The award-winning Tiger Talk podcast of John Tyson Elementary School of Innovation continues to impress as it earns accolades for sharing stories from within the Springdale community.
The student-produced podcast was recognized at the 2025 Arkansas Podcast Collaborative Awards, with Tiger Talk winning the Kids and Family Podcast award. Tiger Talk co-host Janette Perez also earned the Rising Star Podcaster award, while co-host Emerie Johnson was recognized as the Best Young Podcaster.
“It was an honor to be nominated and to be able to win an award,” Janette said. “I love that we get to learn new things every time we have a new podcast.”
Co-host Roderick Jello is the first Marshallese person to ever be nominated and win an ARKAST award, according to Jennifer Boogaart, John Tyson EAST facilitator.
“I felt so proud of myself, and it was such an honor winning a podcast award,” Roderick said.
Tiger Talk was also nominated for Best Education Podcast, a category the podcast won at the first-ever ARKAST awards in 2024.
“It felt really surprising that we won twice in a row and that it’s against adults who do professional podcasts and have been doing it for much longer than I have,” said Emerie, who now attends Hellstern Middle School.
The podcast is a great learning tool, said Witten Spencer, who is one of this season’s co-hosts.
“It helps us work as a team and collaborate,” he said.
The podcast began in 2019, Boogaart said, and focuses on different subject matter annually.
“They have ownership of the podcast, and so they get to talk about whatever topic they would like and share those stories,” she said. “This season is about heroes, serving heroes--the veteran organizations that serve veterans.”
Tiger Talk is exemplary of the type of learning Springdale Education Accelerated by Service and Technology (EAST) students experience, Boogaart said.
“EAST is student led, and as you saw today, these students are in charge. They do everything from writing the script to emailing to inviting the guest,” Boogaart said. “This year, they even wrote a song that goes along with their podcast and composed it using AI. So, every step of the way they're in charge of this process.”
The current hosts of Tiger Talk are Janette Perez, Roderick Jello, Yaretzi Araujo and Witten Spencer. You can catch up on past episodes of the podcast on Buzzsprout, Apple Podcasts, Spotify and your favorite podcast app.