{"id":32991,"date":"2020-06-26T06:02:51","date_gmt":"2020-06-26T11:02:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/?p=32991"},"modified":"2020-06-25T16:30:35","modified_gmt":"2020-06-25T21:30:35","slug":"stilwell-high-school-students-explore-their-towns-history-in-podcast-that-was-a-finalist-in-npr-student-challenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/2020\/06\/26\/stilwell-high-school-students-explore-their-towns-history-in-podcast-that-was-a-finalist-in-npr-student-challenge\/","title":{"rendered":"Stilwell High School students explore their town\u2019s history in podcast that was a finalist in NPR student challenge"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_32994\"  class=\"wp-caption module image aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 672px;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-32994\" src=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2020\/06\/IMG_7441-672x448.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"672\" height=\"448\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2020\/06\/IMG_7441-672x448.jpeg 672w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2020\/06\/IMG_7441-1920x1280.jpeg 1920w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2020\/06\/IMG_7441-768x512.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2020\/06\/IMG_7441-150x100.jpeg 150w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2020\/06\/IMG_7441-300x200.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2020\/06\/IMG_7441-620x413.jpeg 620w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2020\/06\/IMG_7441-1620x1080.jpeg 1620w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 672px) 100vw, 672px\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Robby Korth \/ StateImpact Oklahoma<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Stilwell High School teacher and local author Faith Phillips.<\/p>\n<\/div><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Faith Phillips had a question for her high senior English students at Stilwell High School.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Is this small northeastern Oklahoma town of 4,000 people really the death capital of the United States?<\/span><\/p><p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/player.simplecast.com\/cf6b5db7-e697-4c8b-a4df-b555a1e6926c?dark=false\" width=\"100%\" height=\"200px\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\" seamless=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/business\/2018\/09\/14\/wrong-neighborhood-can-take-plus-years-off-your-life-average\/\">2018 Washington Post article<\/a> had given the town the title \u201cEarly Death Capital.\u201d Far different from Stilwell\u2019s famed moniker as the \u201cStrawberry Capital of the World,\u201d which was given to it in 1949 by Oklahoma lawmakers.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Post article used National Center for Health Statistics data that said Stilwell had the lowest average life expectancy in the country of just 56.3.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Despite the article and the data &#8211; which was later retracted because of a collection flaw &#8211; the students answered Phillips\u2019 question with an emphatic no. They weren\u2019t initially denying the stats. But they felt the numbers lacked context.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThat kind of confused me because when they said that we were the death capital, that\u2019s like so if I drive 15 minutes to Westville I live longer? How\u2019s that make sense?\u201d Samuel Baird, a podcast host and fresh Stilwell High graduate said in a recent interview.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The group spent months investigating those questions. Then they turned it into a podcast to be submitted to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2018\/11\/15\/650500116\/npr-student-podcast-challenge-home\">National Public Radio\u2019s Student Podcast Challenge<\/a>. In late May they found out they were among <a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2020\/05\/27\/862792242\/best-of-the-best-here-are-the-finalists-in-the-npr-student-podcast-challenge\">a dozen finalists<\/a> &#8211; the only one from Oklahoma.<\/span><\/p><p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/769327363&color=%23ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=true&visual=true\" width=\"100%\" height=\"300\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<div style=\"font-size: 10px; color: #cccccc; line-break: anywhere; word-break: normal; overflow: hidden; white-space: nowrap; text-overflow: ellipsis; font-family: Interstate,Lucida Grande,Lucida Sans Unicode,Lucida Sans,Garuda,Verdana,Tahoma,sans-serif; font-weight: 100;\"><a style=\"color: #cccccc; text-decoration: none;\" title=\"faif\" href=\"https:\/\/soundcloud.com\/user-427794673\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">faif<\/a> \u00b7 <a style=\"color: #cccccc; text-decoration: none;\" title=\"Strawberries In The Death Capital\" href=\"https:\/\/soundcloud.com\/user-427794673\/strawberries-in-the-death-capital\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Strawberries In The Death Capital<\/a><\/div><p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_32993\"  class=\"wp-caption module image aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 672px;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-32993\" src=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2020\/06\/IMG_7426-672x448.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"672\" height=\"448\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2020\/06\/IMG_7426-672x448.jpeg 672w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2020\/06\/IMG_7426-1920x1280.jpeg 1920w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2020\/06\/IMG_7426-768x512.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2020\/06\/IMG_7426-150x100.jpeg 150w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2020\/06\/IMG_7426-300x200.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2020\/06\/IMG_7426-620x413.jpeg 620w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2020\/06\/IMG_7426-1620x1080.jpeg 1620w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 672px) 100vw, 672px\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Robby Korth \/ StateImpact Oklahoma<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Alexis Sanders, a recent Stilwell High School graduate, shows how the students edited their script in Google Docs. The Chromebook she&#8217;s using was purchased using money from a fundraiser organized by teacher Faith Phillips.<\/p>\n<\/div><p><b>Making the podcast<\/b><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The students started the project on the first day of school and didn\u2019t finish it until early March.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They conducted dozens of interviews, did hours of research and spent a ton of time writing and editing to get their script together.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cI\u2019d say we edited this like 15 times,\u201d said Alexis Sanders, another recent graduate who worked on the podcast. \u201cWe definitely edited this a lot because we wanted to have the right stuff fit where it needed to be.\u201d<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The interviews were all conducted and recorded on Phillips personal phone. Classes would then listen to the interviews and pick out what they wanted as a group.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThey would vote,\u201d Phillips said. \u201cI\u2019d pass out note cards and we\u2019d listen to sound clips and they\u2019d write down the time mark and write down what they were hearing to say this is the most important part of what the Congressman said that we want in the podcast.\u201d<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Congressman Markwayne Mullin, R-Westville, was among many of the notable people the students interviewed for the podcast. Sanders said interviewing him was intimidating but fun. Students spoke to him after he finished giving a talk at Stilwell High School, where he graduated from.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In the podcast he talked to the students about finding <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">good role models in Adair County.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cIs there a picture in the community that sets standards high for kids, that sets achievements high for them to let them know they can achieve greatness?\u201d He rhetorically asked them.<\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_32992\"  class=\"wp-caption module image aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 672px;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-32992\" src=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2020\/06\/IMG_7404-672x657.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"672\" height=\"657\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2020\/06\/IMG_7404-672x657.jpeg 672w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2020\/06\/IMG_7404-1920x1876.jpeg 1920w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2020\/06\/IMG_7404-768x750.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2020\/06\/IMG_7404-150x147.jpeg 150w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2020\/06\/IMG_7404-300x293.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2020\/06\/IMG_7404-620x606.jpeg 620w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2020\/06\/IMG_7404-1105x1080.jpeg 1105w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2020\/06\/IMG_7404-32x32.jpeg 32w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2020\/06\/IMG_7404-50x50.jpeg 50w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2020\/06\/IMG_7404-64x64.jpeg 64w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 672px) 100vw, 672px\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Robby Korth \/ StateImpact Oklahoma<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Faith Phillips displays the audio clips her students gathered by recording interviews for their podcast on her phone.<\/p>\n<\/div><p><b>It\u2019s place in the competition<\/b><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The NPR student podcast competition is no joke. There were more than 2,000 entrants.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Stilwell students were finalists along with an impressive list of high school students, mostly from bigger schools. The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2020\/06\/03\/867842394\/the-winners-of-the-npr-student-podcast-challenge\">eventual winner<\/a> was a project about climate change activism done by a group of students at The High School for Innovation in Advertising and Media in New York City. But Stilwell\u00a0 still stood out to the NPR education team, which runs the contest.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cStrawberries in the Death Capital really transports you into the world of Stilwell,\u201d said NPR\u2019s Sequoia Carrillo. \u201cI was immediately impressed by how many sources the students were able to fold into the story while keeping the tone engaging and natural. Any investigative journalist would be proud of the time and energy the students put into dissecting this story.\u201d<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Carrillo, a production assistant on NPR\u2019s education team, helped pick the finalists who were then judged by a team of NPR reporters and editors.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Phillips says she was just proud her students could compete with some of the best and brightest around the country. And they faced some major hurdles. The student body is more than 90 percent economically disadvantaged.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_32995\"  class=\"wp-caption module image aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 672px;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-32995\" src=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2020\/06\/IMG_7451-672x344.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"672\" height=\"344\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2020\/06\/IMG_7451-672x344.jpeg 672w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2020\/06\/IMG_7451-1920x982.jpeg 1920w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2020\/06\/IMG_7451-768x393.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2020\/06\/IMG_7451-150x77.jpeg 150w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2020\/06\/IMG_7451-300x153.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2020\/06\/IMG_7451-620x317.jpeg 620w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 672px) 100vw, 672px\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Robby Korth \/ StateImpact Oklahoma<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">A building and sign on the Stilwell High School campus.<\/p>\n<\/div><p><b>What the students discovered<\/b><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The National Center for Health Statistics data that said Stilwell had the lowest average life expectancy in the country of just 56.3. The national average in that same set was 78.8.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">However, those numbers are inaccurate, the students found, after talking to a Cherokee Nation official. And in February, the Centers for Disease Control said they were working to revise the dataset so it more accurately reflected the average life expectancy in Stilwell.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.tulsaworld.com\/news\/state-and-regional\/oklahoma-town-doesnt-have-the-nations-lowest-life-expectancy-after-all\/article_8a7ff136-f834-557a-8ce6-df1511b16183.html\">According to the Tulsa World<\/a>, \u201cThe study&#8230; collected data from death certificates and geo-located where the deceased residents had lived. But the analytics apparently didn\u2019t know what to do with addresses that used a P.O. box, grouping all of them into one \u2018default\u2019 location at the very center of the census tract.\u201d<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Stilwell\u2019s life expectancy is about 74, which is lower than the state and national averages. But that hardly makes it a \u201cdeath capital.\u201d<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">People in Adair County face more challenges than most. Drugs are a serious problem and overdose deaths are a big contributor to the much lower than average life expectancy.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The students posited that calling Stilwell the nation\u2019s death capital was unfair. They researched those challenges &#8211; that include a drug problem, a lack of mental health and medical services and environmental problems including historical neglect of local water.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bringing all these challenges to light was difficult, Sanders said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter if it makes people upset because you\u2019re doing the right thing,\u201d she said. \u201cYou shouldn\u2019t care about what other people might think as long as what you\u2019re doing is right.\u201d<\/span><\/p><p><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The students are also publishing a book of their journal entries during the time of COVID. For more information and to preorder that book, put together by Phillips visit her <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/readbooksby.faith\/book\/2020-visions\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">website<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. It will be released next month and proceeds will help pay for Chromebooks for students at Stilwell High School.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Faith Phillips had a question for her high senior English students at Stilwell High School.Is this small northeastern Oklahoma town of 4,000 people really the death capital of the United States?A 2018 Washington Post article had given the town the title \u201cEarly Death Capital.\u201d Far different from Stilwell\u2019s famed moniker as the \u201cStrawberry Capital of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":209,"featured_media":32996,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[17],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32991"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/209"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32991"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32991\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33006,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32991\/revisions\/33006"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}