Pulitzer Prize–winning writer and journalist Studs Terkel is world famous for his oral histories, and he is considered a groundbreaking innovator in modern ethnographic research. Working, Terkel’s most popular book, provides a powerful and original perspective on one of the most basic components of human experience and has long been recognized as an ideal teaching tool. Now, offering educators a variety of approaches to using Working in the classroom, Rick Ayers presents a comprehensive teaching guide to this celebrated classic.

In Studs Terkel’s Working, teachers are shown how to help students become critical interviewers themselves, by exploring oral history techniques and doing oral history projects. With two hundred pages of classroom materials—including lesson plans, discussion questions, sample interviews, an a bibliography of related sources—teachers are given a guide to the oral history process, from setting up the first interview to publishing the final, edited version. As an added bonus, included here is a previously unpublished interview with Studs Terkel himself, offering insight into the making of Working.