Listening in on Finals at OA

Golf. It’s one of America’s favorite pastimes. [...] With golf comes golf courses, and with these courses come serious environmental issues. Things like land and water use, as well as fertilizer runoff, are, and will continue to be, detrimental to the natural environments around them. How do we, as a society, tread the line between the safety of our environment and continuance of activities that are important to us? Can we find the balance? Do we have to abandon these activities? Do we have to abandon the environment in favor of our leisure? Lace up everyone, it’s tee time with me, Ward.”

-Semester 55

The thought of finals week might make most students shudder in anticipation of late-night cram sessions and hours of testing. At OA, rather than studying and sitting for exams (ok, there is usually a math test), our students are spread over campus furiously re-writing their outlines, interviewing each other, their teachers, and their families, creating their own music, and editing their recordings.

Why the flurry of activity? It must be podcast time.

-Semester 54

Welcome to synced, by Scholars Enterprises. I’m Doc – and I’m Elia – and today we’ll be talking about the human connection to nature. Our essential question is: why do people care about the environment? We’ll be talking about this through three lenses: the environmental justice movement, people of color and displacement, and American pride and nationalism.” On this episode, we will be tackling the subject of how the fash- ion industry and industrialization shape today’s society. We are your hosts, Cass and Kathryn, and this is Our Lens. For background, the $2.5 trillion fashion industry heavily affects our carbon footprint and is responsible for about 10% of greenhouse gas emissions. Fashion is on track to become about a quarter of the global carbon footprint. Woah, that’s crazy.”

-Semester 53

The podcast project was first created in Fall 2021 as an interdisciplinary final project to complement the new Bridge curriculum (see Fall, 2021 Eagle online for more on Bridge). In it, students have the chance to create 15-minute podcasts addressing a question – any question – that relates to themes covered in their English, Environmental Science, and History classes.

“It’s the culmination of a philosophy that puts students in charge of their own learning,” US History teacher and former Resident Griffin Pollock explains. “Students have a question about the world,” adds Elyse Terrill, OA’s Spanish teacher, “and they don’t answer it but instead open the door to continue learning.”

While such technology-based work might seem antithetical to OA’s tradition of being screen-free, podcasts are actually perfectly suited to capture the art of discussion and depth of conversation that students cultivate through all their classes at OA. Soon-to-be hosts craft their essential questions and the full outlines of their episodes based only on their class notes and personal musings. A “smart recorder” runs in the background as Cass and Kathryn convene a discussion circle to talk about thrifting or Ward calls his grandpa to ask how he reconciles the environmental impact of the game they both love. They use Alitu, a minimalist podcast editing software, to crop and order their voice tracks and select the perfect transition music.

While it might not hang on the wall like a coat rack or a quilt, each podcast is just as much a proud testament to the long process of learning and creating that marks how we do everything at The Outdoor Academy.