Preparation For Interviews

The journalism students of the 2015 Navajo Oral History Project, a collaboration between Winona State University and Diné College, spent Wednesday, May 27, preparing for and practicing for their first interviews with Navajo elders which begin on May 28.

In class, they did role-playing interviews with each other, practicing their interviewing skills going for both factual, short answers and more emphatic and emotional long answers and stories.

Above six photos by Chops Hancock.

The WSU students all spent a few minutes-- and dollars-- paying their tuition bill at the Diné College cashier's office.

Skylar Ogren and Robbie Christiano led a tutorial on the field journalism equipment.




Above photo by Chops Hancock.

The group then went out to the Tree Of Life sculpture at the Center of the Diné College campus to take the official group portrait of the 2015 class.



Of course, after the real portrait was done, the group did a goofy one.




Above two photos by Chops Hancock.

In the evening, each journalism team set-up and tested all their equipment to ensure they knew how it worked, and that they had all settings correct, fresh batteries, etc. They did a short mock interview and imported the video to their laptops to become more familiar with the video editing software.

The energy level is high in this group, as is the nervousness. The students are all committed to doing a great job and want to make sure they tell the story of their elder's life accurately, ethically and with passion.