Working with traumatic data
Total suggested time: 50 minutes
Class discussion: Who did you hear from?
Suggested time: 20 minutes
After students have listened to the oral histories on their own, devote all or a portion of the next class to guided discussion, starting with students sharing their main takeaways from one or more of the oral histories they reviewed.
Class discussion: Confronting trauma
Suggested time: 30 minutes
As a class, have students explore the links between the subjects of their oral histories by answering some of the following questions.
- Across the oral histories that you reviewed, what did CTP volunteers have in common?
- Were any volunteers you heard from personally affected by COVID? How did that impact their participation?
- What positive impacts do you think volunteers experienced while working with CTP? What about negative impacts?
- As an organization, how did CTP handle the traumatic aspects of doing this work?
- What lessons can we take from the experience of the COVID Tracking Project for other types of potentially traumatic journalism work?