‘THE GOLDEN PLAYBOOK’

RUSSELLVILLE – Students at Russellville Middle School are writing a new playbook, “The Golden Playbook,” but it isn’t a book. It’s a podcast, and while its first episode celebrates the legacy of Russellville High football legend Roy Lee “Chucky” Mullins, the project itself empowers students to look to their futures by putting the power of learning in their own hands.

“The whole idea was that Russellville has a legacy of sports, but it’s not just about sports. It’s about being a good sport. Being a good person,” said Alana Parker, an English and Language Arts teacher who is co-leading the “Introduction to Innovations” class at Russellville Middle.

With that idea in mind, the students came together and agreed on the title for their podcast, according to Mackie Drew Parker, the seventh grader who leads the student’s marketing team.

After brainstorming ideas, she and her team narrowed the list to a few options and surveyed the rest of the class to settle on a title that would reflect the podcast’s focus on Russellville alumni who “wrote the playbook for us to follow.”

“We thought that for future episodes, ‘The Golden Playbook’ made the most sense,” said Jackson Behel, a seventh grader who leads the content team. “Chucky Mullins is a such a special part of our (school’s story), that’s why we started with him.”

Parker and Behel are two of the five team leaders who will present their podcast’s first episode in a competition between their school and 16 other schools in Birmingham and Montgomery at the end of this month.

In all, 24 RMS students took part in this semester’s program. They were broken down into smaller groups to create the final product and promote it on campus and out in the community.

Parker led the marketing team and Behel headed up the team of content creators. Drake Glass, a sixth grader, led the podcast hosts; Aiden Contreras, an eighth grader, oversaw the audio and editing team; and Scarlet Vela, an eighth grader, led the project managers.

“Everything is driven through challenge-based learning, so the students have their goal but it’s up to them to figure out how to meet that goal,” said Lauren Archer, the RMS Library media specialist who is co-leading the class with Parker.

Last semester, the first round of students to enroll in the class were challenged to design an app that would impact their community. The class partnered with Main Street Russellville, a local non-profit, to make it happen.

This semester’s challenge evolved to incorporate other technologies and expertise outside of audio engineering and broadcasting.

When Mackie Drew Parker and her team were tasked with marketing their podcast, they started with brainstorming an overall brand. In trying to find creative ways to promote their work, the team decided to manufacture keychains to help in advertising.

Sawyer Dover, an eighth-grade student, and Crews Kroger, seventh grader, handled the 3-D printing of the keychains with software and equipment. Before the class, Dover and Kroger said neither of them had any experience in 3-D printing.

“It took us a whole day to figure it out, but as soon as we started to get it, we got it,” Kroger said.

Both students said they were drawn to the marketing team for different reasons. Kroger, who has found a knack for sales, thought he could lend his talents to the project in that way.

“I like selling things, and once I sold cookies,” he said. “I made 72 bucks in three hours. That’s probably the main reason I wanted to do this.”

While the goal of creating the keychains was to garner more listeners, the students found the keychain promotions are also a good way to generate funds for future projects happening in The Huddle.

CONTRIBUTED/DAN BUSEY – Crews Kroger, left, and Sawyer Dover were tasked with producing 3-D printed keychains to sell as fundraisers for future projects for “The Golden Playbook.”

For Dover, his gravitation towards marketing was less about sales and more about experiencing something new.

“I didn’t really know what I was going to do, but I knew I didn’t want to be a host. When I heard marketing, I was like, oh! This will be fun,” he said with a laugh. “We’ve gotten to collab together and all that. We’ve designed a lot, but we’ve also dealt with content. They had to help us with the website.”

Behel said he and his content team were tasked with coming up with the focus of the podcast, researching their topic, planning interviews with Russellville High alumni and faculty, and writing scripts for the podcast hosts.

When asked what stood out to him most about the work, he said he was surprised to learn how much went on behind the scenes.

“It’s very underestimated,” he said. “Like, you would think it’s very simple and easy, but a lot of planning went into it.”

“Every group had something they had to get done or the podcast doesn’t happen,” Glass chimed in. “I was over the podcasters. We had to go over lines and make sure everyone (articulated) when they were speaking. I didn’t talk, but I recorded it.”

When Glass and his team finished recording, they sent the audio to the next team, led by Contreras.

“We were in charge of the intro song, the outro song, editing the video, and putting the sound effects in,” he said. “We found out that it wasn’t as hard as it looks to edit a video and put songs in. We did that, and then we also had to listen over the podcast to see if something sounds bad. Then we’d have to fix it or rerecord it.”

As all the teams went to work on their specific tasks, Vela said she and her team were there to ensure everything ran smoothly from start to finish.

“Basically, we were the managers over all of them,” she said. “If someone asked, ‘What do we do with this,’ or ‘I don’t know what to do with this,’ I would look around to see if anyone needed help and if they were on task.”