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When high school teachers from a small town in Tennessee teamed up to design a student podcasting project, they couldn鈥檛 have predicted that four of their students would craft a story so compelling that it would attract a national audience.

Eleventh graders from Elizabethton High School in Elizabethton, Tennessee, surprised their teachers, their community, and even themselves when they produced the winning entry in the first-ever sponsored by National Public Radio earlier this year. 鈥淢urderous Mary and the Rise of Erwin鈥� tells the stranger-than-fiction story of a Tennessee town that hanged a circus elephant more than a century ago.

Winning was not聽the goal of the project-based learning (PBL) experience that integrated history and English鈥攖eachers saw the contest as an opportunity to address academic goals by immersing students in the real work of historians and storytellers. As the project unfolded, 鈥渋t became less about winning and more about doing right by the story,鈥� says English teacher Tim Wasem.

Choice and Structure

I caught up with Wasem and social studies teacher Alex Campbell just as the school year was wrapping up. They teach in adjoining classrooms, share the same 40 students in 11th grade, and regularly collaborate. Campbell is a PBL veteran. Wasem is an enthusiastic newcomer to real-world projects.

Our conversation confirmed my hunch that it doesn鈥檛 take a big contest to get students engaged in podcasting. More important are student choice and authentic audience. To help other teachers run with similar ideas, Wasem and Campbell shared their project design and key teaching strategies.

Stepping Stones to Success

The project unfolded in six phases, each with clear learning goals and formative check-ins for understanding.

Phase one: teams propose topics. Working in four-person teams, students began by proposing historical events of local significance. Each student offered four ideas, giving every team 16 possibilities. 鈥淛ust generating those ideas involved tons of research,鈥� Campbell says, with students gathering leads from family, friends, and others in the community. Before moving into deeper research, teams had to reach consensus on a single story to investigate.

Phase two: conduct background research.聽鈥淓ach student chose four areas they needed to learn more about,鈥� says Campbell.聽鈥淎fter researching, they presented back to their team.鈥� In the process, he adds, 鈥渢hey were learning how to collaborate.鈥�

Phase three: generate questions. Next, students fine-tuned questions to guide their inquiry. 鈥淭hey had to learn to ask good questions,鈥� Wasem says. Each student generated 20 questions, for a big list of 80 per team. Local journalists vetted these lists and coached students on questioning strategies. Eventually, each team had 20 well-crafted questions.

Phase four: find experts to interview. Each team had to interview six experts. 鈥淪ome had it easier than others,鈥� admits Wasem, 鈥渁nd immediately found 10 people who had published articles or books about a topic. But if stories were very old or happened far away, students struggled. The winning team was telling a story that happened 100 years ago. Nobody鈥檚 alive.鈥� The challenge of聽tracking down sources proved beneficial:聽鈥淪tudents had to get creative,鈥� Campbell says, and investigate history from multiple perspectives. 鈥淗ow does the average, random person feel about something that happened in their town 100 years ago? That adds to the story.鈥�

Phase five: conduct interviews. Interviews happened at school, in the community, over Skype, everywhere. Some teams used school equipment to record, but most relied on cell phones. 鈥淔or about two weeks,鈥� says Wasem, 鈥渋t was a constant stream. That鈥檚 when it hit me: This is a large project!鈥�

Phase six: produce podcasts. Finally, students were ready to craft their digital stories. 鈥淭he first five steps were scaffolding,鈥� Wasem says. Now they had to weave their material together in an artful way. Students聽indexed interviews to highlight the聽quotes they wanted to use, created聽detailed scripts, and combined interview clips and their own narration in 15-second intervals. That meant distilling five or six hours of content into 12 minutes. 鈥淭hey hated that!鈥� Campbell admits. Listening to students work on their stories, Wasem could tell how invested they had become. 鈥淭hey would say, 鈥業 can鈥檛 get this wrong.鈥� They cared about it being a good product.鈥�

Once the scripts were ready, Wasem introduced students to open-source audio editing software called . 鈥淚 gave them a quick tutorial,鈥� he says, 鈥渁nd then dropped Audacity in their laps.鈥� Not one student had prior experience with the tool. Wasem suggested YouTube tutorials and brought in a聽music producer friend to help. 鈥淭hat was one of my proudest moments,鈥� Wasem adds, 鈥渨hen the kids basically told him, 鈥楾hanks, but we鈥檝e got this.鈥欌��

Three days later, their podcasts were ready.

Connecting With Audiences

When Elizabethton High students entered the NPR Podcast Challenge (along with 25,000 other students from across the United States) they knew聽the odds of any of their stories making the final cut were exceedingly slim.

What mattered more to students was making sure that their podcasts were heard by the audiences that they most wanted to reach. One team hosted a listening party for a 100-year-old veteran, along with her family and friends. Another organized a cookout and podcast party at the home of an inspirational former school principal who now has a degenerative disease.

鈥淭he podcasts were great,鈥� Campbell says, 鈥渂ut these actions showed how much the stories meant for students.鈥� It鈥檚 also a good reminder that authentic audience is a cornerstone of effective PBL.

In their small town, Campbell adds, 鈥渨e don鈥檛 have recording studios down the street, but we do have people who are willing to spend time with our students.鈥� At the end of the project, a student told Campbell, 鈥淚 never knew I lived in such a cool place.鈥� That鈥檚 the kind of learning that lasts.