The Buzz for December 17, 2021
In 2019, The New York Times selected a podcast produced by a student from City High School in Tucson as one of the best student podcasts of the year.
The award-winning podcast was produced by Samantha Zazueta, and is titled "My Incarcerated Family."
Zazueta created the podcasts as part of City High Radio.
The podcasts were a combination of two classes, a podcast class and a senior seminar youth participatory action research project. Zazueta was interested in recidivism and incarceration. Another student, Paloma Martinez, created a podcast focusing on water scarcity in the desert.
Her podcast is titled "A Crisis in the Desert."
Sarah Bromer has been a teacher at City High for more than 15 years, and has been running the youth radio program nearly as long. She said Zazueta and Martinez were "fearless" in their pursuit of interviews with family and experts in the field.
"I think one of my very favorite things about teaching this class is that the kids that have spent their entire lives thinking of themselves as great writers are not necessarily the kids who are the best in radio class. I often have kids who come to my class and they are struggling readers and struggling writers and I think sometimes it's easier for them to write in their own voice," Bromer told The Buzz.
"And then I think hearing themselves on the radio and getting all that positive feedback for how powerful their story is, it's something that can be very transformative for a kid who has spent their whole life thinking, 'I'm not a good writer.'"
This episode of The Buzz first aired in 2019.
Hear more from the City High Radio podcast.
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