2025-2026 Semester

Feature Length Podcasts

Starting in early January, students began their third and final podcasting deep dive of the 2025/26 semester, culminating with each student producing a complete, feature-length journalistic podcast.

Students first conceptualized their podcasts, beginning in pre-production by defining the core story, characters, and arc, then researched and planned interviews while gathering supporting audio like ambient sounds. 

They moved to production by building rapport with their interview guests during recordings, asking open-ended questions to capture rich anecdotes, and collecting clean narration tracks alongside field audio. 

In post-production, they logged and transcribed footage, scripting a logical narrative weaving clips with voiceover and sound design, editing for tight pacing and emotional impact, fact-checking vigorously, while mixing levels for clarity and finalizing production.

These podcasts are available for the world to hear, on Cortes Community Radio, 89.5FM, and worldwide online at www.cktz.ca. As they become available, episodes will be available for your listening pleasure below.

Episode 1 - Play & The Stories We Live By

Student journalists Minton, Jasmine, and Willow, of the Cortes Island Academy, explore the topics of storytelling and play, and why they are vital and important parts of healthy culture, both in the past, and today. Journey with them as they interview experts on these topics, report on their findings, weave in their own stories, and bring us a new and playful understanding of these timeless concepts and why they remain as important today as they did hundreds of years ago.

Episode 3 - Desolation Sounds

Elsie, Lacey, and Elias discuss the housing situation on Cortes, from three different angles. This includes tiny homes, Rainbow Ridge, the Seniors Village, and interviews with five different locals, as well as their own stories and observations on the topic. 

In part two, Nathaniel Maki interviews Margaret Verschuur and Fawn Baron from the Death Care Collective and discusses the importance of having a healthy culture and communication around the topic of death and dying.

Aires February 14th

Satirical Advertisements

Produced in the initial week of the Tools for Truth Telling Program, these satirical advertisements were crafted by students who began with little knowledge of audio recording and production. In just five days, they progressed from novices to creators of unique personal observations.

2022-23 Semester

Ripple Effect