My Voice

The first few days of Radio Production A/B are lots of fun for my students. I teach them how to hold and use a mic and the ins-and-outs of the minidisc recorder. Then, I just let them play. They laugh, pretend they're DJs or play-by-play announcers, and have a ball. I ask them to keep one recording of themselves reading poem or a passage from a favorite book, and I listen to a minute from each student, checking for pops, levels, and mic-handling noise only. On Day 3, I say, "You've now heard yourself, perhaps for the first time, the way others hear you. Write a reflection on the experience of listening to your own voice." Time to get serious, and my students rise to it beautifully.