Maya E. ’26 Named Top Ten Finalist in NPR's Student Podcast Challenge

Exciting news! National Public Radio announced the finalists for its Student Podcast Challenge, of which senior Maya E. was among the ten high school students chosen. Out of nearly 2,000 podcast submissions, Maya's piece about her family's identity, "It Took A War To Make Us Ukrainian" -featuring interviews with her mother, grandmother, and Friends Upper School Russian teacher Lee Roby- has been named one of the best high school podcasts in the country according to NPR.

Following NPR’s finalist selection, Maya was invited to appear on WYPR’s Midday to discuss her podcast further. Maya was joined by Mary Wiltenburg, Upper School English, Journalism, and Podcast teacher, who was a previous producer at WYPR. Listen to Maya’s interview here.

For students like Maya who are interested in podcasting, Friends offers the course Writing for Podcasts and Radio for Upper School students. Students learn to tell stories with sound, practice recording and interviewing, write and revise scripts, edit and mix sound, think critically about the media they consume, and contextualize all of that in the history of radio. Students listen to podcasts and create a new work each week, building to a self-designed final project of one's choosing.

 Congratulations, Maya!