On the Air: The Pedagogy of Student-Produced Radio Documentaries

At University Laboratory High School (Uni) in Urbana, Illinois, students begin the common sequence of history courses by collectively undertaking an intensive oral history project which has real-world application and creates authentic engagement with the past. The project is two-tiered. At one level, the eighth-graders in this five-year school, officially called subfreshmen, conduct the initial research and collect the raw materials. In social studies class, they study the background history, work in teams to conduct and record oral history interviews with community members at the local public radio station, transcribe the audio, and process the stories through writing. On another level, a select group of students in grades nine through twelve, known as interns, work in designated teams to do both the groundwork of choosing a topic and finding interviewees, as well as the processing and production to turn the raw material into a professional-quality one-hour radio documentary that airs on local public radio. It is through this two-tiered structure that Uni’s oral history project is able to provide students at multiple levels with valuable skills and to encourage authentic engagement with the material and a sense of ownership of their work. Additionally, this approach to doing oral history is rooted in a partnership with a public radio station and privileges short- and long-form radio documentary as means of teaching students to create primary source-based historical narratives. The dissemination of student-produced oral history via public radio enriches not only those directly involved with the project, but also listeners in the wider community.