Your students have the opportunity to compete with young people all over the country for a coveted grand prize: your students' story appearing on NPR's Morning Edition or All Things Considered.
Beginning in January, teachers or qualified educators can submit student entries in two basic categories: grades 5-8 and grades 9-12. Entries can be as short as 3 minutes and as long as 12 minutes.
During the last school year, NPR received nearly 6,000 entries from all 50 states and the District of Columbia, with more than 25,000 students participating. “The winners, and even the finalists and honorable mentions, got a lot of attention — from local news stories all the way up to national coverage in places like the Today show on NBC,” NPR reported in an article last month.
As students learned last year, it doesn’t take a lot of fancy equipment to produce great stories. NPR has promised to provide more training materials and advice on audio reporting, writing, and sound editing and production--all in addition to the outstanding guide they created for teachers to use last year.
Submissions may be on any topic, but NPR offers the following prompts as suggestions:
- Tell us a story about your school or community: about something that happened there – recently or in the past — that you want your audience to know about.
- What is a moment in history that all students should learn about?
- Show us both sides of a debate about an issue that's important to you.
- What do you want to change about the world? What's a big change that you want to make in the future?
- Explain something to us that kids understand and grownups don't.
The submission period begins January 1. Entries are due by March 24.
Visit NPR’s official rules page to learn entry requirements and criteria that judges will be seeking.