Elaine is Almost: Lesson Plan

At a glance

Access Full Resource

Introduction

With “Elaine is Almost” as inspiration, this lesson will introduce students to the art and ethics of the interview. Students will learn and write their own ethical code of interviewing. Through a collaborative in-class project, students will work with a partner to co-create a set of interview questions, taking turns as interviewer and subject, thereby experiencing shared agency and accountability for the experience of asking and answering questions about oneself. Finally, students will conduct and record interviews with someone they consider important to their lives, applying the code that they developed, and sharing the final, recorded project to a class-specific Instagram account. This lesson works in person or on a digital platform; some of the tweaks to the format necessary to conduct it online will be left to each instructor. It is also one that could be expanded into a longer curriculum, especially with a focus on animation and visual editing. As it stands here, students will have the chance to take their projects in a journalistic or creative direction. They will be sure to leave it with a new relationship to the art of care, curiosity, and connection.

About the Authors

Jade Sanchez-Ventura is a writer and radical educator. She works in memoir and her personal essays have been published across an array of online literary journals, and in print with Slice Magazine and Seal Press. Her work has been featured on Bitch Media’s Popaganda podcast and been awarded the Slice Literary Conference “Bridging the Gap” award; a Disquiet Literary conference fellowship; and a Hertog fellowship. She is a regular contributor to MUTHA Magazine, which champions a fiery re-imagining of parenting. As an educator, she is very good at being continually wowed by her students and their words on the page. She believes a commitment to racial equity and social justice is essential to the practice of teaching. She has spent the last decade studying and implementing this pedagogical approach to education with the Brooklyn Free School, an urban democratic free school in New York City. Though she has ties to many countries, she has always made her home in Brooklyn, New York. She’s on Instagram posting about radical parenting, teaching, race, writing, and other such matters; find her @jade_m_sv.

Em Yue is a Chinese-American artist and filmmaker from North Carolina. Their work in documentary animation and interactive media explores the intersections of queerness, language and technology through the lens of tenderness. After studying photojournalism and studio art at UNCChapel Hill, they relocated to Los Angeles where they are currently pursuing an MFA in experimental animation at the California Institute of the Arts.

Access Full Resource