Capturing the sounds--and spirit--of PDS through podcasting

by Peter Vinogradov '91 (shown above with fellow student pioneer podcasters)

Last February, we celebrated Martin Luther King Day in our traditional fashion, with an all-school assembly. Having been organized and emceed by a student (Matt Buccelli '06), this particular event was one of the best in my memory, comprising a wonderful mix of readings, presentations and songs, from a spirited pre-k performance of This Little Light of Mine, to an "old time" rendition of Ed McCurdy's Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream.

As usual, a number of us were there, clicking away on digital cameras, hoping to capture the moment, but mostly trying not to wash out the faces with too much flash. It's always a challenge to convey these kinds of events with images alone, and so this time, in addition to a yearbook camera, I also duct-taped a small audio recorder to a tripod and left it running at the foot of the stage. Three days later, that recording would be featured in the pilot episode of the PDS Podcast.

Of course, radio shows in schools are nothing new. Journalism curricula everywhere have been broadcasting TV and radio for years, giving students the opportunity to learn important technical skills, to get the story, and to deliver team scores or school business with all the hard-nosed professionalism of real reporters. And yet, this type of program has never seemed to fit our style (to say nothing of our budget). We're small, and close, and our news of the day travels swiftly through the medium of morning meetings, playground banter and the cacophony of the morning break time. Yet as white earbuds started to become as common as ears themselves, this notion of a podcast - something simple, spontaneous, and quick - began to emerge in a number of minds throughout the school as something that might be PDS-ish enough to work.

A few curious seniors took to the project right away; two of them, Luke Burns '06 and Ian Crovisier '06, were even brave enough to host our first season, huddled around the same media recorder I'd used for the MLK celebration. We recorded and released our pilot episode in a single Friday afternoon, and confident that no one would hear it, we set about planning and recording another one. We soon became comfortable with the idea of putting a running recorder out at various gatherings and events, and the number of things that we wanted to get on tape started to multiply rapidly.

Among the performances recorded in the first PDS podcast were those of the pre-k (left) and seniors in the old-time music elective, seen here with English teacher MikeFoley. Click here to visit the PDS Podcast page and then scroll down under "Radioland" and click on Episode I.

Before long, we had our first alumnus interview, with Jason Berry '93, via Skype chat to Dublin, followed by the good fortune of another interview with alumnus Tom Bull '40. And though both interviews were conducted through a laptop, amidst a tangled kludge of headphones and microphones that had been cobbled together with little know-how and even less common sense, the experience was riveting. These alumni shared experiences from their lives, and the technology and distance seemed to fall away; we found ourselves just sitting, comfortably, talking to voices from the past about a PDS experience that was so familiar, so simple and so wonderful.

As the year progressed, recorded moments like these started piling up, and since we were still pretty certain that no one was listening, we had a great deal of fun with them. We talked Peter Basch '06 into recording his internship interview at Men's Vogue in New York (as if the interview wasn't stressful enough), we crank-called a group of seniors who were interning in Paris (in French, of course), and we packed in dozens of clips from lower school morning meetings, talent shows, music festivals, plays, graduations and assemblies. Soon, we were on short list of items that would come up on an iTunes search for "Poughkeepsie."

By the end of the year, our sound quality improved, and our server logs showed a surprising number of downloads. When the show went on break in April, students would stop and ask when it was going to start up again, whether a particular event would be covered, or whether there would there be more interviews with alums. One of our seniors even reported sharing a bit of the podcast with a friend from another school, and said it made her jealous.

This year, ninth graders have taken the lead as PDS podcasters. Two are shown with PDS advisor and upper school English teacher, Mark Burns, as well their attentive student audience.

So now we have over a dozen episodes behind us, along with several episodes of an independent middle school podcast that also began last year. Our Web page has grown, and now accommodates the flurry of songs and performances that we just couldn't fit into the regular show. We have an enthusiastic group of students ready to start on the new season and our hard drives are already spinning warmly with a great deal of content recorded during the fall semester.

On our Web page, we refer to the podcast as "an experiment in capturing the PDS experience through sound," but as I listen to these early episodes, I realize that something more important is taking place. Whether in my kitchen on a Friday night as I prepare dinner, or in the car with my kindergartener on the way to a birthday party, as I listen to just a few minutes of a lower school community sing, a snippet of a graduation speech, or the Old Time band singing Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream, I'm reminded of where it is I work, and how lucky I am to hear this sound all the time. It is the sound of an endless celebration that has echoed through seven decades, from an old schoolhouse where kids like Tom Bull played music and studied, around the famous Big Room with its Thanksgiving dinners, winter festivals and musicals, and now up the stairways of Kenyon, through the Chapman Room, and into the cozy classroom lofts of Gilkeson.

Editor's Note: Peter Vinogradov '91, a graduate of Cornell University, has taught at PDS for over a decade. He is chair of the languages department and also assists technology director David Held. Peter is currently on sabbatical, and is looking forward to hearing the first podcast of the new year. Any alumni/e wanting to share their reflections about PDS on our podcast are most welcome. Click here for episodes and information about the PDS Podcast. You can also contact Peter directly. Enjoy!

Editor's note: The first podcast of the new school year is up (it's titled podcast 12). It includes clips from the year's very first all-school activity, coverage of picture day; the long anticipated interview with Sophie and Daniella in Ellen's 3-4 regarding their class launching of the recycling program; an excerpt from the Halloween all-school activity.

If you have iTunes, you can subscribe to the podcast and get it automatically downloaded. Go to www.poughkeepsieday.org/podcast and click on the icon in the upper right of the page.

If you don't have iTunes you can download it for free, then follow directions above.

Posted 11/06

Read about Monica Liang '87, school founder and activist.

To read about dancer and choreographer Kara Tatelbaum '96. 

To read about TV news anchor Mike Milhaven '90.

To read about Lee Miringoff '66, national political pollster.