From the Horse's Mouth

From the Horse's Mouth is Providence Day School's official podcast, and its guests are the school's own students, parents, graduates and teachers. Its host, Jay Barron, is a world language teacher on campus. He usually brings in three or four guests at once, goes around the table for introductions, and lets the talk run from there. Some of those guests are people he knows well. He mentions having taught or coached the children of parents he interviews. That closeness sets the tone. The exchanges are warm and easygoing, closer to colleagues catching up than to a formal interview. College comes up from both directions. In 'Navigating the College Search Process', the guidance timeline gets laid out: a little chatting in ninth grade, an optional but recommended step up in sophomore year, and real decisions about where to apply in junior year. The talk also turns to helping juniors tell their own story sincerely while leaving room for them to change their minds. Barron admits the subject is personal, since as a parent he is in the thick of it himself. In 'Young Alumni Reflect on PD and College Journeys', three graduates, among them Stephanie Melton in her first year at Ohio University, look back at the move. The surprises were mostly social. The sheer number of people felt daunting at first, and one graduate went in assuming the social side would be effortless, only to find later how much college resembled Providence Day. Current students take the table in 'Tackling Internships and AI Research', recalling an ambitious summer project with the ECHO Foundation in Charlotte. Their take on artificial intelligence resists easy verdicts. One student, Nolan, says every topic they covered had positives and negatives, and he calls the technology gray: powerful, but not certain to save humanity or to destroy it. Barron, counting himself among 'one of those older people', says he wants to learn more so he is less suspicious of it. 'Bringing Together Global Perspectives (Parent Edition)' gathers four moms with international experience, who describe meeting through their kids and connecting over shared values. One of them, Radha, remembers a fifth-grade teacher inviting her daughter Sierra to present on Navratri during the family's first year at the school. Teachers get their turn too. In 'Dee's Lower School Ladies', Dee Smith takes the host chair, and one teacher recalls losing entire weekends to grading before learning to give herself grace. 'Inside Auerbach Hall' brings in three people from the lower school who helped shape a new building. They contrast the cramped corridors of the old Overcash building with hallways wide enough for a whole class to gather for a read-aloud. What a listener gets is a specific, affectionate view of one school from the inside, from college guidance to the lower school hallway.