Memo #3: Plans for Primary Sources- Who the Heck Can I Talk To?

     I personally plan on interviewing a lot of people and possibly plan on creating a short survey. I first want to at least interview two different teachers. My first teacher is an old English teacher that I have always been inspired by. He was my Junior year Honors English teacher. We have remained very close, and I have not visited him in quite some time. I will contact him on Facebook about the project and will explain to him how he can help me. His name is Jack Caswell and he was not only the most influential English teachers I have ever had, but he has always created a very safe environment and a strong writing community for me. I think that he can be of significant help in my research.

     I also plan on interviewing my other English teacher Darlene Netcoh. She was my Senior year English Honors AP teacher. She is a great teacher who knows how to command a classroom and how to create a hard-working community.

     I guess I can't exactly say for sure how emotionally and physically safe these teachers' other classes were considering I was in honors classes and never experienced the other classes they had, but I can say that whatever they did in the classroom I was in worked. When I say this I do not mean to imply that other classes that were not honors were incapable of having a safe community or that honors classes were any better than any other type of class. What I am saying is that these class categories are catered to all different types of students, and I am not sure if environmental safety, and tactics used to create this safety differ depending on the type of class the teacher is teaching. This is something I will have to further investigate in order to better my research. I should ask both of these teachers.

     I also plan on interviewing students. Their perspective is every bit as important as the teachers'. As a future teacher I need to ask students: What makes you feel physically safe in a classroom? How do you feel about presenting your writing to your classmates? Do you feel comfortable presenting to your classmates? If not, why not? If so, what makes you feel safe? What is inviting about any of your classrooms? How can teachers help eliminate bullying in their classroom? Etc.

     I specifically think I am going to interview my brother (a Junior in High School) and see what his opinion is. Sometimes he is not the best source to go to because sometimes he won't take my topic seriously. In this case, I also have many other students that I could ask. My goal is to try and get multiple perspectives. Thus, I am also going to interview my cousin/friend who dropped out of high school. Why did she drop out? I'm curious to find out specifically why and what wasn't working in her classrooms. I specifically want to try and see if it was at all related to the environment she was in. I also have many friends with siblings that I can interview easily.

     If I am able to, I also want to conduct a student survey. I'm pretty sure that my old teacher, Jack Caswell, will allow me to hand out a short survey to his students to fill out for five minutes. This survey will ask simple questions about their environment and how safe they feel. It will also ask about their feelings towards writing. The goal will be to record data about the relevance of their feelings and attitudes to writing in correspondence to how physically and emotionally safe they feel in their classrooms. This will then give me some more information to record in my research.

     Finally, I will also include my own opinions. The goal here is not to be biased at all. Instead, it is to express my own experiences with safety and classroom environments and to input my own information and view on the subject matter. I am a source that I constantly have access to. While my research should go far beyond my own perspectives and opinions, I have been and still am a student, and my perspective is also valid. I know why Jack Caswell's class was some comforting. I know what made me want to go to that classroom every day. Thus, I think that my own opinion should be of use to this project. This statement is not to be confused with me implying that I know everything that my teacher did to make the classroom safe. Rather, it is me stating that I know what made me feel safe and what didn't. Mr. Caswell's tactics behind why I felt safe in his classroom is something that I still need to investing.