Raising boys’ aspirations using podcasts

An article that appeared on the Specialist School and Academies Trust website

What is the project?
The project involved three groups of disaffected boys who have had difficulties in school. It centred on two fictional characters, whose story was intended to inspire them to discuss issues that affect them in school and then to create a story, which was recorded as a podcast. The idea was that the story the boys created as a drama reflected experiences they were having in real life.

One group was in year 10 and the other two were in year 9. Ten boys were involved in the project at one time. The project was for two full days and the students were taken off timetable.

Key objectives
The project sought to help students realise that their actions inside and outside school can have serious consequences. It aimed to instill in participants a sense of responsibility for their own lives and their destiny, and to help them develop an understanding on how they can express themselves through different media.

Actions taken
I met the drama company leading the project to discuss what the project’s intended outcomes would be. We agreed the boys may respond more positively if there were an end product they could work towards.

The students were chosen at school and asked if they would like to take part in the project. All the boys wanted to be involved. They were told that they would be given two characters who were the same age, went to the same school and had similar family life and intelligence levels. Importantly, the characters had the same group of friends. The boys were shown these characters aged 27 - one was very successful and the other was not.

The boys were split into two groups and asked to develop the story. What happened to the characters at key points in their lives - at the age of 16, 18, 21 and 25?

At the age of 27, the students had to agree a life-changing decision for each character. The group then discussed how they could tell the story through a podcast. The boys decided the podcast would centre on a reunion and asked members of staff to be ex-teachers. The boys took it in turn to play the two characters.

The students then split into groups and wrote a script for their story. They approached members of staff to arrange times for interviews and devised a schedule for the second day. The boys were taught how to use the recording equipment.

By the end of the second day, the boys had worked really hard to finish the podcast. Through discussions at the end of the project, they felt that they had learnt the following:
- ‘I have learnt about how people can turn out different with the choice they make’
- ‘I can choose the way I turn out’
- ‘How you can have chances in life if you make the right decisions’

Evidence of success
The students completed an evaluation form and made the following comments:
- ‘In the past my behaviour was appalling but since doing the project I have started to behave more’
- ‘Thank you for putting me on this. I really enjoyed it’
- ‘It was a lot of fun and I would like to do another one’

The podcasts were posted on the school’s website. As news of this spread around the school, numerous boys approached me to ask if they could be involved in the next project.

What did and didn’t work
Working for two full days on the project meant that the students were fully focused on the task at hand.

Because the project happened in school time, the group had to move rooms, which created disruption between lessons. I would like to run the project off the school site (and in the same place) for the two days.

The future
I will be organising more projects for boys next year and I will look at using media to inspire and motivate them. The most successful projects have been the ones in which there is an end product that the students can work towards and which they can also show to their parents and friends outside school.

Hillcrest School and Community College is an 11-16 comprehensive in Netherton, Dudley. It gained arts specialist status in 2005.