#270 – Student Podcasting in Secondary Grades, with Joe Bento

If you are listening to the podcast with your instructional team or would like to explore this topic more deeply, here are guiding questions to prompt your reflection:

• What do you know about podcasts and podcasting?
• What aspects of podcasting with students sound rewarding to you?
• What aspects of podcasting with students make you nervous?
• What content from your classroom might align well with a podcasting project?
• If you were to integrate podcasting into your classroom, what would your next steps be?

• Podcast with Students (Joe Bento)
• Resources for Podcasting Lesson (Joe Bento)
• Our 6th Annual Student Podcast Contest (The New York Times)
• Best Podcast Apps and Websites for Students (Common Sense Education)

#270 — Student Podcasting, with Joe Bento

AVID Open Access
33 min

Keywords
students, podcast, podcasting, ib, cte, talk, toolkit, assignment, joe, interview, content, work, learned, winston, new york times, great, free, classrooms, student, mics

Joe Bento  0:00  

What did we notice about these podcasts? This is gonna be your story you’re gonna tell. I want the students be able to use what they have. I want them to have their own voice. And I think the students recognize that you don’t need all this fancy equipment. It helps if you’re doing like more professional things.

Rena Clark  0:17  

The topic of today’s podcast is Student Podcasting, with Joe Bento. Unpacking Education is brought to you by avid.org. AVID believes that we can raise the bar for education. To learn more about AVID visit their website at avid.org. Welcome to Unpacking Education, the podcast where we explore current issues and best practices in education. I’m Rena Clark.

Paul Beckermann  0:48  

I’m Paul Beckermann.

Winston Benjamin  0:49  

And I’m Winston Benjamin. We are educators.

Paul Beckermann  0:53  

And we’re here to share insights and actionable strategies.

Transition Music  0:57  

Education is our passport to the future.

Rena Clark  1:03  

Our quote for today is from Paula Diaz from the Edutopia article, “How to Promote Student Voice—Literally.” She says, “Podcasting offers an empowering way for students—even young ones—to express their ideas and connect with the world.” Okay, Winston, you’re up.

Winston Benjamin  1:23  

I think the part that stands out for me is connect with the world. Thinking about some kids who experience the world sometimes don’t feel that they matter to the larger scope. So being able to express yourself and have someone choose to listen in and choose to pay attention really makes them feel more valuable. So, I think also being able to express their viewpoint to the rest of the world is also something that’s really, really key to the use of podcasts. I’m really tuned into the idea that kids can connect with the world and the world can see their experience.

Paul Beckermann  1:56  

Yeah, and I love that you said the word mattering, Winston, because two of my favorite words in here: empower and voice. And if you matter, you have both of those things going for you. Or if you have those things going for you, you feel like you matter. They can go either way, right? And I really think those are two things we should should strive for in everything we do in education. If we can make our kids feel like they are empowered, and they have a voice that matters, wow, we are doing some good stuff.

Rena Clark  2:23  

Yeah, we are. So I am excited today because we’re gonna dig into that a bit more. Our guest today is Joe Bento, an IB Career Program Coordinator and CTE teacher. I know he does some podcasting of his own. Maybe he’ll talk to us about that. And then he also teaches his students about great content and how to do some podcasting with them. So welcome, Joe.

Joe Bento  2:50  

Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate the invite.

Rena Clark  2:54  

And if you’d like to add anything else, just to give some background for our listeners about who you are, what you’re about, feel free to chime in.

Speaker 1  3:01  

For sure. I’m a CTE teacher. I’ve been teaching CTE for 22 years now. So for CTE, we’re always about making sure that students have content that’s relevant to them, that we use technology to support things that we do. I teach IB psychology, which is not a traditional CTE class, but it’s in our CTE department. So we don’t have access to resources and technology to support the program. There’s a lot of things that that you need to have in order to have CTE program, 21st century skills, leadership experiences, etc. And so I think by doing things like podcasting, and having students be able to do their leadership and look at what 21st century skills that they’re using allows them to have that access to CTE content. Unlike what you think of traditional CTE classes like construction, or aerospace or culinary, in our district, psychology, especially IB psychology, is in the CTE program. So we have access to those resources. So they’re able to do that. So that’s when I talk to educators about podcasting. I always tell them that it’d be nice to have like the fancy podcasting mics, etc. It’s not necessary to do in classrooms that deal with the things that you need. Probably personally, with my students, we’ve just been able to use our basic technology that we have with us in our classrooms to create content.

Rena Clark  4:25  

I look forward to digging into that a little more and helping our listeners out. And you said you use podcasting in your classes. So what just inspired you to start podcasting with students? And what is it that you’re hoping to accomplish with them with podcasting?

Joe Bento  4:40  

I’ve been doing podcasting for a few years. I used to teach AP Psychology, and what I found with AP Psychology as a curriculum was kind of dry. I was looking for more things for students to do that wasn’t just your traditional, read the assignment, do the questions, do the lecture, move on. And so I started dabbling in it a few years agou. Most recently in the IB psychology curriculum, there was content about how students collect data. And there was something about we need to talk about interviewing, and then inductive content analysis. I was like, “Oh, my gosh, this is so boring. I don’t want to teach inductive content analysis just by lecturing.” I did a Google search, and I found that the New York Times had an article about podcasting in your class. And apparently, every year they do some sort of contests, where teachers can submit student audio projects. And so I found this New York Times article, and so looking at what the IB curriculum required, and looking at this podcasting assignment, I was like I can have students just do interviews, and do content analysis and an inductive content analysis, just taking data that’s not just numbers and letters and being able to look at it holistically and put them into categories and groupings. And so I figured, you know what, let’s do something that students could use. So as a CTE teacher, I wanted students to have access to create and do something that can be useful for later, whether they want to do TikTok creation, or YouTube, or podcasting themselves. I want them to have access and practice so they could do something that would be useful to them later. So that was kind of my inspiration–it’s like, this was really boring, let’s do something that’s more entertaining, and still getting the content that students would need to learn and this podcast assignment was born.

Winston Benjamin  6:40  

I’m so excited that you were not willing to bore your students to death. Part of the biggest things are, as you could tell, when you ask teachers about podcasting, they’re like, oh, there’s so much. I don’t really know where to start. But there always seems to be like a plan or an outline. Did your class or did your students come up with the plan, the outline, the structures before recording ever happened? Or was it something that grew organically through the process?

Joe Bento  7:20  

When I mentioned podcasting, one of the things that my students seemed to think that you can just talk into a microphone, record it, and then submit something. And I didn’t want that to happen, right? Because I wanted to guide them through the process. So I use this New York Times article, I wish I remembered the name of the lesson plan. I’ll find it and send it later. So I based the structure on that. The way they structured it started with this idea of like storytelling, and with listening to sample podcasts, and identifying what storytelling elements were in that podcast, and they had a variety. I made them listen to so many different types of podcasts. And just identifying like, what are you hearing? What’s the story? Some are happy, some are sad, some were done in pairs. There are so many podcasts out there. And they all were pretty familiar with the serial podcasts, because they had all done it in their ninth grade language arts class. And so at least there was that basis, they understood that. And then what I had them do was sample short stories. And there was some website where you have writing prompts. And I said, pick one of those or come up with your own and just write a little story about that. Like what is the first time you rode a bike or what’s your first phone you had? What’s your first pet? And just write a little story. And then after that, I had them practice reading it. And then I had them practice recording it, because I didn’t want them to wing it. Because a lot of times they think they could just wing an assignment without practice. And so that was kind of the basis. I had them record that story as evidence of here’s the story that you’re going to tell. This is gonna be your story you’re gonna tell. And then from there, I was like, what did we notice about these podcasts? And a lot of them talked about they tended to interview people, which is one of the key words I wanted this for this idea assignment.

So then we talked about interviewing skills. What did interview look like? And whether it’s on-the-street interviews versus formal interviews, and then I had them practice doing interviews. Then I had them pick two people where they asked interview questions, and they recorded those. And then, from there, I showed them how to edit a podcast, like using online platforms. I’ll talk about that a little bit later. And how to combine their storytelling and embed quotes that they liked from interviews into their podcast. And then we listened to them and we talked about the structures, what we liked about these little one to two minute podcast that they had generated. That was the structure. I wanted them have their own voice, which is why I had them look at the writing prompts or tell their own story. The structure was the same regardless because I wanted to go through that process, in case they wanted to submit their podcast to this New York Times contest. But that was basic structure but they definitely had their own voice in there. But the actual structure itself, I kept it the way it was because I wanted them to be able to use that for other things. So I always want student voice. And so over the years, it’s mostly stayed the same. Sometimes we change a little bit of things, but that’s mostly been the structure for the last few years I’ve done this project.

Paul Beckermann  10:24  

I love how you kind of sucked them into the process by having them write a story and then listen to these other podcasts, and it’s like the questions sort of sounds like they came naturally out of that experience, sort of an inductive approach, sort of PBL baiting kind of.

Joe Bento  10:40  

It sure was. I think a lot of this lesson plan from the New York Times have that kind of focus, like PBL focus.

Paul Beckermann  10:48  

I love it. So you mentioned early on that you didn’t have a big budget to buy all the fancy stuff. So what did you use? I mean, what what’s the stuff that can make it actually happen?

Joe Bento  11:00  

So one of the things I found was I want the students be able to use what they have. As a CTE teacher, I could buy the fancy mics and do all that. I didn’t want to do that. I wanted them use what they had, which was their Chromebooks. Now, no judgment on the Chromebooks, but they’re not the best devices in the world. They do what they need to do, and that’s fine. But what I did do was have the CTE department buy the little clip-on mics that they can use, and they have this one that came with two, so you can clip it on someone else, as well. And so I had them use those in our practice interviews and whatnot. And I used to use anchor FM. Anchor FM was amazing, and I used that for years. Spotify recently bought it, and this year, it was a challenge. The program was actually a challenge to use, which was unfortunate, because I love Anchor, and I never had any issues with it. But this year, there was a lot of issues. So I was like, okay, sorry, Spotify, but I’m going to look for other free programs. But Anchor tended to do really well. The Spotify for Podcasting, which is a new name, is similar to what Anchor was, and could be great if they kind of worked out the tech issues that my students and I were having. But what I found ultimately was, I’m probably going to use WeVideo. WeVideo has a free podcast feature on there, and some of my students tested it. And my students, also the ones that have iPhones like iMovie to do recordings, even if it’s not video, and GarageBand. What I found students like too, I think it’s a little complex for what I’m doing in a classroom. But it has some features in there that would work well for podcasting. So there’s definitely lots out there. So the resources I use was their Chromebooks, these little clip-on mics, and a hope and a dream, and those all seem to work pretty good. I feel like I’ve got good quality. And I think the students recognize that you don’t need all this fancy equipment. It helps if you’re doing more professional things. For what we did in class, that’s what I use it and it happened to be very good. So the quality of the products I got was pretty good, based on the technology that we had available.

Paul Beckermann  13:19  

So you didn’t actually have them post it somewhere, right? You had them record it, and edit it, and produce it. But was it more local then?

Joe Bento  13:27  

They just sent me the file as soon as it’s done, because I didn’t want it out in the world yet, mostly just because of parent permission. I don’t know the Renton School District policies when it comes to publishing, and things like that. So I held up on that. It was all done intenal.

Paul Beckermann  13:43  

That’s a decent message for a new teacher listening to this that doesn’t want to take that initial risk. They want to get started, but they’re worried about some of those things. That keeps it a little more manageable too. So I think that’s a good approach.

Rena Clark  13:54  

I do love that you’re having students use what’s available to them so then if they do have a passion interest, they want to make a podcast about something else they care about, now they can do that on their own. It sounds like they’re already using their phones. They’re gonna go out and make videos, so they might as well do really good ones with a story.

Joe Bento  14:14  

I don’t want to see bad editing or whatever. Like I want good TikTok videos, I want good YouTube videos that are done, so hopefully this is like a first step in that.

Rena Clark  14:26  

Yeah, multiple years, but through this process, it sounds like you learned a lot. But what was it that you and students learned that was unexpected, or surprised you, or the biggest learning that’s happened so far?

Joe Bento  14:40  

You know, for me, ultimately, I think my students learned you can’t just talk in a mic and I put it out there. I think they learned that the reason why influencers like do YouTube and TikTok and do regular, like it’s work! It’s a lot of work to get it done. I think for my students, their learning was like, wow, podcasting is work and it takes time to make quality podcasts. And you know, everyone’s definition of quality is different, but for the work that they put in, we did a listening party with their final projects, and I had them talk about what did you notice? And they definitely could tell like the–I don’t want, say the good ones versus the not good ones–but they could definitely tell the ones that students spent more time on, the quality, because of that storytelling element and the interviewing techniques that were in there. You can see those in there. Their final project was this five-minute podcast on an IB topic. So I had them pick whatever IB topic and then have them go through this process. And what I found from this process is the students had great work. And I think they were surprised by the quality of their work, as well. I wasn’t surprised that their work was good, because my students, of course, are awesome. I think what surprised me the most was some of this quality was almost like professional-level podcasts that I’ve heard or even better, some of the ones I’ve heard on Spotify, or on Apple podcasts or whatnot. I think my students could walk out, do podcasting as a career or something, whereas a hobby that gives them a little funds, and do well. So to me, that was the surprise. It was that they did quality work that I didn’t expect, which was awesome.

Winston Benjamin  16:21  

I appreciate the two things about it that you said. One, that podcasting is work. And the second thing is okay, we got some future podcasters coming out of Renton. Again, you’ve defined as we could see some of the benefits as we just talked in terms of work and dedication to practice in the process. But if you could think about what are some of the benefits for doing podcasts with kids, either academic or social? What were some of the benefits that you saw out of the out of the process with them?

Joe Bento  17:01  

I always tell people that I am not a professional podcaster. I don’t have a fancy podcast that I do on my own. I don’t do this as a hobby. It’s not something that I do. So when I look at benefits, it’s not about me being this superior behind-the-scenes podcaster, it’s getting students to kind of think about this idea of if you have a task, what’s a way that you can handle the task in a way that makes it a more tolerable task, if that makes sense. So learning about interviewing inductive content analysis is not exciting. Like thank you IB, this is boring. But for my students, I think what they learned was these interview techniques and things don’t have to be what you think it is. Like I go to a job interview, it’s supposed to be like this. And that interviewing people and analyzing interviews is different than just talking to someone, recording it, and playing it. I think what they learned based on their IB assignment is you interviewed three people, what were the commonalities? What did you learn from these people? How can you make their voice heard? Because I also talked about ethics, too. We’re like, what clips are you going to use in your podcast? Is it going to make the person look great? Or is it going to make them not look good? And did you tell them about that? Because I made them do consent forms. Every person that they interviewed, they were supposed to give them a clip of the audio so that they knew how their interview was used. So there was a whole element in there of learning how to interview, working in teams, if they chose. They could do this assignment in pairs or individually.

They had to talk about ethics. They had to learn how to analyze their interview data, figure out which clips best matched the story they wanted to tell, with their IB topics. I picked some current events like one of the current events about whether vacations make people happy. There was another one I found about why heterosexual men don’t recycle. And it has to do with like gender roles and gender biases. So they were able to pick one of those top third on the list, and look at what’s your story, who you’re going to interview, and how’s that interview going to benefit your story? And your story being benefited could make someone else not look good, as well. So I wanted to talk about ethics. So there were a lot of things in there academically that they learned, but socially, just like human rights, and also looking at content and then ethical considerations. A lot of my students thought that podcasting could be something they want to do for fun or something that can integrate in something that they do later. So for me, every single student did it at different qualities, of course, but they were all engaged. They all liked it. They all like being able to spend time in class, working with the tool that they don’t necessarily know how to use. None of them ever edited a podcast before, let alone a video. But they’ve all done TikTok in some ways, so they at least have that as a base. So I think they learned a lot from this project that I hope that they can use later on. And I have students tell me every year they want to do it for fun or for other things later on in their lives. So to me, that’s a win. I think that’s a great benefit, not just necessarily academically, but socially for fun, for hobbies later on, I think hobbies are important to talk about, too. That student definitely benefited from this.

Winston Benjamin  20:33  

And they went in class.

Joe Bento  20:38  

This is great. I have a lot of students skipping class, so the fact that they at least want to stay and do this, this is so good.

Paul Beckermann  20:47  

So now let’s say I’m a teacher, and I’m listening to this, and I’m fired up. I want to do podcasting. But it sounds like there’s a lot of moving parts, and I don’t know where to get started. What would you tell an educator listening here that does want to get started, but they really don’t know much?

Joe Bento  21:03  

There’s a presentation I presented at a conference with a toolkit. I sent that to Rena, I think. I hope you have it. If not, I can resend it. Definitely feel free to share that. People can view it. I think you can download it.

Paul Beckermann  21:22 

We’ll link it on our website.

Joe Bento  21:23  

That’d be great. Yeah, for sure. And so when I tell them is this can’t be done as a quick assignment. And so follow the guide. Obviously, the New York Times has their lesson plan. I modified it. It’s in this guide that I use. I changed it around so it made it easy for my classroom. It doesn’t mean that it won’t work for other classrooms. But for educators who want to look at it, plan ahead. It’s definitely not something that can’t be done in a week or so. If you’re looking for like a quick assignment, this isn’t it. I think it took me three or four weeks to do this, on top of other things that we’re working on in class. It definitely was a time commitment, but it matched what I was doing in class, so that was fine, for the IB psychology paper threes, FYI. So if you’re doing IB psychology, this was a great assignment for that paper three, so they could get into that. But go through the lesson plan ahead of time. Definitely see what resources I know in my district, and Reton, all the students have Chromebooks, so they at least have that tool there. See what’s available, like grants, etc. if you want fancier mics, or even the clip-on mics, or whatever. And to make plans and to just be willing to explore a different type of classroom management. In CTE, I’m used to students being all over the place and different levels, working on different things, and I have to manage a class like you’re working on this topic, great. You’re doing this, okay. You’re over here, you’re doing this. And that’s just how CTE classrooms generally are. I know a lot of general ed classes aren’t necessarily set up to be like that, but if you’re planning to do an assignment like a podcast assignment, it’s definitely a different type of classroom management since students are doing different things, different times, different places, and different levels. And so being open to that, and also, at first, having to learn a lot. Students are going to want you to guide them step-by-step and feel free to not help them and let them struggle through it. I know a lot of educators don’t want to do that, like I need to help them. Sometimes with stuff like this, I think you have to kind of struggle through it a little bit, but being willing to let students kind of struggle through the development of this. You’re also goning to be needed a lot. So they’re gonna be like, well, how do you do this, step-by-step? Letting students know that you’re there for them, and you’ll support them, but they kind of have to figure it out. But also, if you’re brand new, you’re not going to know how to do every single thing. So I also recommend ahead of time, play with the website, do your own little podcast, play with every feature. I played with all the music, sound effects, etcetera, editing, cutting, adding. I played with all those features. That way I knew how to do it. So if a student had a question, I was able to show them. It was very rare that student asked me something I didn’t know how to do, just because I ahead of time, I played around with all the features on the website. So for me, you don’t need be an expert. I’m not an expert. My students have created great content. And so just be willing to go to that place of discomfort and have your students try something new. I think you’ll be surprised at the content that your students create.

Sounds like good advice.

Winston Benjamin  24:25  

I appreciate it not being a today thing. But it’s time for me to ask a question.

Transition Music  24:41  

Check it out. Check it out. Check out. Check it out. What’s in the toolkit? What is in the toolkit? So, what’s in the toolkit? Check it out.

Winston Benjamin  24:51  

What’s in your toolkit? I’m trying to give space.

Paul Beckermann  24:55  

Nice dramatic pause there, Winston.

Winston Benjamin  24:57  

I wanted to come in. We got music in the background, Joe, so we’re trying to add an ad lib.

Paul Beckermann  25:04  

Nice production jazz.

Winston Benjamin  25:07  

Gotta get it, baby. But I’m gonna ask you, what’s in your toolkit? What’s something that you like? I want a takeaway with that.

Joe Bento  25:15  

So basically, what’s in the toolkit is I break out every single part of my structure. And so I have a whole section that starts with storytelling. What’s storytelling? What are the elements? With examples and links to some of the resources that the New York Times does. It’s just a more organized New York Times lesson plan that I’ve kind of modified and created some things and moved things around so it made a little bit more sense for me. And there’s also links to the different resources, there’s links to different platforms. There’s, I don’t have in front of me, so I forget what else was on there, but my presentation I did at this conference, those are all things that are on this toolkit.

Winston Benjamin  25:59  

See, Joe had a sneak attack. He actually gave y’all a toolkit, and a toolkit.

Paul Beckermann  26:04  

That might be the first time a guest gave an entire toolkit!

Winston Benjamin  26:11  

So you’ll have that you have access to that toolkit, everyone. Rena, Paul, what’s in your toolkit?

Rena Clark  26:18  

So I was saying, if you look on AvidOpenAccess.org, we actually have a lot of great resources in there. I was just going through there again today. And there’s an article that I loved–“Hear It, Say It, Play It: The Power of Audio in Student Creation.” And even if you’re not going full podcast, because I do appreciate that full podcast, but even if it is just including audio, different clips, and I know we talked with our Amanda, about you doing this with elementary students, and there are components that you could integrate all over, not just for podcasting, that could enhance with audio. And we have a lot of different resources at AvidOpenAccess.org.

Paul Beckermann  26:58  

I’m glad you mentioned AVID Open Access too, Rena, because if our listeners go there and click on the podcast link at the top, that’s where they will find Joe’s links. So just find Joe’s episode, and find the link at the bottom of that. I would say my toolkit is a spin-off of what Joe said earlier. You don’t have to buy the fanciest, most expensive stuff. Decide–oh, did I take yours, Winston? See you shouldn’t have let me go first. But really, use what you have, right? Use what you have. And there’s a lot of free stuff out there. I mean, if you have iPads, then you’ve got access to GarageBand. If you’ve got Chromebooks, you can use the web-based stuff like Soundtrap; it’s a really good one. Or Podbean is one that a friend of mine is using now for his actual podcast. Obviously, you have to check out the age restrictions and things like that and make sure that it’s okay to use, but there’s a lot of free stuff out there, even microphones. You said you got the clip-on ones Joe. I remember I bought these little $10 ones on Amazon that had the little necks, so they stood on the table. And then I took the fuzzy earbud covers. I don’t even know if they make those anymore. But I bought a pack of replacement covers, and I glued them on as little pop filters over the end of the microphone. It cost me like $2. So there are cheap ways to do things. Use what you got. Winston, did I leave anything for you?

Winston Benjamin  28:30  

You did and I’m gonna try to do one extra one. Toolkit. Your kids! Your students are already doing TikToks and all kinds of videos. Use their funds of knowledge as a hook to get them involved and engaged with the content. Because ooh, when Joe said IB, I was like, yeah, I don’t really care in inductive reasoning. Not as fun, but the students were engaged and fully pulled in because you used their funds of knowledge and accessed their engagement level. So I really appreciate that piece.

Paul Beckermann  29:09  

Awesome. All right, we’re gonna hop into our one thing.

Transition Music  29:11  

It’s time for that one thing. One thing. One thing. It’s time for that one thing. It’s that one thing.

Paul Beckermann  29:11  

All right. In this segment, we’re going to leave our listeners with one thing that’s still under mind, like a final takeaway. Winston, you ended the last segment, so I’ll let you start this one so nobody can take your idea.

Winston Benjamin  29:43  

Trust the process, right. If you’re a new teacher trying to do this, like Joe, he didn’t know everything about podcasting, and he just tried, so trust the process. You’ll figure it out.

Paul Beckermann  29:56  

Awesome. Rena?

Rena Clark  29:58  

It’s work. So, I appreciate everything we’re doing, but really instilling in our students an understanding around the energy, the effort, and it’s fun, too, but that it takes, as we say, do artwork. It’s called artwork for a reason. And it can be amazing and fun. But it does take some of those 21st century skills that we’re trying to build. So if we can make a clear connection to those skills for students, and now we’re pulling in, as you said, with their funds of knowledge and purpose, and they’re excited about it, then that’s going to just help grow them, I believe, as an individual and help them when they move on to that next step into the workforce.

Paul Beckermann  30:41  

For sure. And my one thing is actually, two things. Are you surprised? Two things that I remember I used to say when I was planning my lessons, like two guiding principles. One, make it real. And podcasting makes it real. And two, kids can do amazing things if we let them. And we need to let them do amazing things. All right, Joe, what are your final thoughts here for today?

Joe Bento  31:10  

Well, I was gonna say kids can do amazing things…

Rena Clark  31:13  

Oh no! You can take it!

Joe Bento  31:22  

Another thing I would say is for educators, I think we just need to give ourselves grace sometimes. We think we have to be perfect at everything. And I always tell the students I’m not. And so by being vulnerable and trying something new and giving yourself grace for not being perfect, I think is great. I think it’s great advice. So that would be my final thing.

Rena Clark  31:42  

Well, Joe, we’re so thankful we were able to talk with you today that you were able to be vulnerable with us and tell us your story and what you’re doing in the secondary space with students and podcasting. And I think our listeners are going to walk away with some great tips and some next steps, and maybe we’ll have to check back in with you in another year. Or maybe we can grab some of the older students that are over 18, get them to maybe talk with us about the experience at some point.

Joe Bento  32:09  

I’m sure we could get it to happen. Yes.

Paul Beckermann  32:13  

You know, we should have a nickname for Joe. Joe Podcast. Don’t you think? Joe Podcast?

Joe Bento  32:21  

I’ll put it in my notes.

Paul Beckermann  32:24  

We’ll make some T-shirts.

Rena Clark  32:27  

All right. Well, thanks so much, Joe. We’ll hopefully talk to you soon.

Joe Bento  32:30  

Thank you so much.

Rena Clark  32:35  

Thanks for listening to Unpacking Education.

Winston Benjamin  32:38  

We invite you to visit us at AvidOpenAccess.org, where you can discover resources to support student agency, equity, and academic tenacity to create a classroom for future-ready learners.

Paul Beckermann  32:53  

We’ll be back here next Wednesday for a fresh episode of Unpacking Education.

Rena Clark  32:57  

And remember, go forth and be awesome.

Winston Benjamin  33:00  

Thank you for all you do.

Paul Beckermann  33:02  

You make a difference.