Today my group and I are going to Winooski and Burlington schools, to have a full day of interviewing! Our group planned on going to Burlington and Winooski together all in one day. We did this because, we all had some contacts in Winooski and/or Burlington. These two school’s have one of the best ELL programs in Vermont, and we are hoping to get a lot of great footage today!

I have contacted a teacher from Winooski Kristin Van Fossen, and she is a 2nd and 3rd grade teacher at Winooski elementary school. I have an interview with her at 10:30 this morning, and Erin is coming to help me as well. So, I won’t be able to go to Burlington. I am very interested in talking to her about how she teaches different students. Hopefully she will have good experiences to talk about!

I had also contacted the Principal of Winooski, Sara Raabe. Sara was very helpful, and helped us get in touch with the Director of the ELL program at Winooski; Kristen Kollgaard. Unfortunately, Kristen will not be here today but she helped us set up five different interviews today. Our team is going to split up so that we can interview all the people we can. We are going to interview three ELL students from Winooski a fourth grader, an eight grader, and a ninth grader. Kristen also helped us contact two liaisons, Tul Nioula a Bhutanese and Nepali liaison, and Abeer Alzubaidy who is an Iraqi liaison.

We plan on asking the student’s about their transition into Vermont, and how there school has helped them. I am the most interested in talking with the Students today, and hearing about their story’s and how their lives changed. Since I have lived in Vermont my whole life it is going to be very interesting to learn about the move into a new country with a new culture and a new language. I think that this footage is going to be very valuable in our documentary, helping the audience understand what their lives are like. It will also be very interesting to see how the different aged students answer the questions, differently.

Liaisons are also going to be very inserting to talk too. Right now I am not exactly sure what they do for their job, but through thee interview I hope to lean more. I understand that they help the student and the family settle into the Vermont culture. Learning about the details of their job is going to be very interesting, and valuable.

Overall, I am a little nervous about all the interviews but I know it is going to be a very productive day. Since I am with my whole team, and this is my second interview I do not feel as nervous as I did my first interview with Natalie Meyer. It is going to be very busy and not a lot of free time, but once this is done we won’t need much or any more footage. The next step is going to be constructing the Documentary!