Students are required to do a project every six weeks. The project can be a traditional research paper or a local history project. The local history project can be an interview, cemetery catalog, or report on a local history subject. If a good interview is done and a transcription completed, the student receives a grade well over 100. ( I have given a grade of 150 to a transcription that was 60 pages long and the grade was more than earned.) In other words, the students are paid for the work they put into their project. Your best interviewers will not necessarily be your best students. Some students really will get turned on and you can just sit back and smile. Others will do it for the grade. I do not care who types the transcript, but no transcript, no grade. Not requiring a transcript is a slippery slope on which your project will quickly slide to oblivion.

The cemeteries have mostly already been done, but interviews and photos are still rolling in. I am also starting to get some good reports on various local subjects . The students use the contents of the Archives to do a report for example on one room schools. This is good. When you start, do not expect every student to jump up and down with excitement to do an interview. They won't.

Have students do practice interviews to familiarize themselves with the process. This will overcome some of their hesitancy. Experienced students can conduct interview workshops with younger students. I usually get seniors who have conducted interviews as juniors. This seems to be very helpful. The experienced students enjoy it and the new oral historians enjoy doing something different if nothing else. The class is divided into groups of 3 or 4 and are led into interviewing each other. They use a set of prepared questions and go through all the procedures and checks. They also discuss what they are doing and the results. It really seems to work well.

Good Luck.