SIOUX CITY, Iowa (Iowa Media Wire) — The Sioux City Career Academy has launched “Students On,” a new podcast ran entirely by students.
Listeners are able to tune in to hear students’ voices and their stories as they talk to the community and district leaders. Topics may include school news, student spotlights, or just great conversations.
“We have a few of our students — Nolin, Addie, Nicole, and Vance just joined the team,” Sioux City Career Academy principal Eric Kilburn said. “We had a couple others kind of on the sidelines… to just get out there and get some positive stuff going on in the district in different formats. And podcasting was a format we thought we’d give our kids some instruction on and get them interaction with different adults throughout the district and put it out there for all to hear.”
Kilburn has waited a decade to launch a student-led podcast.
“Students are consumers of media, but pretty rarely are they creators of media,” he said. “So I wanted them to be able to push some content out there that was valuable to the community.”
The two hosts — Nolin Morano and Addalai Burback — had never considered podcasting, but when chosen to become the stars of the series, they were hooked immediately.
“I have met so many new people and just made so many new experiences, and it’s really shown me that broadcasting is really a career option that could be available to me, which I love,” Burback, a student at East High School, said. “That’s the whole part of the Career Academy that I love, and this is an opportunity provided through that.”
“I’ve never seen this side of myself even because, I mean, I’ve done some radio news broadcasting for speech, but actually doing this shows me like, yeah, I have fun doing this,” Morano, also a student at East High, said. “I could see myself doing this, like, this is a real option for me. So why not just take a look even further than just this?”
When first starting the podcast, Burback didn’t know how it would be received.
“I just kind of texted my friends. I was like, they just asked me to do a podcast for the school. Are you kidding me? There’s zero chance it takes off,” Burback said. “And that wasn’t true. It took off, and now I’m here doing it.”
Kilburn says he believes this is the best opportunity for students to voice their opinions on education.
“We don’t get enough student voices,” Kilburn said. “I think [incoming Sioux City Community School District superintendent Dr. Juan Cordova] put it best: what’s the student experience? And so getting students’ voices out there so that our community members can hear directly from our kids, from our teachers, and from community members who care about public education — that was our goal, to push a positive message.”
New episodes will be posted on Sundays. You can listen on platforms such as: