Herricks podcasting class helps students find their voice

Herricks Middle School podcasting teacher Michael Heit encourages his students to strive for what he calls the three C’s: Chemistry, Content and Quality (OK, that last one isn’t exactly a C).

“Content is doing the legwork of finding good topics, chemistry is being able to play off each other so the podcast sounds like a real conversation, and quality comes from proper recording and mic techniques,” Heit said he tells the 50 students taking his Content Creation Foundation podcasting course.

If students master these skills, they can “impress the world with what a 13-year-old can do,” he said.

Heit, 46, of Wantagh, graduated from Farmingdale High School and, after college at Clemson University in South Carolina, worked as a customer service rep for a printing company. What he liked most about the job, he said, was educating customers.

So Heit later earned a master’s in teaching from Long Island University, in Brookville, joined the Herricks Middle School faculty as a sixth grade teacher in 2008 and has taught special education there for the past 16 years. He also teaches a broadcasting class that produces the weekly “Herricks Morning Show,” which spotlights middle school stories and events.

The podcasting class grew out of Heit’s experience co-hosting 50 episodes of a cooking podcast with fellow Herricks Middle School special education teacher Sara-Rebecca Desravines and Hempstead Schools technology teacher Michael Levine. Heit took a break from podcasting after he and his wife, Rachel, had their third child.

Then in 2023, he, Levine and Desravines launched “Hey Other Parents!” a talk-show-style parenting podcast available through Apple featuring topics such as “Raising a Child With Autism.”

Heit introduced podcasting as a middle school elective course in the 2021-22 school year. He envisioned a class covering “everything from recording and editing to creating the description and show titles for podcast directories.”

“What makes the class so special is that we post on real podcast sites and students’ voices can be heard all over the world,” including by relatives in South Korea and India, he said.

Cassidy Oswanigam, 14, and classmate Katarina Joseph, 13, recently posted the first episode of “Hamiltalk,” their podcast for fans of the Broadway show “Hamilton.” Cassidy said Heit is a teacher who “helps us get our energy up with vocal exercises and pep talks.”

Heit’s podcasting class “empowers students to find and share their voices,” Herricks Superintendent Tony Sinanis wrote in an email.

Former student Kristen Lee, 16, said her podcast was one of the first to be uploaded to Spotify when she was an eighth grader. “It wasn’t like any other class,” said Lee, a junior at Herricks High School in New Hyde Park. “He gave us advice . . . but we could choose our own path, show our own passion and voice.”

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