DisruptED TV Magazine

Finding Voice through Student-Led Podcasting

By Hans Appel

Last Spring, when I announced to the education world that I was creating a student-led leadership podcast; despite knowing almost NOTHING about how to create one, I took a giant professional risk. (Here’s a look back at my decision to podcast and my recent appearance on Barbara Bray’s Rethink_Learning podcast discussing my ‘WHY’ for creating this podcast platform). However, when educators are willing to model risk-taking and a fail forward mindset, students have the potential to be the greatest benefactors. Over the past few months our Award Winning Culture Podcast (AWC) students have slowly discovered their voice both figuratively and literally.

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Creating a podcast, which has been largely unconnected to a particular class, assignment or homework, has offered our students an outlet of creativity, self expression, and student choice. While most of our podcast students are specifically passionate about leadership and school culture, they’re effectively working through a master class in self-discovery. Often times, school podcasts and other project based learning make a common error when establishing the class teacher as both the evaluator and sole consumer of the student learning product. Elevating this passion project beyond the classroom provided students with the knowledge that their work would not just be seen or heard by a teacher. It’s been refreshing for them to know that what their building matters outside the walls of the schoolhouse. A point that David Geurin so eloquently makes in his landmark book, “Future Driven”. Learning becomes “irresistible, when visible to real audiences,” Geurin explains. Thus, doing their best work as podcasters isn’t about earning a grade, it’s about wanting to create a platform of inspiration that ripples through K-12 education in cities around the globe. When a student knows that their reach of voice has the potential to impact, touch lives, and influence students and adults in communities beyond theirs; student learning knows no bounds…no limitations…and no obstacles. While grades often have no tangibility to soak up…