What do a local Korean church, METCO, places where teenagers gather, the Coolidge Corner Theater, dog park culture and Chestnut Hill all have in common? Each one was discussed in length on student-produced podcasts as part of the new branch of the Whipple Writing Program, called This Brookline Life. On Thursday, Nov. 13 in the MLK room, six juniors and seniors, the first cohort of podcasters for this branch of the program, celebrated the work they created over the summer.
The event opened with introductions from Jen Martin, Social Studies Curriculum Coordinator and Whipple Writing Program director, and Zac Broken Rope, the facilitator for This Brookline Life. Each podcaster presented a small introduction about the process of creating their podcast. Included in their introductions were stories from interviews and insights into the methods they used to capture the unique sounds included in the final product. They then played a small clip of the finished work. The event concluded with a Q&A with the audience.
Broken Rope said that the process of creating a podcast can mirror the process of writing an essay for a class and incorporates age-old methods of narrative-building.
“I think [podcasting is] tied to both oral tradition, which is one of the oldest forms of storytelling, and our oldest form of mass media: radio,” Broken Rope said. “It’s this really interesting way to piece together a story. I thought about how podcasting in some ways replicates what we teach in class. You have an idea, you develop it, you bring in sound, sources, all to tell a compelling story.”
Carol Gladstone founded the Whipple Writing Program with her husband Ben Whipple to honor her late son, alum David Whipple, and commemorate his love of writing. She said that podcasts offer a newer, more enticing way to tell stories in a new digital age.
“I love podcasts and I listen to them all the time,” Gladstone said. “It’s become the way that we’re communicating now. The written word is turning into podcasts. It seemed like it would be the perfect blend of really, really good writing that we saw in the summer fellowship, but also a little bit of that personal part that we see in the story hour.”
To create their podcasts, participants used professional equipment from PRX Podcast Garage, a non-profit media company in Boston that develops podcasts and radio for groups including WBUR and NPR. Broken Rope said he reached out to the non-profit because it was important to him that the podcasts were high quality and developed with authentic equipment.
“They [PRX Podcast Garage] really firmly believe in creating the next generation of radio people, podcasters, and so they were excited to develop a program with us where we can use their equipment,” Broken Rope said. “We had someone come from the program to show us about how to edit, how to craft a story and what that structure looks like.”
A common challenge identified by the podcasters was gathering interviews from strangers to be part of their podcasts. But podcaster and senior Kerisa Ramirez said that through her research process, she learned a lot about METCO (a program that allows students from Boston to attend schools in surrounding suburbs).
“I have my own opinions on METCO. Before the podcast [they] were actually negative but I would say now it’s neutral,” Ramirez said. “I only saw the negatives of METCO, but speaking with [Malcolm] Cawthorn, the Brookline METCO director, I definitely saw the pros and I understood why METCO is so great and why it continues to stand strong and why people work so hard to make it what it is today.”
Amidst fears surrounding artificial intelligence, podcasts can be a sustainable way to incorporate technology into schools that still require critical thinking and research skills, according to Broken Rope.
“We’re building a story by using audio, by using voices, by thinking of a thesis, giving it feedback, editing it again to tell some of the same stories using primary sources and resources available to us,” Broken Rope said. “So I think that that’s a really compelling way that we can bring technology into our classrooms and have kids create compelling narratives.”
