Who The Heck Are You is a project that my class has been working on since February 8th. It is an interview that every student in the 6th grade has (and still is) conducting. The first step was to write a letter to your interviewee. When you are writing this letter it was very important to go for flattery and humbleness. My letter was to our middle school teacher, Margaret Andrews.

Step 1 is just figuring out who you want to have the interview, dates etc. It is to start you off and make sure you are prepared for the following steps.

Since this is an interview you have to have questions prepared beforehand. When you come up with questions you should be thinking how you could get a lot of information without bombarding someone with questions. Also, when you are coming up with questions they should never be yes or no questions.The reason being you will never get any info and you won’t have a quote which is a necessary part of the whole structure.

Step 2 is when you take all your quotes and information and narrowing everything down to what info you are putting where. For my class we separated the entire interview paper into three parts, Beginning, Middle, End. This makes it easier to write it and you won’t feel so overwhelmed with work.

When you are working on your final who the heck you will want to remember these things:
Don’t paraphrase, actually, find the quote.
Don’t give questions and answers. Weave the questions into your words and take the answers and make them quotes or weave them the way you did with the questions.
This is my Final Who the heck are your piece:
Beach and Saxophone
by Oni

Did you know that one of our craziest teachers as a child lived in West Hartford, CT? Margaret Andrews grew up in a house that looked much like her own now, but the one she had as a kid was bigger. Margaret now lives by herself in a house much smaller than her childhood one. Margaret has enjoyed her time at LREI. I was curious to see what lead up to her finding LREI. “I would have to say LREI picked me and made it worth my while to come to NYC every day.” .Margaret as a child felt very confident in Math and Science. So while she was at school she would always look forward to Math and Science. As Margaret got older and went to school she would get numerous awards for Math. Although Margaret loves to teach, teaching is not all she does.
“When I have free time in the summer I am on the beach!! Relaxing or reading sometimes talking to my friends.” Margaret has a fun and very loud personality. She loves to spend her free time at the beach with friends. “My neighborhood as a child was predominantly white. Now I live in a much more diverse neighborhood.” Even though Margaret is seen as the Dean of all things fun she does have a serious side to her. Through Margaret’s childhood, she was discriminated against and she would receive either disgusted stares or insulting comments. To this day Margaret, our teacher still is being treated differently than other people.
“I have been followed in stores and pulled over in my car for shopping and/or driving while black.” I have heard of stories but I have never seen them happen but after I heard Margaret’s stories I felt like I was with her when It happened. The experience over the years became less and less surprising when people would discriminate her when they saw her skin.
Throughout Margaret’s entire life one thing has stayed the same. She loves Music.” My favorite style of jazz right now is bebop and big band. My most listened to jazz pieces are by Joe Henderson and John Coltrane. I wasn’t always interested in music the way I am now which kinda sucks because I could have played with some really great musicians as a kid.” Margaret didn’t always feel an affinity for music for most of her life. Her favorite instrument (which is the instrument that she plays) is the saxophone. If you have ever heard Margaret play the saxophone then you can tell she plays it with such emotion. it is more than just an instrument for her. It is a special place where she has no worries. I can relate because I have the same relationship but with books.
As students, I think that we can all agree that Margaret is amazing at what she does. Margaret is dedicated and can work magic when she puts her mind to it. When obstacles are in her path she tears them down with her determination and works around them. But Margaret is still human and humans need to eat.”My favorite restaurant near a school is El Toro Blanco, they have great Mexican food and drinks. I also like the J G Melon place that opened recently around the corner.”
Margaret is hard working, fun, loud and crazy. She might not have had the best childhood but she never let that get to her, She just brought a sense of awareness to our school about it. She loves this school and she brings her love for teaching and math skills to school every day. We are all grateful for her work here and I think that we can all agree that the school would be very different without her.

The hardest part was taking and choosing information that I want to use and put in my interview. The easiest part for me was putting everything together because I found that since I had prepared before it was really easy. I think I have grown as a writer by editing and really paying attention to the details. I really enjoyed this Writing piece and I hope that you guys do too!