The skittering scratch of chalk on a century old chalk board, the shuffling, squeaky din of shoes on terrazzo floors, and the piercing ring of a bell . these are the sounds of life in historic schools. Like photographs, sounds connect the present to the past. These evocative noises and traditional oral histories have been collected as a part of an innovative series of audio media projects supported by Seattle's Jack Straw Foundation .

Jack Straw: Peasant Liberator, Lawyer Killer

The Jack Straw Foundation, created in 1962, is a groundbreaking nonprofit organization conceived to start one of the first non-commercial radio stations, KRAB-FM. The station provided a forum for arts, science and political programs that were not, at the time, popular fare on the air. Liberating radio from the monotony of popular music and conventional newscasts, Jack Straw spawned similar stations in Portland, Lynnwood and Granger, Washington.

Jack Straw provides studio time, training, grant-locating assistance, and occasionally acts as an agent for community groups and individuals who use sound as a part of their work. Oral history provides the basis for a number of projects and products, including websites, CDs and radio segments.

Named for a 14th century English revolutionary, Jack Straw Productions (as its now known) has lived up to its moniker by providing groundbreaking community programming and crafting highly engaging educational projects through the use of audio technology.

Another Sense

Though historic preservation is generally associated with the physical, that is, buildings that can be seen and touched, Jack Straw has employed sound in a series of educational programs that link local students to their historic school's history.

The Seattle Public School district's Building Excellence program has led to the rehabilitation of a number of local historic schools. As a part of this effort, the school district engaged Jack Straw to help create projects connecting the renovation work with class projects involving the old school's story - as told by alumni and others with connections to the school, like architects who have worked on the building in the past.

Teams made up of Jack Straw staff, the architect working on the rehabilitation, an outside oral historian, and members of the community historical society work together to direct student work. Students learn how to conduct oral history interviews, and collect sounds that create an "audio portrait" of their school, and in the process, satisfy a number of Essential Academic Learning Requirements, or EALRs established by the state Commission on Student Learning.

These innovative media projects teach history and writing and verbal communication skills while at the same time introduce school children to recording technology. Thus far, the School District and Jack Straw have worked together on projects at Bryant Elementary, Brighton Elementary, Greenwood Elementary, and Olympic Elementary and have been delighted with the success and impact of the students' work.

According to Jack Straw's Executive Director Joan Rabinowitz, the projects are a great experience for the kids. Curriculum-oriented, they are also greatly entertaining to children of all educational levels. In addition to oral history interviews and recordings, students learn how to record and edit sound effects, how to perform on the radio, and come to know music from different places and time periods that helps create a sense of place through sound.

Teaching history and language skills through engaging projects like these audio portraits seems to have had a direct impact on students' interest in learning. Other projects involving students from families in which English is a second language have brought parents and their children together around stories of their immigration to the United States. Rabinowitz notes that audio projects involving families correlate to higher scores on standardized tests - not, she thinks, because of what the children learned during the project, but because their parents were more engaged in their education once they became an integral part of their child's classwork.

Although Jack Straw and Seattle Public Schools have worked together on a number of similar projects over the past few years, not until recently did they consider applying for a program grant as partners. This month (June 2003), Jack Straw submitted an application to the National Endowment for the Arts, which would fund a program entitled Family Partnership, designed to use audio technology as a tool for engaging parents in their children's learning in schools throughout the district.

To learn more about Jack Straw Productions, visit their website at http://www.jackstraw.org.

View last month's Young Voices article

Back to Top