In November, senior Josh Sackett had the opportunity to appear on Good Morning America in New York City to share his StoryCorps interview with his sister, Julia Sackett during GMA’s annual “Thanksgiving Listen.”
StoryCorps is an “American non-profit organization which aims to record, preserve and share the stories of Americans from all backgrounds and beliefs,” according to storycorps.org. These stories are then archived in the Library of Congress and are accessible to anyone who wants to listen as long as the recordings are public.
English Teacher Rebecca McGrath, who has incorporated StoryCorps into her curriculum as an extra credit project, said, “We started this project prior to our memoir unit to learn about other people’s stories and how to share our own.”
The project consisted of students interviewing influential people in their lives who have impacted them or others in a major way. The conversations were meant to be deep. However, students were also encouraged to have fun with it, allowing their true colors to shine through to form a deeper connection with their interviewee.
At first, the project was intended to stay in the classroom, but when McGrath saw a social media post from StoryCorps asking if anyone had a good story to share on GMA, she immediately brought it to the attention of her English 4 class.
Josh Sackett explained, “When she asked the class who would be interested, I raised my hand because I thought it would be fun.”
McGrath then sent in names of some students who volunteered to partake in the short segment for GMA.
During the week of Thanksgiving while in his AP Government class, “A StoryCorps representative called me saying I was picked for Good Morning America and that they would send me information,” Josh Sackett said.
He explained that he picked his sister to interview because “she’s always wanted to be famous so she wanted me to choose her and we got to experience something that was really big. She moved out and graduated college so [the interview] brought us closer since she only comes [home] on the holidays.”
Julia Sackett said, “It was definitely an honor especially because we have such a big family. ”
On Nov. 25 at 7:45 a.m., Josh and Julia Sackett arrived at the GMA studio in NYC for their four-minute interview. They were joined by their immediate family, who were allowed to watch from the audience.
A woman from GMA prepped Josh and Julia Sackett with example questions as they got their hair and makeup done. On air, the hosts asked them questions about how they have impacted their family, how their shared bond gets them through the holiday season and what they think going back and listening to this interview will be like for them in the future.
Josh Sackett said, “Maybe at Thanksgiving [in the future] we will be able to show our kids what we’ve done and how our lives were back then and see if they changed or whether they’re the same or not.”