During the 2017-18 school year, secondary and postsecondary students and educators at schools in Perris and Moreno Valley, California, participated in an oral history project, called Oral Histories of the Inland Empire. The goal of this project is to highlight the diverse experiences of Inland Empire residents through oral histories. 

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As part of a class project, students selected narrators (interviewees) who would help students and readers learn and understand more about the diverse people in the Inland Empire. These stories--oral histories--were transcribed and prepared for publication by students with support of their peers and teachers. Several students interviewed narrators in a language other than English and translated and transcribed the oral histories into English. 

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Thank you to the Germanacos Fellowship (through Voice of Witness), who funded this work during 2017-18. 

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In July 2019, a group of educators from MVUSD, VVUSD, and MVC were awarded a grant from CTA's Institute for Teaching to support up to thirty teachers' classrooms (middle school through college) in completing an oral history project during the 2019-2020 academic year. 

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After having to cancel the April 2020 community event because of COVID-19, we decided to feature these oral histories on this website and our social media; these will be featured from April through December 2020. We hope you spend time learning from our students and narrators (See "Oral Histories" tab at top). 

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In June 2020, CTA's Institute for Teaching renewed our grant, which will now support up to forty teachers' classrooms as we continue oral history storytelling projects through 2020-2021. As of September 2020, ten teachers have signed up to complete an oral history project this academic year. 

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The project concluded in Spring 2021 with twelve teachers completing oral history projects with their students. These oral history projects can be found here. Of course, this year's team had hoped for in-person community events (which were also canceled the previous year), but were unable to host them due to school closures and safety/health. 

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Acknowledgements

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This work wouldn't be possible without the dedication of participating teachers, students, and narrators (interviewees). We are so honored to be able to share this work with a public audience. 

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Thank you to CTA's IFT program for supporting this work in 2019-2020 and 2020-2021!

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