Schools
Students Shine in School Interview Project
Woburn Patch publishes the English and History classes' feature stories.
Justin Cushing volunteered to read first, a paragraph from a biography of Tom O’Brien, on video.
Justin has learned a lot about O’Brien—and Woburn when O’Brien was young—this school year. The eighth-grader interviewed his grandfather for the at the Joyce Middle School. Then he wrote a profile of O’Brien.
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“He sits in his chair,” the profile begins. “Wearing sweatpants and moccasins with the classic t-shirt.”
“Woburn, a small city? If you asked me that today,” Justin wrote, “I would have thought you were crazy. I mean, sure, it’s not New York City but still it’s not tiny. However, when Tom O’Brien was little that was how it was.”
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Justin’s peers liked his feature best.
They also liked Kassi Burke’s profile of her uncle, David George, a Woburn firefighter. They gave her feature the second-highest number of their votes.
“Being a firefighter has its bad days,” Kassi’s feature begins, “hard days and days where it all pays off.”
Joyce English teacher Kathryn Materazzo and History teacher Rob Tropea joined forces again this school year on the project. About 85 students wrote profiles, Materazzo told Woburn Patch Tuesday. About 30 of them hoped their work might be published, Materazzo said, on Woburn Patch.
Four teachers read the features and selected the top six, Materazzo explained. They looked for things like a strong story introduction, or lead, she said, some history and evidence that the writer asked follow-up questions. Then students voted for the top two.
Besides Justin and Kassi, Brittany Aston, Patrick Hurley, Keeley Pavlik and Katie Weber earned high honors for their profiles.
Brittany wrote about her grandmother, Jo An Aston; Patrick, his grandmother, Pamela Weeks; Keeley, her grandmother, Arlene Murphy; and Katie, physician Dr. John Maggioncalda.
Materazzo and Tropea raised the bar for their students this second project year. They required students to interview someone other than their parents, who they might not know as well, so they could learn about their subjects. The teachers helped students prepare questions to ask during the interviews and then organize the information they collected into a feature.
When Materazzo told students they’d be writing a profile, some asked, she said, “Why would people want to read about” their interview subjects?
In the end, “they learned so much more” about their subjects, even their grandparents, she said.
Keeley Pavlik’s grandmother has “done a lot in her life,” Keeley told Woburn Patch. “She’s smart and interesting” and active.
They got a taste of history, too, according to Tropea, from people who lived through it. Some interview subjects remember World War II, the election of President John F. Kennedy, the explosion of the Challenger spacecraft and even when gas sold for 17 cents a gallon.
Both teachers said they learned from the profiles. One student who went to India for a cousin’s wedding wrote, Materazzo said, about wedding traditions there. Another student’s grandmother was one of only a handful—about 20 women—who attended MIT. Another student’s relative appeared on the Dr. Oz TV show after losing a significant amount of weight.
As for the project itself, tying the classroom into the living room or kitchen (wherever the interviews were conducted) and history, here’s what the students said.
"Not torture,” said Keeley.
“Fun,” said Justin. “I got to know my grandfather.”
