Mariah Phillips

Cindy Gleason

EDUC 350

March 29, 2022

Case Study Interviews

As I prepared to do student interviews, I looked at my class list and a few names stood

out to me because there were I few students who I didn’t know much about, and I thought this

could be a good opportunity to learn more about the students who were a little shy or I haven’t

really had the chance to build a relationship with. Coming into the day I was doing the interviews

I asked my mentor teacher if he had any thoughts on which students, I could get the most out of

from the interviews. His perspective gave me even more students I wanted to pick from, but

because I now had so many ideas for my interviews, I decided to start by picking a table group

and asking for volunteers. I went to the table group that most of the students who I was most

interested in for the interviews and explained to them what I was doing and that I wanted to ask

if any of them wanted to volunteer. Quickly, all the students in the table group raised their hands.

I ended up telling them I could only take half of them to interview and picked 3 which was half

of the group) who I felt would get the most interesting interviews out or who I had not had the

chance to talk too much. These students where Ellie, Christian, and Kylee.

The first student Ellie gave me a good insight into her life. I picked her first because I

hadn’t had the chance to talk to her much this semester. She’s a quiet student who never seems to

need extra help, so I knew this was a great chance to learn something about her. The most

common theme I got from her interview is that she is a generally creative person, who likes

things like watercolor, reading, and she also mentioned that her favorite class was English, but I
also noticed she is very involved as well. When I asked her about her involvement inside and

outside of school, she mentioned that she had just tried out for golf, does musical theatre at

school, and also is apart of NJHS, and volunteers at the laimer county food bank. I did not expect

her to be so involved already at such a young age, but it truly sounded like she enjoys all of it.

My favorite question I asked each of the students was, “if you could change anything in the

world, what would it be?” because I was surprised at how big their answers were. Ellie’s

response was that she wishes things in the world could be fairer and more equal when it comes to

race, gender and identity. Hearing that answer from her gave me hope and how well the next

generation of people is developing.

The second student Christian raised his hand first so he caught my attention, and I knew

he would be interesting to interview because of the past conversations I’ve had with him. This

student I found I had a lot in common with, was interesting because at times when middle

schoolers have so many “new” interests that are hard to keep up with it was nice to see how

much in common I had with this student. Just from asking him to tell me about himself I found

out he likes soccer, music, traveling and that his dream travel place is Japan. I found a common

theme around the favorite question I asked about changing anything in the world. He said he

would want to change, “all the war that’s going on right now with Russia and Ukraine”. I also

happily surprised by his answer. I think something that I have learned from asking this question

to students is that no matter how young the student, they often already have big dreams and

concerns like us.

The last student Kylee was a very interesting interview. This interview gave me a lot of

insight that I didn’t expect to get. When I first asked her to tell me about herself the most

prominent thing, she mentioned was how aware she was of how consistently her mood changes,
which was very surprising to her an 8th grader be so self-aware of that. Also, while interviewing

Kylee, I asked her where she would she herself in high school. Her answer was very interesting

to me and a perspective I had never heard before. Her response was that she, “don’t really see the

future, just want it to happen as it happens”. At first when I heard her say she didn’t see her

future it worried me, but as she explained how she likes to literally just take life one day at a

time, it made more sense.

The most common theme I got from these students that I can learn about the middle

school experience is that students love to dive into their interests. Whether it be in the classroom

or out, they will find a way to make it happen, and I feel like including it in the classroom can

help them a bit with their time management as they start getting into high school.

As well as learning about the middle school experience, from these interviews I also

learned a little bit more about being a teacher. Coming into this my biggest thing has always

been relationships because they help the students, but from these interviews I’m starting to see it

goes both ways. Particularly something that made me notice, was when I asked Christian what

advice he would give to his teachers. He said, “I would just say everyone get stressed, but you

know you’ll get over it sooner or later”. This made me think about students view their teachers. I

had thought that maybe he had seen many of teachers stressed before and realized that how

students see their teacher and the relationship is just as important as how we as teachers view our

students.

As for the value of using interviews in my future career, I think they were very helpful

and can be very valuable to learn more about students. I learned so much about just a few

students and I have already used that to my advantage in the classroom with these students.

Interviews with students can be extremely valuable, even in an informal sense such as giving
students a google forms to fill out, it can really let you inside of the student experience, which

can then help you with student relationships.