Interview #1

Last week I completed my 1st interview and got some great stuff. I have a lot of raw notes from the interview and just need to transcribe them to find some patterns. The young boy I interviewed was African American and 15 years old. It was VERY difficult to break the ice with him (At the beginning of the interview i got the idea he wanted to answer only yes or no questions). But as SOON as he told me he liked to play basketball i knew i was in. :) I showed great interest in the fact he loved to play ball, and got quite the story out of it. He had a daily routine of walking to the park after school to shoot hoops. This was the one thing he felt he was good at. This same park was where the older kids (both kids in school and kids dropped out) would hang out. He was very hesitant on telling me in detail about these boys. I put an asterisk by that part of the interview. We then started to talk about things in his life that he thought he was good at. Sports was at the top of the list and education was near the bottom. He also mentioned dominoes as being near the top of his list. Dominoes is the most popular game these kids play here in the detention center. He told me dominoes was a daily activity played multiple times a day. I wanted to touch on the subject of education and why he said it wasn't his favorite. It was hard for him to pay attention during class and most of the material he never understood, he said. It was hard enough for him to sit still during this interview (Its seems to be a problem he has outside of school as well).

.....to be continued after game tonight