What makes a good interview?

What makes an interview successful?  How do we ensure that we ask the right questions to unlock a person's story?

We had the incredible experience of having 8 visitors from the Calgary Homeless Foundation come into our school to speak with us.  All of these people have been homeless at one point for various amounts of time and we wanted to ask them the best possible questions.  Students brainstormed as many questions as they could and then narrowed it down to the 10 best.  These 10 were then edited and edited until we felt that they were perfect.  Our questions were:

1. How did you become homeless and when?

2. Are you grateful for the life you have now and why?

3. What stage of life were you homeless in?  What was your life like before?

4. Who or what supported you in your journey?  How did they help you?

5. What was your experience being homeless?

6. If you could change any one thing in the past what would it be and why?

7. If you had one sentence to describe when you were homeless what would it be?

8. What did you learn from being homeless?

9. What was your most precious possession that you brought with you?  Why was it so important?

10. Were you separated from your family because of homelessness?

We wanted to ensure that all of our visitors were asked the same questions so that we could then compare and contrast their experiences.  Students also took photographs of our guests and our next steps will be to analyze these photographs.  What makes a good picture?  What could make it better?  How does this picture capture the story?

We will also be working to develop our newspaper writing skills by sharing this life changing experience.