For this piece of writing, students practiced their observational skills. Students were instructed to to do the following: Choose a place in your home, neighborhood or surrounding area where you can station yourself for a half hour in order to conduct a deep observation. This should be somewhere that is familiar to you and where you spent time regularly in your everyday life.

To conduct an ethnographic interview, students were instructed to do the following: Choose someone who is a part of your everyday life to interview about an aspect of their experience that is relevant to your own life or of interest to you. Your goal will be to conduct an open-ended, informal interview reflecting their experiences.

This piece of writing is designed to prompt students to practice the writing fundamental to "show and not tell." We all love a good character—someone who is complex yet relatable, full of all the human foibles we are aware of and who may act differently from what we could ever anticipate.