The Sunday Story: The kids have something to say

a chance to step in front of the microphone themselves, to tell their own stories in whatever

way they want.

Podcast Challenge.

Middle schoolers and high schoolers from around the country take part, and their stories can

teach us a lot about what it's like to be a kid today.

It started when the Taliban came back to power in August 2021, and we had to leave our schools

in the middle of the final exams.

Today I'm joined by NPR's Janet Ujung Lee.

She heads up the contest with help from producer Lauren Magaki.

They combed through all the entries and are here to share the highlights.

Welcome to you both.

Hello, hello.

tell us about what's going on in the lives of young people?

identity.

The kids are figuring out who they are on mic, whether it's the struggles of being

a student or an immigrant or a little sister, talking about body image, gun violence, and

we heard from students from 48 states and Puerto Rico.

So how do you sift through all of that?

It feels like that'd be tough.

I personally listened to more than like 880 of them.

But when we were still deep in the judging process, there is one podcast that jumped

out at me.

And this one in particular stood out because it starts with a student describing my dad's

favorite food.

cheese and chopped scallions.

Budae jjigae is a popular South Korean dish created in the 50s in the midst of the war.

She's a high school junior at Mercer Island High School in Seattle.

Sometimes students enter our contest because they have to make a podcast for class.

But Grace really just made this for herself and you can really hear it.

And she does a beautiful job of introducing herself with her favorite food, which then

leads into conversations on bigger topics like body image and mental health.

Food is their love language.

But paradoxically, another aspect of our culture contradicts this idea and prevents many Asian

Americans from having a healthy relationship with food.

Stop eating.

Eat less.

Grace, I think you're getting fatter.

Like this is, you know, these are some deep concepts between our relationships to food

and the unhealthiness and all of that.

That's that's a lot.

And every time I listen to it, I'm like, could I even say something like that now about how

I feel on my body?

I'm like, probably not.

Yeah.

And probably not on mic.

So as I'm listening to these entries, I especially this podcast from Grace shared with a couple

of my friends saying, like, can you also imagine this doing this as a high schooler?

And Grace touches on this sort of universal sentiment in her podcast.

a dish that I can enjoy.

As I share my story, my hope is that more resources will be provided to my community

and mental health will become less stigmatized so that one day others who have experienced

a similar journey to mine will be able to enjoy their discomfort and find comfort.

health.

And when I say this, we have range.

Like one student interviewed their father, who was Mormon.

There's an entry from Missouri that we found really powerful with multiple interviews with

trans high schoolers.

And to be clear, when we say podcasts on identity, we aren't just talking about these serious,

heavier conversations on race, gender or intergenerational trauma.

There's really more than that.

about identity.

I think here's a little clip.

And I am always the last chosen for basketball.

go.

She submitted the story about wishing to be taller after being cast as an elf in the school

play.

I know.

I just fell in love with Amelia.

I was always going to love this one as a short person.

But I should also point out, this is a fictional story, or if you will, a tall tale.

I see what you did.

gives her some witchy things to do that will help her grow.

It includes eating raw garlic at midnight and doing a bunch of toe touches on the playground

at recess.

I actually called her up and asked her if she'd done any acting, and she says that she

was cast as a marshmallow in the school play once.

Although I should note, she's never been cast as the elf.

I also spoke to her teacher, Rodney West Estelle.

He says that Amelia really is the smallest in her class, but that her story was actually

the result of something called a story starter, and the prompt that she had was, imagine you're

the shortest person in class.

After that, Amelia let her imagination fill in the rest.

I'm going to give you a little spoiler alert here.

This is where the story takes us.

I cannot believe my eyes.

She says that the key to her creative success was talking to other people.

She said she talked to her friends, her mom, and her teacher for this story, and they all

gave her different suggestions.

I think the clothes suggestion was from her mom.

I think what I love about this is we think of school as this really academic place.

We're learning math.

We're learning multiplication tables.

This assignment is so important because there's this value in collaboration and in teamwork,

in creativity and play.

It's something that we grown-ups would do well to remember, I think.

In these sorts of writing exercises, it lets kids explore their own identity and also put

themselves into the big or small shoes of others.

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We're back with a Sunday Story.

We're talking about NPR's Student Podcast Challenge with Janet Woo-Jung Lee and producer

Lauren Magaki.

So Janet, I understand one of your finalists did a podcast all about embarrassment.

We receive a good amount of entries each year that are just silly, fun, that make us smile.

And those are honestly some of her favorite entries.

And one fifth grader from Chicago talks about an experience that's still so relatable to

many of us.

What made this so embarrassing?

Why do I still think about this today?

Do other people feel this way too?

and you're thinking about it long after it happened.

So Janet, what is going on here?

Maisie has a favorite stick.

Yes, a stick.

Its name is Flint.

And as one does in middle school, her friend snatches Flint and smashes it in front of

Maisie's eyes.

Here's what happened next.

I was stunned, shocked, flabbergasted.

He tried to calm me down and figure out what was going on.

Instead of listening, I stormed out the room as he was talking to me, only to find that

my dad had witnessed the whole thing.

See that?

See when emotions are running high and it's like if you had time to like take a breath,

you might have reacted differently, but in the moment, it's rough.

And to make things worse, the next day, Maisie's dad made her apologize to her counselor in

front of everyone.

In this mixed bag of feelings, embarrassment, confusion, frustration, we've all been there.

But Maisie doesn't stop here.

She goes on to interview other friends and her teacher about their own embarrassing experiences

to learn what she could have done differently in this situation.

And I was like, oh, please stop.

Please don't do this right now.

Well, yeah.

Now looking back, that just meant that he loves me.

He, you know, he was just blessing me and telling me, have a great day.

Ms. Garcia's story shows that with time and looking at a different perspective, you can

learn how to move on from an embarrassing situation like that.

But everyone gets embarrassed.

I think that helped me too as I got older.

If you acknowledge the embarrassment, then it's better.

As someone who was very socially awkward as a child, and it's still pretty socially awkward now.

So we've heard students talking about their experiences as immigrants, grappling with

body image, with embarrassment.

Can you talk about some of the other experiences these middle school and high school students

are dealing with?

with family and specifically her older sister.

people closest to me.

But above all, I reflect my sister's hardships and learned from her perseverance.

little.

And one person in her life that she really looked up to was her older sister.

You know, family is a really personal topic.

And when it comes to sibling relationships in an immigrant family, it's like your older

siblings figuring out school, language differences, cultural differences, any new racial dynamics

all before you do, right?

And Jia's podcast focuses on one day and one experience that changes their relationship

in a way that brings them closer together.

We pick up the story after Jia's sister has what was supposed to be a big night, her first

prom with her first boyfriend.

And just a heads up for listeners, Jia's story deals with the aftermath of sexual assault.

And when I went out to greet her, I was shocked to see her crying on the floor of her room.

I kept asking what was wrong to no response but sobbing.

I sat down next to her and hugged her until she finally told me the earth shattering news

that he had sexually assaulted her.

I have a hard time writing that word out and saying it out loud even now.

So imagine the horror and anger I felt when that word was turned into reality for my own

sister.

All I could do was hold her hand in the rare moment of weakness and vulnerability she was

showing me.

And for the moment, I was proud to be the representative of her support system.

As the night went on, she started to confide in me about how she had closeted herself away

from me and our parents when we first moved because she had been ashamed of her lack of

adapting to America.

Prom night was the angriest and happiest I'd ever been, both due to my sister.

podcast for ended up in tears at the end.

It's so powerful and not just because there's there's like a tragedy in it, but you know,

sometimes we're all experiencing things that like we're hiding whole worlds from our family

that other people don't know about.

And I just as a big sister, this this hurt me and like I just my heart went out to both

Gia and her sister.

kids will tell you exactly what they're thinking and process things out loud on the mic.

And this one really felt like we were invited to follow Gia's personal experience of sort

of what she was reflecting on and learn from making this and in terms of her and her sister,

all of that.

emotions from like the funny to the very serious to the heartwarming.

You know, the past few things that we've been hearing have been like really strong

personal narratives.

But we also heard like that students explored the history and like current events in their

own communities.

Like, tell me about that.

We had a lot of student journalists take on some really big topics.

The winner of our high school contest reported on how Jackson, Mississippi's water crisis

affected students.

Everything from like what lunch was being served that day to like the wait for the bathroom.

In North Carolina, Leah Chowdhury also explored her own backyard in a different way.

She explored a place that she lives just two blocks from, but didn't know anything about.

freedman's colony in North Carolina.

This is a story about the rise of remarkable community of freed Black people.

It's about their fall because of annexation, gentrification, and racist state laws.

And now it's about the rise again, about a community that's rediscovered the old history,

rejected it, and reaffirmed the rise of it again and again.

from former and current residents of Oberlin Village.

She talks to historians.

It's fascinating.

And the thing I really love in these sort of depressing times is that she ends the story

on a hopeful note and focuses really on the story of the community's resilience.

So community and identity seem to be like the big topics this year.

We got another entry from Chicago where students focused on immigration.

And it's actually a series of podcasts.

It's done by three middle schoolers from the south side of Chicago.

Their names are Carlos Morales, Gabriel Mendez, and Anyan Andrade.

They're all from Mexican immigrant families.

And they said they decided to interview students who are undocumented.

So here's a clip from their podcast where they're talking to a high schooler named Edwin.

And he's reflecting on his first impressions of Chicago.

And I've never seen snow in my life.

When I first got here, I couldn't really go outside.

My parents would just not let me.

And over there in Mexico, we were outside all the time.

That was my fun time.

It was outside.

how hard school was during the pandemic due to lack of resources,

and lack of financial aid for college, and lack of financial and work opportunities.

And the students really address this with a lot of empathy.

And they're really respectful of his story.

And I guess the thing that I think about is we hear about these issues in the news a lot.

But it really has a different meaning when we hear a student talking to their peers about it

and really putting a voice to folks who don't often get to be on the microphone.

And I think I'm going to ask you, maybe as the DJs here,

sort of to just play us one more thing to just bring us on out of here.

This last podcast is one of many we've gotten this year from trans youths.

It's a topic that's been in the news a lot lately.

And the story is very especially due to the different state laws restricting

gender-affirming care where the students are coming from.

I wanted to end with a podcast that's a great example of young people

taking a stand for what they believe in, something we see repeatedly in this year's entries.

Dylan McDonald is a student at Marblehead High School in Massachusetts,

a state that does provide resources for trans minors.

He shares a personal story of a lengthy and at times tough journey that is transitioning.

As someone who's gone through it himself,

he said there are lots of misconceptions around the transition process for minors.

Free testosterone, walk-in breast augmentation, and estrogen for two-year-olds.

Well, in reality, it's way more complicated and difficult than that.

who he introduces as someone who was right by his side through this entire process.

It's a really open and honest chat that covers every step of Dylan's experience,

with him and his mom reaching out to clinics,

getting on the seven to eighth month long wait list, all to get his first appointment.

And at the end of his podcast, Dylan shifts gears.

He insists on action and protection for transgender youth.

And yet, even here, it's taken me a lot of time and effort to get to this point.

Kids like me are why we need to fight these anti-trans bills.

Nobody should be stripped of their health care and bodily autonomy.

as well as this year's winning entries, visit npr.org forward slash student podcast challenge

2023.

Thanks again to the team behind NPR's student podcast challenge,

Janet Woo-Jung Lee, Lauren Magaki, and Steve Drummond.

This episode of the Sunday Story was produced by Justine Yan and Henry Hottie.

It was edited by Jenny Schmidt.

James Willits was our engineer.

The Sunday Story team includes Andrew Mambo and Emily Silver.

Our supervising producer is Liana Simstrom, and our executive producer is Irene Noguchi.

We'd love to hear from you, so please send us an email at thesundaysstory at npr.org.

I'm Aisha Roscoe.

First, we'll be back tomorrow with all the news you need to start your week.

Until then, have a great rest of your weekend.