During Covid it was hard to see what lasting effects something as severe as shutting down in-person school could really have, but now that school is mostly back to in-person normalities, we can start to look at the actual effects. I’m going to show you what the KAKX station building and Marshall’s classes were like before, during, and after Covid. After interviewing Marshall, a student who took the class pre-Covid through last school year, and my personal experience, I now know more about how everything went and changed, along with the transition back to school.  

KAKX was built around 1998; a little fun fact is we are actually close to the 25th anniversary. The primary class that was taught was Multimedia, “which was a beginners only course which had audio/radio/music for one semester and video for the second,”Marshall said. Right before Covid the idea of Multimedia being transitioned into Podcasting happened. Besides the classroom aspects of it, there is the KAKX station portion of the building. KAKX is a radio station made up of Marshall’s students and his own radio shows along with occasional guests. The radio shows would most often be live or pre-recorded; some of the shows would have an interview or some other aspect of it, so it’s not just straight music. 

During Covid, the energy of the students was “interesting” as Marshall put it. Everyone was just couped up in their homes and had no idea what the next day would be like, and everyone was dealing with their own problems as well. With that, the production of live shows went up to about 8-12 a week from home which was quite an improvement from before COVID since usually it’s 2-3 a week. I also saw posts such like the one below

These were pretty consistent throughout the quarantine, along with Monday Mornings with Marsh, which was Marshall doing live shows of his own.

As Marshall put it, “Our students and a handful of additional staff members in the district really stepped up and produced some of the best programs to come out of the station (in my opinion).” This didn’t just apply to the high school students either; there even was content being made by the 2nd graders and 8th graders. As Marshall put it, “COVID times were difficult, sure, but it was our time to be a source of positive and fun entertainment in the community, and I feel like we delivered on that.” I couldn’t agree more; we really did try to make the best of it.

Last year, ‘21-’22, everyone came back to school and began to go back to in-class teaching. Throughout the year, the mask mandate slowly went away, and it started to feel like normal school again. While the mask mandate was still happening, and even after it was no longer required, it was always a great idea to keep your mask on in the media lab especially because of how close you had to be and how enclosed the space is; along with this, it was very cold during the winter since all the doors had to be open and the water heater was broken. Nothing much changed over last year. This current year is starting to change like some of the methods Marshall taught with which he “refined.” 

 Some of the other stuff that’s starting to change is Marshall is getting new equipment like macbooks to lend out for certain assignments and to use for events and such. 

This current year has definitely really turned it around even more than last year; stuff is starting to turn back to normal. As Marshall put it, “The energy this year is close to the feeling I had before COVID was a thought in our minds.” A few of the 4-year students that I asked completely agreed with him. This year has also really stepped it up as far as having consecutive live shows and people always being able to help with events.

I can’t wait to come back and visit within a year or two and see how the renovations go when the school starts to remodel the media lab and Marshall will have to temporarily pack everything up. It’s definitely going to have to be a whole other journey to write about.