WYSO Youth Radio is produced for the ear and designed to be heard, not read. We strongly encourage you to listen to the audio by clicking on the blue "LISTEN" button above, which includes emotion and emphasis not on the page.
Before WYSO Youth Radio takes a break to develop new stories with local students, host Lee Wade sat down with two veterans from NPR's education desk for insider advice on teaching audio storytelling.
Steve Drummond and Janet W. Lee help run NPR's Student Podcast Challenge, working with teachers and students nationwide to showcase exceptional work. In this bonus episode, they share practical tips for creating compelling student audio stories — from avoiding common recording mistakes to helping young voices find confidence behind the microphone.
And hey, if you're a local educator and you want to work with us on the next season of WYSO Youth Radio, send us an email at communityvoices@wyso.org.
Steve Drummond: Perhaps instead of the students writing a book report or a term paper, teachers have been having a lot of fun teaching a little bit about journalism, a little about storytelling, a little bit about creative writing, and mixing all that together. And what we've also found is that, for many teachers, it's been a really good group project. One student editing, one student writing, or whatever. I should say, though, we've had many, many of our finest have just essentially been one student with a story to tell, interviewing their family members or doing journalism in their community. Or sometimes just sort of personal stories about their lives or who they are or what their place is in the world.
Janet Lee: We do get a lot of "we can't hear the students," whether it's because it's recorded in a lunchroom full of friends who are talking over you or because it is edited in a way it's so quiet that it's like hard to hear you.
Drummond: They don't know that recording it in their noisy classroom with their teachers talking or desks or chairs banging around is really not great for that. We get a lot of students kind of talking about their favorite sports or video game or their favorite musician. But it ends up just being sort of a "who's your favorite quarterback? Oh, I like this one better. I like that one better." We hope teachers will be a little more guiding and students having a little bit more structure and a little writing that would rise above sort of conversation with your friend.
Lee: Yeah, if you're just starting out, I would recommend visiting our resources page. You can find it by looking up NPR Sound Advice. When it comes to editing software, I think we list a couple of free ones that we've seen a lot of students and teachers use. But yeah, we link to a couple different options and kind of guides on how to get started on there if you are worried about the technical aspects.
Drummond: And Janet, it doesn't take a lot of fancy equipment either. We've kind of started off saying, so all you need is basically a smartphone and a laptop computer. It doesn't take super fancy microphones or whatever. Some of the teachers who participated have told us it's really helped their students sort of find their own voices and learn how to speak in a voice that they're comfortable with. We see time and time again that one of the biggest fears that people have in their adult lives is public speaking and speaking to groups, and I think helping them learn to speak in a confident voice, helping them work together in a group with other students, helping them to tell a story and structure it. These are some of the things that I think are universal things that teachers are trying to teach.
WYSO Youth Radio is made possible with support from people like you, the Virginia W. Kettering Foundation, and the Ohio Arts Council. It's produced at The Eichelberger Center for Community Voices.
