What Makes a ZipCast?

Every ZipCast blends your school’s local voice with nationally syndicated content—short, insightful audio segments sourced from leading experts across the country.

Local content is your unique voice: the updates, stories, and reflections your school creates for your own community.

Syndicated content is the shared voice: wisdom, encouragement, and practical insights that connect parents to the bigger picture of Christian education. These segments are carefully curated and professionally produced so they feel seamless alongside your local content.

Take a Peek Inside an Episode:

Here’s a 2024–25 sample ZipCast episode from one of our schools.

The opening includes local updates from the school leader—often recorded on a smartphone—followed by selected syndicated content.

Each week, your team chooses and approves what airs. ZipCast blends all audio and adds music automatically for a polished mix.

Syndicated Content: Sample Segments

Every family’s needs are different—which is why ZipCast lets each subscriber choose the track that’s most relevant to them. Each syndicated channel contains two segments that subscribers can select from:

  • Lower School (PreK–6th) – Encouragement and practical wisdom for the foundational years, when habits, character, and wonder are taking root.

  • Upper School (7th–12th) – Guidance for the teen years, with insights on academics, discipleship, calling, and preparation for life beyond graduation.

This ability to tailor the listening experience is an integral part of what makes ZipCast unique—ensuring every message feels personal, timely, and directly relevant.

Parenting: Sample Content

The Parenting channel is featured in every ZipCast episode—because while each family’s journey is unique, parents everywhere face common questions and challenges. These segments offer timeless, practical guidance rooted in Christian wisdom, helping moms and dads navigate the joys and trials of raising children in today’s world.

  • Focus on being friendly rather than making friends

  • Tips: eye contact, remembering names, asking questions

  • Friendship starts with kindness and genuine interest

  • Fire on the stove becomes a teachable moment

  • Covers calling 911, first aid, and staying calm

  • Family practice builds confidence in crisis response

  • Marked his son's 13th birthday with a Bible and journal

  • Weekly quiet times encouraged reflection and maturity

  • Godly manhood is formed by intentional design

  • Distinguishes between adult privacy and child safety

  • Advocates for parental device checks as loving oversight

  • Encourages open dialogue, not surveillance

  • Lions are bold, driven leaders who take initiative

  • Strengths include decisiveness and accountability

  • Warns of becoming overly intense—leadership must be wise and kind

School Life segments give families a deeper understanding of what makes their child’s school experience rich and distinctive. The school life channel is customizable to each school’s unique educational philosphy

  • Classical School Life – For classical Christian schools, these segments explore the philosophy, habits, and beauty of a classical education.

  • Christian School Life – For traditional Christian schools, these segments highlight spiritual formation, academic excellence, and whole-child development.

  • Collaborative School Life – Rolling out this fall, this track focuses on the rhythms and strengths of collaborative education models.

School Life: Sample Content

For Classical Schools:

  • Classical grads succeed across diverse fields—from law to homemaking

  • Emphasizes learning how to learn and soft skills development

  • Poetic imagination and wisdom prepare students for future innovation

  • Defines grammar, logic, and rhetoric in classical education

  • Explains how these work together across child development

  • Emphasizes forming students who think and live wisely

  • Rhetoric is essential for persuasion with moral responsibility

  • Equips students to wield words truthfully in a post-truth world

  • Echoes Augustine’s view of rhetoric as a tool for truth-telling

  • Western culture shapes the world we navigate daily

  • Great books provide timeless wisdom for present and future

  • Recommends starting with C.S. Lewis to engage with the canon

For Christian Schools (Non-Classical):

  • Create joyful, structured homework routines

  • Keep older kids nearby for communal learning

  • Incentivize good habits with fun, family-oriented rewards

  • Budgeting must feel rewarding to be effective

  • Uses a personal story: trading eating out for a Maui trip

  • Emphasizes delayed gratification and family financial goals

  • Ancient technique to boost memory using spatial association

  • Practical tips on building and using a memory palace

  • Promotes physical movement to enhance retention

  • Virtue is the fruit of grace, not a substitute for it

  • Builds toward Christlikeness in students

  • Encourages parents to pair grace with high expectations

For Collaborative Schools: Coming October 2025

Your Voice. Your People.

  • “It's an easy way to inform and educate our families in the areas important to us.”

    — School Administrator

  • “This is an excellent resource for my family and myself, I can't think of a better way it can serve us. Thank you!”

    — ZipCast Parent

  • “Zipcast has been a great addition to our school community, adding a different option for parents to engage and get information other than every school's everlasting emails!”

    — School Administrator