Nikhil Laud 
In January 2021, teacher Bruna Lee and San Francisco Unified School District Ethnic Studies coordinator Nikhil Laud described how students turned oral history interviews into podcasts. Their article appears below, unchanged. A new section follows with student podcast ideas and the context of SFUSD ethnic studies in 2026.
Bruna Lee is a dynamic English and Ethnic Studies teacher at Ruth Asawa School of the Arts (SOTA) in San Francisco. She focuses on creating classroom experiences that uplift student voice and allow young people to see themselves as agents of change. Part of Bruna’s process involves implementing podcasts into the learning environment to bring forward the narratives and experiences shaping her students.Â
A recent blog article, which you can read below, told the story of how Bruna and her colleague Nikhil Laud, coordinator of SFUSD’s Ethnic Studies program, have used storytelling to enhance the change-making impact of their Ethnic Studies program. The students worked on an oral history project, in which they conducted a variety of interviews and then produced them into podcasts using Soundtrap.
Following up on that piece, we caught up with Bruna to ask about her go-to tips for other teachers interested in implementing classroom podcasting. For educators who want to bring podcasting into the classroom, Bruna recommends these four winning strategies:
1) When introducing the project, provide a clear outline of all the project steps.
This outline breaks the podcast project into small, digestible steps with clear deadlines. A sample project guide can be found here.
2) Emphasize the importance of privacy, agency and consent.
As students get ready for their interviews, remind them that the interviewee has the power to decide how their interview will be shared. While some interviewees will be okay with using their real name and having their interview published on a public website, others will choose to use a pseudonym, and others will also prefer that the interview only be accessed by the classroom teacher. Remind students that their interviewees have the power and agency to choose their level of consent by signing a consent form. A sample consent form can be found here.
3) Encourage bilingual students to conduct interviews in languages other than English.
Bilingual students have very few opportunities to use their home language in school. Encourage students to explore their home language in this project by interviewing a parent, grandparent, or another relative. Students who conduct their interview in a language other than English will still have an introduction and conclusion segment in English, and may choose to translate parts of the interview throughout the podcast as they wish. By encouraging interviews in languages other than English, this project becomes even more culturally and linguistically significant for students. I’ve had students conduct interviews in Spanish, Portuguese, Cantonese, Polish, Hebrew, and Korean. Even if I don’t speak the student’s home language, I am still able to support them through all steps of the project.
4) Be flexible!
As is the case with any project or lesson in your classroom, students will be at different parts of the project at any given point. It is important to provide additional support for individuals who are struggling to get their interviews set up, or who have tech difficulties. Be prepared to provide individualized feedback and support at every step of the process.
Thank you to Bruna Lee for sharing her valuable insights! Read on to learn more about this inspiring project in SFUSD:
San Francisco Unified Uses Ethnic Studies to Advance Youth Storytelling to Become Agents of Change
San Francisco Unified is taking Ethnic Studies to a whole different level, incorporating podcasting to help lift student voices and develop the skills necessary to become agents of change. Two highly effective voices in this powerful cadre of educators, Bruna Lee and Nikhil Laud, are helping lead the way. Bruna Lee is a teacher at Ruth Asawa School of the Arts (SOTA), the district’s arts magnet school. Because it is an arts magnet, students are always looking for opportunities to bring their art and creativity into their academic classes, especially in Humanities, English, and Social Studies.
“When I first started at SOTA, and I asked the students, ‘What do you like in a teacher, what are the kinds of projects that have worked for you,’ and nearly all of them said, ‘You know, if there’s a way that we can incorporate our art into our academics, that would really engage us and make us feel like this assignment matters,'” said Lee. “Last year, I was offered the position to teach an Ethnic Studies elective for juniors and seniors. Because it’s an elective, I took that opportunity to be able to make the class as project-based as possible and think of opportunities where students can use their creativity as well as their life experience to display their mastery of the content.”
Lee’s Ethnic Studies students participated in an oral history project, through which they interviewed an elder in their community about a topic of their choice. Students turned the interviews into podcasts using Soundtrap. The project, titled Humanizing Oral Histories, features podcasts about immigration, interracial relationships, queerness, feminism, activism, and more. All podcasts have one goal: to provide a humanizing, nuanced account of a person’s life.
Nikhil Laud is one of the Ethnic Studies co-coordinators that helps support the Ethnic Studies program at San Francisco Unified School District. According to Laud, “currently, [SFUSD has] an Ethnic Studies course being taught at every comprehensive high school in the district and in almost every alternative high school as well. Over the years, the program has really grown. Roughly 1,500 students are enrolled in these classes, but that’s not nearly where we want it to be. What Bruna has done, particularly during her time, is a testament to some of our potential of really creative approaches to youth storytelling —and that’s where we entered the picture.”
In the Ethnic Studies program, students are taught to be change agents. The ability of students to hone their storytelling skills makes this possible.
“Central to developing people’s capacity for being agents of change is developing their storytelling abilities,” said Laud. “We try to have youth-centered narratives embedded throughout our curriculum. Our curriculum begins with concepts explored like identity and narrative and culminates in writing student autoethnography and sharing them with peers.”
As Laud further explained, “Storytelling progresses beyond a critical look at the self into zooming out to see connections to community and the stories that matter to them most. We go from that to students doing action research or directly positioning them as social researchers and ethnographers. That’s what sets Ethnic Studies apart from many other academic disciplines; our pedagogy centers on youth experiences and realities, and we use that as our textbook. In doing so, we want to enhance our young people’s ability to reflect on the life they’re living, to see connections with others, and to ultimately be advocates and allies for those who are most vulnerable.”
Sharing the project with their communities was key to the success of the students. “One of the most powerful outcomes of this project was the fact that often in the classroom, students are completing work so that it can be presented to the teacher and maybe other students in the class,” said Lee. “But what this project allowed us as an ethnic studies community to do, is to bring this project to a wider audience, which brings a lot of relevance to the project.”
Both Lee and Laud have helped their students understand this work, a piece of oral history that they can take to share with their families, communities, and the person they interviewed. It allows for a certain level of authenticity to the project.
“These are stories that need to be uplifted, that have meaning for themselves as well as their communities and families,” said Laud. The stories represent potent examples highlighting the interesting podcasting that came out of Lee’s class at SOTA.
To learn more about the Ethnic Studies program in San Francisco schools, visit the following:
Stanford study suggests academic benefits to ethnic studies courses
About Bruna Lee and Nikhil Laud
Bruna Lee is an English and Ethnic Studies teacher at Ruth Asawa School of the Arts (SOTA). She creates classroom experiences that uplift student voice and allow young people to see themselves as agents of change. See what her classroom is up to here (Ethnic Studies) and here (English).
Nikhil Laud has been an Ethnic Studies educator for 16 years and is currently coordinator of SFUSD’s Ethnic Studies program centering the principles of knowledge and love of self, solidarity and self-determination.
A version of this article originally published on Soundtrap EDU Blog
Student podcast ideas in 2026: lessons from the SFUSD ethnic studies project
Student podcast ideas are easiest to judge against a working example, and the oral history project that Bruna Lee and Nikhil Laud describe above is one. Lee’s students at Ruth Asawa School of the Arts interviewed an elder in their community, then turned the recordings into podcasts that Laud and Lee say reached a wider audience than classroom work usually does. This section places that project in the larger story of SFUSD ethnic studies and offers ideas for teachers who want to try something similar.
The research behind ethnic studies in San Francisco
Laud notes above that SFUSD offers ethnic studies at every comprehensive high school and in almost every alternative high school, with roughly 1,500 students enrolled at the time of the article. A study by economists Thomas Dee and Emily Penner, issued in January 2016 as an NBER working paper and later published in the American Educational Research Journal in 2017, looked at an ethnic studies course in San Francisco high schools. Some schools assigned ninth-graders whose eighth-grade grade point averages fell below a cutoff to the course. Using a regression discontinuity design, which compares students just above and just below a cutoff, the authors found attendance 21 percentage points higher, a grade point average 1.4 points higher and 23 more credits earned. The authors call the effects surprisingly large and suggest that culturally relevant teaching can support at-risk students when it is delivered in a supportive, high-fidelity setting. The design measures effects for students near the cutoff, so the result may not apply to every student or every version of the course.
Statewide, the picture has also changed. The California Department of Education says the State Board of Education adopted the Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum on March 18, 2021. It is a guide that districts may use, not a requirement, and the 2021-22 state budget provided $50 million for grades 9 to 12 to create or expand ethnic studies courses. The department notes that some districts have adopted local graduation requirements in ethnic studies.
Student podcast ideas for a classroom
- Oral history interviews. This is Lee’s model. Students interview an elder about a topic they choose, and Lee has seen interviews in Spanish, Portuguese, Cantonese, Polish, Hebrew and Korean.
- Community profiles. Students interview a local worker, a business owner or a club leader about how the neighborhood has changed.
- Book or history episodes. A class can record a discussion of a text, with each student preparing one question and one passage to read aloud.
- School stories. Short episodes on a school tradition, a student club or a new policy give younger students a lower-stakes first project.
- Explainers. Students teach a science or math idea in three minutes, which helps them check their own understanding.
Choosing and shaping a topic
A good topic gives students a person to interview and a question that matters to them. Lee reports that the students’ podcasts cover immigration, interracial relationships, queerness, feminism and activism, and that all share one goal: a humanizing, nuanced account of a person’s life. A teacher in another subject can keep that goal and change the content, for example an oral history of a local industry for social studies or a conversation with a nurse or engineer for a career class. Lee says that arts students in Lee’s school asked for ways to bring their art into academic work, which a podcast with original music or sound design can do.
Planning the project
Lee’s four tips above still form a sound plan: give students a clear outline with deadlines, teach privacy, agency and consent, welcome interviews in home languages, and stay flexible. NPR’s guide to student podcasting, published in February 2023, covers planning, recording, editing audio and using music, and is a practical companion for teachers who are new to audio. Before publishing, check the school’s policy on posting student work and recordings of adults, and have interviewees sign a consent form, as Lee recommends.
Subjects such as identity, immigration and discrimination can bring strong feelings. A teacher can prepare students for hard stories, give them a way to pause an interview, and offer a counselor or another trusted adult if a student is affected. For the online side of publishing student work, the edCircuit digital citizenship guide covers safe and respectful online habits. As Laud explains above, the stories need to be uplifted because they have meaning for students, families and communities, and a clear plan helps them be told well.
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