Jennifer Song is Named as a Finalist in NPR’s Student Podcast Contest
NPR’s annual call for entries to its student podcast contest garnered over 2,600 entries from 47 states and the District of Columbia. After listening to each entry, 15 high school and 12 middle school finalists were announced on May 9th. Eight grader, Jennifer Song’s entry entitled, “The Perfect Girl” earned a place among the middle school finalists. Her eight-minute piece describes the evolving and inconsistent standards of what society labels “beautiful” or “perfect” and how that affects girls’ perceptions of themselves. She interviewed local friends as well as some from China on their ideas of feminine perfection and elicits a wide range of fascinating opinions.
With so many issues she would have liked to address, Jennifer had a hard time narrowing down her topic ideas. “There were so many things that I wanted to bring to peoples’ attention,” she said, “but I felt like the final topic I chose was the most important. As a girl living in today’s day and age, especially as a teenager, we are easily influenced by social media and society’s expectations to change ourselves. Whenever we go on social media, we can see people praising girls that fit into their expectations of a ‘perfect girl,’ but then we also see the same people saying mean things to other girls that don’t. It’s because of these comments, we as girls feel like we need to change to be accepted into what society categorizes as a ‘perfect girl.’ What we all need to understand is that there is no ‘perfect girl’ out there. You can’t just accept and praise one group of girls that fit in your category of perfection then completely strip another girl’s confidence by saying ‘you’re too fat’ or ‘you’re so ugly.’ This needs to be understood and I hope my podcast can bring awareness and attention to the subject to people all around the world.”
Dr. Maysan Haydar, Birchwood’s Remote Language Arts teacher, described Jennifer’s work saying, “The NPR Podcast Challenge was an excellent opportunity for students to practice their storytelling with new tools and strict rules. Because we as teachers weren’t allowed to help them directly, it was also a good opportunity for us to practice our coaching and encouraging independent work. Jennifer’s podcast was the excellent final product of weeks of honing her idea, conducting interviews, learning how to organize the pieces of her work, and using audio recording and editing tools to put it all together. Her national ranking is a well-deserved honor.”
You can listen to Jennifer’s podcast here: https://bit.ly/2REmf3c
NPR will announce their national winner in the coming weeks, and we wish our local finalist the best of luck
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Early Childhood, Lower, and Middle Schools, 5000 Clubside Rd, Lyndhurst, OH 44124
Birchwood School of Hawken, 4400 West 140th Street, Cleveland, OH 44135
Upper School, PO Box 8002 (12465 County Line Rd), Gates Mills, OH 44040
Mastery School of Hawken, 11025 Magnolia Dr, Cleveland, OH 44106
Gries Center, 10823 Magnolia Dr, Cleveland, OH 44106
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