This is an interview paper assignment given to students who were part of the Tennyson Thrives Initiative. Tennyson Thrives is an Action Learning collaboration between the city of Hayward and Chabot College. For this assignment, students were tasked with exploring community issues/challenges inside the arenas of Sustainability, Eco-Justice, and Climate Crisis.  

The Climate Crisis--a research opportunity

For this 3rd paper, you will be doing an interview paper. This paper is really kind of a research paper, with the bulk of your support coming from interviews that you do with residents of Hayward.  In this paper you will be investigating a topic related to Sustainability, Eco-Justice, and Climate Crisis within the neighborhoods of Hayward. There are a number of steps that we will go through to do this paper:

1. You need to come up with a topic. You will want to be careful that the topic isn't too big or too general. For example, you don't want to do a paper on “Pollution.” That is much too big. Instead, you will want to come up with a more manageable topic--for example, “What are the challenges of life in neighborhoods that have historically suffered from environmental racism.”   Similarly, “Activism” is too big of a topic. Instead come up with a more manageable topic--for example you could explore the phenomenon of “How young people influence each other to get involved in Climate Activism.”

   The point here is that you need to find a topic that you can manage. At the same time, you need to ask yourself if you have access to the interviewees. It wont work to do a paper on young climate activists if you don't KNOW any young climate activists to interview. Try to pick a topic that interests you, or that you have some beginning knowledge of. SO, one of the keys to this paper is finding a happy medium between picking a topic you have access to, while being sure you can manage it. 

2. After you pick a good topic, you need to figure out what you THINK about this topic. To do that, you will be creating 7 to 10 “I believe” statements. I believe statements are really just your beginning opinions about the topics. I believe statements are not statements of fact… but of opinions that you want to test out when you do the interviews. 

3. Then you turn the “I Believe” statements into questions you will be asking the interviewees. 

4. You will arrange and do 4-5 interviews.  We will be talking a lot about advice on how to do successful interviews. Interview 4-5 people who know things about your topic… we don't want just their uninformed opinions about the topic. 

5. Once you have done the interviews, you will go through your answers and begin to come up with your concepts that will make up your paragraphs. Organize the paragraphs by concepts… paragraphs should not have ANY names in the 3-4-5 topic sentences. The people you interview will be brought into the paragraphs further down into the paras, as support. This is just like how you did your paras in your first two papers. 

6. Now you will begin to write the essay.  Have the people talk back to each other in your paras… it's ok if they disagree. If your paper is uncovering problems, you should try to integrate possible solutions into the paper as well. You should try to integrate quotes or concepts from any Hayward city documents we will be providing. 

This is a research paper, so you should also integrate outside sources into the paper.  

Remember, NO NAMES in the para topic sentences. Also, it is OK if interviewees say things that you didn't see coming, or that you disagree with. That is what happens in a research paper. 

The page minimum for this interview paper is 9, double spaced. This paper REQUIRES that you do NOT procrastinate. There is no way to do an interview research paper “at the last minute.” Why is this? So it is crucial that you stay on top of this process. 

The Paper is due__________________    Draft day is _____________________