it was entertaining and engrossing, though I suppose that if a presentation on how to craft a strong and engaging story wasn't entertaining and engrossing, well it wouldn't be doing its job would it? Anyway, Brian brought to life something that has always been in the back of my head when I write a story or read a book, an unformed thought on what made the story so engaging. With clever anecdotes and fascinating stories from his work with My American Life, he described the four aspects of a quality story, Motion, Reflection, Stakes, and Speaking to Something Larger. Two of the aspects, motion and stakes are designed to keep you hooked. "We are hardwired to tune into motion in a story." Motion in a story tells us that there will be a payoff at a later point, a time when this motion leads to a climatic point, and we cannot help but wonder what that is. The same goes for stakes, "stakes drive a story, they keep you invested. In every book or TV show there is a question driving it forward." These are vital in our production, as there is no point in making project with a poignant and meaningful ending if people get bored and leave before it arrives. While the first two components make for an engaging media product, the second give it depth and purpose. The first is reflection, a.k.a  " the moment we get inside the persons head." This makes the subject of the story a real person, it shows their emotions, it gives us something to relate to and gives us an emotional connection to the story. The last important part is that the story speaks to something larger, that that is speaks to something everyone has experienced, a moral of the story as it were. the first two parts keep the viewer engaged, but its the second two that make it matter to them, its the second two that make people want to make a real change. With such a shocking roller-coaster of a project, we should have no issue keeping the audience engaged, what we need to work on is the connection. The issue with this...issue is that it may be hard to truly relate to it unless you have gone through it yourself. It is the type of long term lasting event that is in its own way unique, and because of this, getting the connection to the audience may be more difficult than it seems.

Part 2: After seeing it in every single one of the newest blog posts, it is ever clearer to me that the media kit and filming interviews is an issue, but we have beat that topic to death, and i think it is time to move on. Something that I saw in Marianna's blog sparked something in me. I saw mention of how we still do not have our personal interests/roles in this project fleshed out, and I came up with a harebrained idea that may or may not be good. With five people in our group compared to the three in most groups, I wondered if it was really a good idea to have five people doing interviews. My thought was that it would be good if we had one person (me...maybe) who was more or a researcher, someone who dug into the cold hard facts online, following leads that way. Someone who compared hard data from state to state, someone who would look at how other countries run their foster systems and how some of their ideas may be used here. Regardless of how many interviews we have, we still need data, and in the process of finding this information, the person would be able to come up with specific and in depth questions for interviews and other members could ask them. This would be helpful because it could make it easier to get the media kits around, as one of the far distant members of the team would not need to find a way to get access to them. The person would still be contributing thoughtful questions to the interview process, just not interviewing themselves. Now this idea may be off the deep end but I would love to see everyone else's thoughts!!!

Alex

Marianna Barrett - #2: Interview & Storytelling; Goal Setting

                   

           For the exploration of a source provided, I chose Brian Reed's video "The Craft of Storytelling."  This was a very interesting video to watch and I think that I learned quite a bit.  He talked about the three things that are essential to a good story, be it a radio show or just a fun story to tell your friends.  These three things are Action, Reflection, and Stakes, without these, a good story becomes nondescript and boring.
           This is some of what I learned from this video.  The first element-Action is the process of the story; it is how the story moves.  The second one- Reflection.  This is where the storyteller can get inside a persons head and really make them care what is going on in the story.  The last one is Stakes.  This is the big question in the story. It is what makes people keep listening to what you are saying.
            I really liked how Brian Reed told us about these elements.  All of the different pieces of shows that he gave us really helped me to understand what he was talking about.  With all of the different points that he made, my favorite was this one about what a story should do- "It should make a larger point about the human experience and about the world"

            My personal goals for the next three weeks are going to be setting up more video interviews with people and figuring out what my next steps should be.  I am having a little bit of trouble contacting people, so far I have only one interview set up and am still not sure if I will be able to video tape it.  However, I do have some sources that should be willing to do so.  For my groups goals, I think that for now we are just focusing on getting footage for our documentary so that we can focus more on other things that need to be done later in the year.
           There are problems that I had that have been figured out though.  One of these was access to the media kit.  Like Alex was talking about in his last post, I was really worried about not having nice enough equipment that I could get from the local high school.  However, I got access to a video camera from the school that should work just fine, if not perfectly.
          I am very excited about how much progress my group is having.  While it might not be as much as we would all like, we are still getting the things that need to be done done.  So while we still have work to do, this should be a very profitable adventure for all of us.

Lydia- "The Life Story Interview"

While I was recovering from eating so much on Turkey Day I read “The Life Story Interview”. I learned a lot from reading this. I learned that interviewing is a lot like writing/reading a novel. Novels have chapters, going from one story to the next. They give details but still leave some things out for the reader's imagination to fill in. They also include the events leading up to the climax.Good and bad events, they don’t just include the positive things they include the negative things too.  So I definitely see the similarities between the two.

I also learned that it is important to focus on the past, present, and the future. To not just dwell in the past, whether it was a good past or not. I found it interesting that while interviewing you should go through the negatives. Like regret, loss, and a challenge that was hard to overcome. I found this to match what we see on tv. Whenever a celebrity gets interviewed they focus mostly on their problems. And after discussing the struggles with their problems they talk about things they had to do to overcome these problems and what the future looks like now that they have overcome it. I found this article to be very informational and helpful. I am glad I read it!

Citation Here:

McAdams, Dan P. "The Life Story Interview :: Foley Center :: Northwestern University." The Life Story Interview :: Foley Center :: Northwestern University. Northwestern University, 2008. Web. 29 Nov. 2015.

Adrienne-Interview & Story-telling Techniques; Goal Setting

                Given the sources available to me, I’ve chosen to look into Dan P. McAdams article on “The Life Story Interview.” While I’m not sure I’ll be looking to record anyone’s life story, a brief skim of the page revealed that some of the sections contain valuable questions I can utilize during my interviews.

                Under Section A, McAdams advises the reader to think of a person’s life as a novel with chapters (McAdams).  If I interview a person who was been in foster care, I could ask them to divide their experience into chapters as well. This could help to divide my videos by subject and theme when I splice together different accounts of similar topics. For example, I could ask three different social workers what their most challenging experiences have been and what has been the most rewarding about their work. Instead of whipping the audience back and forth from question to question, I could put each response to a single question one after another and follow that with a second series of responses. This will combine smaller “chapters” into larger ones.

                This article also lists a series of memories and points in a person’s life I could touch upon, such as high and low points, vivid memories, learning experiences, and turning points (McAdams). Many people are interested in learning about the lives of others and hearing their stories, and combining this sort of information could help me create an engaging piece of media that will also help me to convince my audience. McAdams’ advice on interviews will be very useful for my project.

McAdams, Dan P. "The Life Story Interview." Foley Center for the Study of Lives. School of Education and Social Policy, 2008. Web. 28 Nov. 2015.

                Even before rereading my group members’ blog posts, I know that transferring the media kit from person to person is going to be a challenge. If all five of my group members arrange an interview, that will mean the media kit might transfer hands five times. The five of us don’t live close together at all, and if some of us arrange more than one there might be even more transfers.

                In her last blog post, Marianna mentioned that speaking some people might be difficult because of confidentiality restrictions. I agree that this problem will be difficult to overcome, especially because I’d like to interview minors. However, I think we may be able to supplement our own research with that of others who have looked into this topic in the foster care system in the past. However, Vermont-specific information will probably have to come from us.

                I also like Lydia’s statement that the “first step to fixing a problem is admitting that there is one.” (Charbonneau) Part of my ultimate goal for this project is to raise awareness for this issue and encourage the general population to help resolve it through solutions that my group proposes. With input from experts in the field, I think we might be able to come up with a few actions that the average citizen could feasibly take in order to combat the growing number of Vermont children in the foster care system.

what i think about this topic

 what i learned about the DCF program

The Vermont Department for Children and Families (DCF) provides a large sections of programs and services, including adoption & foster care, child care, child development, child protection, child support disability determination, and 
economic benefits such as 3SquaresVT, fuel assistance, and
Reach Up . there goal is to reduce homelessness, improve 
the safety of families and children, and to provide support to the families and children part of the system and helping it. on the website it says that there vision is for children and families be safe around there staff and help them live up to their potential. well from listening to the news and catching up on the free press for vermont they said that a mother killed a DCf worker and family members for losing custody of her child and putting the child in the system they put the child in the program because they illegitly thought the mom was unstable and needed the daughter to be in safe hands. i know they only did that because the mom had a problem with drugs but to kill family members and a DCF worker is not okay. see the DCF staff want us to trust them and make sure everybody is safe. how are we going to be safe if parents are killing staff to get there child back?. it doesn't work that easy anyways you can't just go killing people, get your child back and think it's okay well it's not. i really want to help out and make sure everybody is satisfied with this program and make sure everybody is safe and secure. while i'm working with this program i think it's good to find the pro's and cons and work out the cons so we only have pro's with this system.

Blog post 1

I came into this topic not really knowing anything. And now that I am doing this topic I feel really good about it. I want to make it a “to do” to learn as many new things as I can before I die (sorry that sounded bad) but I want to learn new things. And I am really interested in this topic and I want to learn about it. I have a few friends who have been and is in the foster care system. And when I think about them and their families I honestly get a little sad. Because some of my friends have been bounced around from house to house for 9 years now. And they doesn’t keep relationships for too long. I’m basically the only exception. They have had a hard time talking to people that they have never met. And I think that that’s a great place to start. I think that people focus too much on how things would affect them and too little on how much it would affect others. And that's what it really comes down to when talking about DCF.

The first step to fixing a problem is admitting that there is one. And when I first came to learn about DCF I had no idea what it was about. And I imagine that many people don’t even know that there is actually a problem with the DCF organization. And other than speculation, I don’t really know all or a lot of the problems behind DCF.

I really want to learn:

Why kids are put in these situations?

How are kids put in these situations?

Who Are responsible?

Why don’t people help?

What can people do?

Why people foster?

I really think that after these questions are answered we will have a clear shot at helping these people in and out of the foster system.

Alex- What I am thinking about my new topic.

In all honesty my views of the topic itself have not changed at least in the sense that i have made no profound discoveries, I have had no eye-opening interviews or seen some fact that changed my views on life. Instead my thinking is changing in the logistical sense, when I went into the overnight I was a lone wolf, going at this alone. By the end of the day however I was joined by four other people who are passionate for the issue and now everything is changing. Changing not in the topic itself but rather how we go about attacking it, the massive switch from one person to five changes the logistics of this project immensely. Nearly all the changes are good ones, we now have five times the interviewers, five times the researchers, and five times as many minds working together to solve problems. This is a great addition, but the point of this blog post to me at least is not to extol what we already have, but rather to puzzle out what issues may have arisen, because hearing what you are already doing right is never as as helpful as hearing what you can make better. The biggest issue in my mind right now is the media kit. We have fewer media kits than we do people and we as well as the group members who are the farthest afield, and this leads to serious issues in these critical months when we are interviewing a myriad of people. I cannot speak for the rest of us but I know that my phone and my school camcorders are not high enough quality for this project, and with media kits so spread out, I am rather stuck. The only idea I have to solve this would be if we as a team scheduled it so each person did all of their interviews withing a 1-2 week slot and at the end of that time they would meat with the next member and pass off the kit relay style. This still involves a fair amount of driving, but it would be a vast improvement over having to bounce the kit back and forth again and again to get to each persons single interviews. Along with this ever-looming issue, the other piece that lays heavy on my mind is who i am going to interview. A of today I have made contact with potential interviewees including an administrator and a case worker at our local DCF office, a long time therapist who specializes in children with home and family issues, and a recent graduate from my school who now works in the Barre office. While I am beginning to talk with these people, I am hesitant to set up an interview until we (the group) set up a plan to schedule the use of the recording equipment. Until then I will simply continue to talk to these people and brainstorm a mess of interview questions.

Marianna Barrett- #1 Evolving thoughts on our shared topic

        My thinking has evolved in ways that I might not be able see.  I already knew about this topic, but I know now what a big issue that this is.  I did not know about all of the different sides that should be examined, and talked about.  Even with just having the overnight to work on it with my group, I can look at it with a much broader understanding of what needs be thought about and brought into the light.
        Right now I am most interested in learning about mental and health disorders in children who go through the foster system.  Also, the same disorders in the social workers who have to deal with this everyday.  Even though these are the sections of this topic that I am most interested in, I am really looking forward to working on the other problems as well.  I am also very excited to get started working with the technology, as I have zero skills with that sort of thing and I hope to get some.
         I would like to learn more about the sub-topics that I talked about in the previous paragraph. I am also wondering about how my thinking might change as the class progresses and I learn more about what my other group members are interested in working on more.  I can not wait to see how our project comes together in the end.
         I really think that we should be interviewing a lot of people who have experience with this topic. For example, I might want to try and talk to a psychologist who has worked with the people who have experienced the effects of foster care, and talk about different possible mental disorders that might be present.  That might be very difficult to do, because of patient confidentiality.  As Alex said in his reflection post, this is a very sensitive topic for many people, so we are going to have to take our time.  It might really help to have and insider view of this, rather than just articles and papers, which are still very helpful, but should not be the only source of information.  I believe that it is very important to get all of the information that we can so that we can draw our own conclusions for things, instead of only listening to others.  And we really do need all of these different sources to help us to figure this out.
        And finally, what plans do we have?  We did not really get around to making plans for the future , but we did talk about maybe trading the equipment off to different group members, since we all live so far apart.  This might work well, but it would be nice to all get together and interview different people.  I hope that we will able to work some of those things out when we talk today.

Adrienne-What and How am I Thinking about my Shared Topic?

            The first over-night exposed me to different thinking than I had been doing alone. I learned a little about different aspects of Vermont’s Department of Children and Families and the changes that need to be made within the organization. While this problem is definitely interesting to me, I would still like to focus on my original issue. I don’t say this out of disregard for the multitude of issues involved in the topic of foster care in Vermont, but because I don’t want to compromise my personal goals just because this project became unexpectedly group-oriented.

            I’m not sure if my thinking on the issues regarding life in foster care have changed, but I attribute this stagnant thought to the fact that I haven’t done much research in the past couple weeks. My first objective after the over-night was to establish contact with a social worker and possibly find contacts through them. This was only partially accomplished; I’ve found a pair of promising e-mail addresses, but because it was so late in the week I decided to postpone initial contact until Monday the 16^th.

            During future research, I’d like to answer a variety of questions I have about foster care in Vermont. What are the best and worst outcomes of life in foster care? How can we minimize these worst outcomes? What factors lead to placement in foster care and how can they be eradicated? What problems do children face after leaving foster care, and while in it?

            I think I’ll be able to answer some of these questions be gathering information from a variety of people within the foster care system. Some helpful sources may be social workers (both current and retired), foster parents, employees of the Department of Children and Families, and maybe even foster children themselves. I would really love to communicate with children in the current foster care system or those who have recently emerged from it because they have the insight I need to answer my questions. Information from other sources is valuable, but children will be able to give me direct insight into their lives. However, I doubt that this will be possible.

            In the future I plan on conducting interviews with at least one social worker and a DCF worker. These are my minimum goals for interviewing, and I’m open to conducting more. However, I believe online correspondence is also a valuable resource, and has the added benefit of requiring less planning and no travel involved. I’ll be initiating contact with the social workers I mentioned above in the next couple days.

            Although I haven’t made much progress over the past weeks, I believe that a Google Hangout with my group this evening will inspire me to get cracking. I look forward to hearing about my group-mates accomplishments and working together to accomplish our common objective in the next few months.