Stilwell High School seniors enjoy a pizza. Clockwise from left are: Valente Garay, Micah Grigsby, Alexis Sanders, Adara Baird, Bailey Vaught, Abby Ales, Lauren Bellamy, parent volunteer, Bethany Paigekiller, Abigail Duran, Sunny Duncan, Drake Martin, Joshua Noisewater, Dylan Wilhite, Jordon Campbell, Jorge Bautista, MacKenzie Teehee and Jarrett Bruner,

Stilwell made national news last week when its high school senior class placed in the top 10 finalists for a National Public Radio podcast competition.

The winners will be announced today – Wednesday, June 3.

The Adair County students' accomplishment is impressive, considering NPR received more than 2,000 podcasts from 46 states and the District of Columbia in this year's Student Podcast Challenge.

Twenty-five finalists were announced on May 27 – 15 high schools and 10 middle schools. The senior class of Stilwell High School investigated The Washington Post article reporting their town was not only the Strawberry Capital of the World, but also the "early death capital of the United States."

English teacher Faith Phillips challenged her students to do research after raising money for them to get a class set of Chromebooks. The fundraiser, which she called #chromedreams, met its goal in a matter of days, to everyone's surprise. The students then began their research, including interviews of local officials and various experts.

"We were all amazed when these elected officials from local government, to the Cherokee Nation, to Washington, D.C., started replying and asking to come speak to the students in person," said Phillips. "The students started realizing that when they engage in a civil and informed manner, and especially as a coalition, they are very powerful. They found their voice!"

The students do hope to win, she added.

"But the students never did this to win an award. They were motivated by a genuine desire to unify their community and bring positive change. I think it is clear that they accomplished what they set out to do," Phillips said.

Stilwell Superintendent Geri Gilstrap offered kudos to Phillips and each of the seniors who worked on this project, providing hope to future generations of students and the Stilwell community as a whole.

"I am extremely proud of the work Ms. Phillips spearheaded, with the Stilwell 2020 seniors taking on such an important issue as the death rate in Adair County. They worked diligently making certain that their facts were correct and have gained national attention due to their research," said Gilstrap. "These students are proud of where they live, as am I, and take pride in the fact that what was reported by the Washington Post was not a clear picture of our community or our death rate. These students researched and analyzed the data that was used in the article and questioned where it was acquired, only to discover what they knew to be true all along – that Adair County, in fact, is not the early death capital of the U.S."

Additional opportunities are coming to Stilwell and the students since the podcast experience. Phillips said she's ecstatic that the students are receiving the recognition they deserve.

"We have so many things happening right now. The Oklahoma NPR station is donating recording equipment to the school and also offering a chance for internships to some of the students who worked on the podcast. The students will be making media appearances. So it is a bit overwhelming in a wonderful way," she said.

The back story

A first-year teacher, Phillips has worked in the corporate law world as an attorney and is a published author. When the principal at SHS called last summer to ask if she would teach their seniors, Phillips thought that was a terrible idea. But eventually she agreed.

When she arrived in August, she realized the students had to write a research paper and didn't have classroom laptops.

"I have a nephew who attends Jenks, and he brings home his own Chromebook every night for homework," she said. "I felt that our students had to have their own classroom set of laptops – not just for a research paper, but so that we could do resumes, apply to colleges, etc."

When she started up a little fundraiser called #chromedreams, the local ABC affiliate came out and covered it. Over 70 people donated, and they raised enough money to buy a classroom set of Chromebooks.

"After that, the students started feeling self-empowered. They were determined to take that gift and run with it," Phillips said. "They are a remarkable group of human beings."

The seniors were highly irritated by the Washington Post article, said Phillips.

"They love their home, and while they recognized we have some things to work on, it did not deserve to be called the Death Capital," she said. "So we took that article, identified the five or six problematic issues raised by the author, and let the students choose which issue they wanted to research."

Those included nutrition, air, water, health care access, and poverty.

"I believe they got into it so passionately because they were really invested in the outcome, you know? So they started emailing their elected officials as well as experts in the various fields. They also started interviewing a lot of people," she said.

They used Phillips' cell phone to record the interviews because they didn't have any recording equipment. She has more than 12 hours of interviews they conducted.

"They had to winnow all that down to 12 minutes," she said.

All agreed the podcast was special, but didn't expect it to win any awards.

"I had my own idea of how the story should be told, but the NPR rules required me to keep my mouth shut and let the students direct the work. I only had one rule: Every single detail they reported in the podcast had to be 100 percent verifiable hard fact," she said. "I wanted it to be more of a journalistic endeavor, leaving out all the emotion. But the students had other plans, and I let them roll with it."

Now that they're winning and receiving all this national recognition, Phillips said, she understands they were on the right track.

The original deadline for the podcast was in mid-March.

"I set a deadline for the students to be finished by March 1. Then something really crazy happened: The students started asking if they could come in and work on the weekends!.They poured their heart, soul, and time into the project," said Phillips. "So we sent their podcast in and just a couple weeks afterward, the pandemic hit."

They wrote the whole project off and figured that was the last they'd hear of it.

"The students began journaling about their experience during the pandemic, and from those journals, we are publishing a book in July called 2020 Visions. The proceeds from that book will place a set of Chromebooks in the rest of Stilwell High School's English classes," she said. "It's the legacy these students want to leave for the Stilwell students coming up after them."

Check it out

Listen to the Stilwell senior class's podcast "Strawberries in the Death Capital."