Georgianna McKenny, 17, is the highschool grand-prize winner in NPR’s fifth-annual Student Podcast Challenge.

Imani Khayyam for NPR

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Imani Khayyam for NPR

Georgianna McKenny, 17, is the highschool grand-prize winner in NPR’s fifth-annual Student Podcast Challenge.

Imani Khayyam for NPR

Georgianna McKenny’s award-winning podcast begins, fittingly, with a blaring alarm.

It’s an alarm clock, waking her 17-year-old cousin, Mariah, as she navigates a morning, again in January, when dwelling in Jackson, Miss., meant waking up without access to clean water.

No showers, no drinkable water out of the faucet, and, for a number of days, no college.

McKenny is the newly-announced high-school winner of NPR’s fifth-annual Student Podcast Challenge. In a 12 months with greater than 3,300 entries – from middle- and high-schoolers in 48 states in addition to Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico – McKenny and her successful entry inform the story of the toll Jackson’s water disaster has taken on the town’s college students.

“I don’t listen to podcasts”

Georgianna McKenny attends college two and a half hours northeast of Jackson, in Columbus – on the Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science, a prestigious, public boarding college for academically proficient high-schoolers from everywhere in the state.

In the college’s sun-filled foyer, summer-school college students decrease a hand-crafted rope over a balcony. Others watch or conduct experiments of their very own across the staircase. Mounted on one classroom door are posters in Russian, certainly one of no less than 5 languages college students right here can be taught.

The college is one thing of a marvel, as is Georgianna.

A rising senior, she is soft-spoken, with glasses and hair in braids that cling to the corners of her broad smile. We meet her within the foyer, amidst the chaos, alongside together with her English instructor, Thomas Easterling, who assigned the podcast as a part of his composition class.

Georgianna poses together with her English instructor, Thomas Easterling, who assigned the podcast contest as a part of his composition class.

Imani Khayyam for NPR

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Imani Khayyam for NPR

Georgianna poses together with her English instructor, Thomas Easterling, who assigned the podcast contest as a part of his composition class.

Imani Khayyam for NPR

“The idea was, they need to know their hometowns better,” Easterling says of the project in his University Composition class. “Since I have students from all over Mississippi, they did research on the parts of their hometown that gave them a sense of place.”

Georgianna grew up south of Jackson and struggled, at first, to decide on a topic. Then she talked about the water disaster, which has troubled Jackson for years, whereas texting with a pal from out of state.

“She lives in Georgia,” Georgianna remembers. “I texted her, and she was like, ‘What is that?’ Like, she didn’t know about it. I was like, really shocked.”

We stroll to Easterling’s classroom, the place Georgianna heads to her common desk, within the again nook, and begins explaining how she went about making her podcast.

“I kind of had a vision in my head. I spend a lot of time in my head, actually, so it wasn’t that hard,” she says, smiling.

That’s Georgianna – disarmingly sincere. While most of Easterling’s college students labored in pairs – one writing, one producing – Georgianna did each, alone. Though she admits: She did not truly know methods to make a podcast.

“I don’t listen to podcasts,” she says, “they’re, like, really boring.”

But as soon as she settled on the Jackson water disaster, and particularly, on her cousin Mariah’s expertise of it, Georgianna had one thing simply as highly effective as expertise.

She had function.

“No water comes from the faucet”

NPR judges beloved Georgianna’s entry as a result of she took on a significant story in her neighborhood, performed in-depth interviews – and made glorious use of sound.

After being woke up by that blaring alarm clock, “Mariah starts her day by going to the bathroom, to check if her water pressure is working before getting ready for school,” Georgianna narrates in the beginning of her podcast. “No water comes from the faucet.”

When Mariah seems to be for a bottle of water, she finds none. Welcome to Jackson in January, 2023.

Georgianna’s podcast is about a number of robust days in January, when low water strain throughout the town hit households and faculties onerous.

Georgianna McKenny wins the highschool award in NPR’s fifth-annual Student Podcast Challenge.

Imani Khayyam for NPR

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Imani Khayyam for NPR

For two days early within the month, all Jackson Public Schools went digital as a result of little to no water strain in faculties made it tough to organize meals and flush bathrooms, Georgianna experiences. Even after college students returned for in-person studying, low water strain remained a problem.

“Something so simple as using the bathroom has become difficult,” Georgianna narrates, below the sound of a flushing bathroom.

“They ended up shutting down some of the bathrooms” as a result of the bathrooms may now not be flushed, says Mariah, Georgianna’s cousin, who remembers one significantly uncomfortable day.

“Class was not my main focus,” Mariah says. “I couldn’t do anything else besides hold it.”

Georgianna additionally interviewed an administrator with Jackson Public Schools, who agreed to debate the disaster so long as Georgianna promised to not use her identify.

Because water strain continued to fluctuate from college to highschool, as a substitute of returning to digital studying, the district generally despatched college students from one college to a different.

“There were times when some other high schools relocated a grade level to our campus, which also made for extra adjustment to the classrooms,” the administrator says within the podcast. “Teachers weren’t able to be in the classrooms they’re usually assigned to. Students weren’t reporting to the area where they were assigned. So it just made for a very unpredictable circumstance.”

Mariah tells NPR, in a follow-up interview in downtown Jackson, that her college was a kind of that ended up internet hosting much more college students. “Sometimes the classroom would be packed. And just imagine the lunchroom, because our lunchroom is really not that big.”

The college administrator informed Georgianna, the water issues even affected what college students got to eat. If there was sufficient water strain, the cafeteria may put together full, sizzling meals. If not: sack lunches.

Mariah, Georgianna’s cousin, was not a fan. “Imagine getting turkey and ham-and-cheese sandwiches for seven days straight. It felt like we were in prison.”

The excellent news is, this was again in January. Jackson Public Schools tells NPR, excluding a number of boil-water notices and one highschool having to return to digital studying once more in February, the district’s faculties operated largely as common for the remainder of the college 12 months.

As for Georgianna, she admits one of many hardest issues about creating her podcast wasn’t the reporting itself; it was listening to the sound of her personal voice.

The day Easterling performed her project for the category, Georgianna remembers, “I requested, ‘Can I please leave the classroom when you play it?’ Because I couldn’t stand it.”

Easterling agreed, so long as she agreed to come back again for her classmates’ critique.

Now, in successful NPR’s Student Podcast Challenge, Georgianna McKenny is getting precisely what she wished: A platform to sound the alarm on behalf of the youngsters of Jackson.

To hearken to Georgianna’s podcast, click on here.

Visual design and improvement by: LA Johnson
Audio story produced by: Lauren Migaki & Janet Woojeong Lee
Audio and digital story edited by: Steve Drummond