Wayne State University C2 (College and Career) Pipeline site coordinator Nedra Hall, social worker Brittney Lawrence, and history teacher Dan Wolford have sparked an idea to start a new podcast for all DPSCD high school students using King as the pilot school. The goal is to connect students with one another outside of regular extracurricular activities.
"We could put some pilot sample out there for the district to adopt, so it doesn't become a King high school podcast,” Lawrence said. “It becomes a DPSCD Podcast that's run out of King. That way we can start to incorporate what other people are doing in their podcasting at other schools."
Hall came up with the idea while working with students in an afterschool program, C2 Pipeline Enrichment. The students have started experimenting with podcasting, and Lawrence wants to attach the podcast ideas to the STEM program.
"Her students have already gotten started learning about how to do a podcast," Lawrence said. "But we wanted to put together our two ideas to make it more schoolwide."
Lawrence and Wolford have teamed up to make the intro, transition, and outro part of the podcast flow better by adding music and spoken word. Wolford is including his musical program, Lyrical Crusaders, to help make the music by using software.
"The software is called Ableton. It is a full suite of music production and recording technology," Wolford said. "We're going to use Ableton to record, edit, and master the podcast, so we can integrate music and spoken word into the podcast."
Lawrence and her students are finalizing possible topics that will appeal to the student body. The group wants to create samples to help with different categories of the podcast.
"One of the topics is going to be touching on the ‘Expect Respect’ campaign because that's something that the district is supportive of," Lawrence said. "Another topic may be about coding and STEM because that's a really popular field that a lot of people want to go into."
Lawrence said she wants this to be a podcast for all DPSCD high schools that’s run out of King, so all students can participate in it.
"We wanted an opportunity for students who may not be athletically inclined or who may not have an art they are passionate about to still network with other peers," Lawrence said.
