![]() Even after students returned for in-person learning, low water pressure remained a challenge. Georgianna McKenny wins the high school award in NPR's fifth-annual Student Podcast Challenge.įor two days early in the month, all Jackson Public Schools went virtual because little to no water pressure in schools made it difficult to prepare meals and flush toilets, Georgianna reports. Georgianna's podcast is about a few tough days in January, when low water pressure across the city hit families and schools hard. ![]() When Mariah looks for a bottle of water, she finds none. NPR judges loved Georgianna's entry because she took on a major story in her community, conducted in-depth interviews – and made excellent use of sound.Īfter being awakened by that blaring alarm clock, "Mariah starts her day by going to the bathroom, to check if her water pressure is working before getting ready for school," Georgianna narrates at the beginning of her podcast. "I don't listen to podcasts," she says, "they're, like, really boring."īut once she settled on the Jackson water crisis, and specifically, on her cousin Mariah's experience of it, Georgianna had something just as powerful as experience. Though she admits: She didn't actually know how to make a podcast. While most of Easterling's students worked in pairs – one writing, one producing – Georgianna did both, alone. I spend a lot of time in my head, actually, so it wasn't that hard," she says, smiling. We walk to Easterling's classroom, where Georgianna heads to her usual desk, in the back corner, and begins explaining how she went about making her podcast. "I texted her, and she was like, 'What is that?' Like, she didn't know about it. "She lives in Georgia," Georgianna remembers. Then she mentioned the water crisis, which has troubled Jackson for years, while texting with a friend from out of state. Georgianna grew up south of Jackson and struggled, at first, to settle on a subject. "Since I have students from all over Mississippi, they did research on the parts of their hometown that gave them a sense of place. "The idea was, they need to know their hometowns better," Easterling says of the assignment in his University Composition class. Georgianna poses with her English teacher, Thomas Easterling, who assigned the podcast contest as part of his composition class. The school is something of a wonder, as is Georgianna. Mounted on one classroom door are posters in Russian, one of at least five languages students here can learn. Others watch or conduct experiments of their own around the staircase. In the school's sun-filled lobby, summer-school students lower a handmade rope over a balcony. ![]() ![]() Georgianna McKenny attends school two and a half hours northeast of Jackson, in Columbus – at the Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science, a prestigious, public boarding school for academically talented high-schoolers from all over the state. In a year with more than 3,300 entries – from middle- and high-schoolers in 48 states as well as Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico – McKenny and her winning entry tell the story of the toll Jackson's water crisis has taken on the city's students. McKenny is the newly-announced high-school winner of NPR's fifth-annual Student Podcast Challenge. No showers, no drinkable water out of the tap, and, for a few days, no school.
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