School

Life-Path Interview 05

Purpose: Understand a person's relationship with learning, school institutions, teachers, peers, achievement, difficulty, and disengagement.

Approximate ages are fine. The participant may skip any question.

Participant code: ____________________ Date: ____________________

Interviewer: ____________________

□ The participant agrees to have these responses recorded and stored privately for Union support planning. Questions may be skipped. The participant can ask the administrator to review or correct the record, or discuss withdrawal.

1. Earliest School Memory

What is your earliest clear memory of school?

How did you feel about going there?

Was learning easy for you at first?

What were you naturally good at?

2. First Difficulty

When did school first become difficult?

What made it difficult - learning, attention, behaviour expectations, bullying, teachers, family problems, moving, attendance, poverty, hunger, health, substance use, or something else?

Did adults understand what was happening?

3. Teachers and Authority

Was there a teacher or school worker who understood you particularly well?

What did they do differently?

Was there someone at school who made things significantly worse? Without naming them, what happened?

4. Belonging at School

Did you feel that you belonged?

Where did you fit - classroom, sports, trades, arts, friends, library, outdoors, nowhere, or somewhere else?

Were there things you were good at that school did not recognize?

5. Leaving or Disengaging

Was there a point when you stopped caring about school, stopped attending regularly, or left?

What happened around that time?

Was leaving a decision, something that gradually happened, or something effectively decided for you?

What happened next?

6. Learning Outside School

What have you learned since leaving school that you are proud of?

How do you learn best now - watching, doing, reading, listening, working beside someone, trial and error, teaching someone else, or another way?

7. Looking Back

What could school have done differently?

What should someone have noticed sooner?

What would education designed for someone like you have looked like?

8. Participant's Own Interpretation

Finish: "I started losing connection with school when..."

Finish: "I learn best when..."

Interviewer Notes

First positive school period: ____________________________________________

First significant difficulty: ____________________________________________

Disengagement / leaving age: ____________________________________________

Strengths school recognized: ____________________________________________

Strengths school missed: ____________________________________________

Important supportive adult: ____________________________________________