Day 4 -- Promoting Connectedness Through Student Leadership
"All kids need to have meaningful involvement. One fabulous example is a school in Spanish Harlem in New York. They took kids who were doing fairly poorly academically and trained them to be teachers of English as a Second Language. They offered a night course where there are a lot of taxi drivers - English for taxi drivers taught by kids and ESL teachers. You bring adults into the classroom and give kids meaningful roles who otherwise had no meaningful roles. They feel fabulous. They are teaching adults English. The adults are learning. It creates a whole community environment. Is that really expensive to do? I don't think so"
- Robert Blum, professor and chair, Department of Population
and Family
Health Sciences, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
As we saw earlier in the course, three of the key factors in building connectedness are a sense of belonging, competence, and autonomy. For students, a gateway to all three of these needs is through meaningful involvement in their school. If they feel like their presence matters in school, if they can see the connections in their school work to their interests and the larger community, and if they have a voice in crafting their educational experiences, they are more likely to feel connected to school.
In her doctoral dissertation on school and community connectedness, Janis Whitlock surveyed more than 300 students in middle and high school. In a report on her findings, she states that nearly 50 percent "felt people their age were not permitted meaningful opportunities to influence policies and practices. This trend was particularly evident for older youth."
Today we look at ways that schools and communities can engage students in meaningful activities. Students can become engaged in a number of ways. In their classrooms, they can connect curriculum to real-world problems facing their communities, such as water pollution or homelessness. They can be given real roles in classroom management, and decision-making power in designing projects, including culminating senior projects. They can have roles in student governance that go beyond the prototypical student government. They can be given a voice about school programming, graduation requirements, faculty hiring, teacher licensing, and even the lunch menu, according to the policy brief "Involving Students in Governance" (2004) put out by the National Center for Learning and Citizenship.
Students can design their own research projects, carry them out, and follow up with action plans. They can also work in the community in meaningful roles, such as being part of Youth Courts, where youth are sentenced by their peers.
Handing Over Power
Giving youth real decision-making ability means that adults must give up some of their power. But it also means that adults help youth learn how to exercise their power, says Adam Fletcher, director of www.soundout.org. He outlines progressive steps that adults can take to promote meaningful involvement for youth:
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Listen. Adults need to hear the ideas, knowledge, experience, and opinions of students.
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Validate. Adults acknowledge students as purposeful and significant partners who can and should hold themselves and their schools accountable. "You don't necessarily have to agree with them," Fletcher said. "Adults think they can only agree with you to be meaningful. Kids need to know that they are respected enough to be disagreed with."
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Authorize. Students develop their abilities to meaningfully contribute to school improvement through skill-sharing, action planning, and strategic participation. That may mean putting them on a committee where they have decision-making power.
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Mobilize. Students and adults take action together as partners in school improvement through a variety of methods.
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Reflect. Adults and students examine what they have learned through this work, including benefits and challenges. These reflections are then used to inform the first step of listening. "A lot of times youth programs stop at the activity. They don't stop and ask what they learned," Fletcher says. "Meaningful youth involvement is for the purpose of learning. It can and does connect to the curriculum."
| Click here for the Ladder
of Student Involvement in School |
Elements of Meaningful Student Involvement
According to Adam Fletcher in Meaningful Student Involvement: Guide to Inclusive School Change (2005): "Student involvement is meaningful when:
Student involvement is not meaningful when:
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One Student's Story
Bernice Fedestin, whom we met on Day 2, attends Brighton High School in Boston. She was feeling disconnected to her new school and decided to embark on a research project after attending a student leadership class. She and her classmates wrote a proposal and received a $5,000 grant from What Kids Can Do (a national not-for-profit organization founded in 2001 for the purpose of making public the voices and views of adolescents) to conduct their research.
The project compared the educational opportunities at urban schools in Boston to those of suburban schools in the area. Bernice and her classmates surveyed two suburban schools and three urban schools. They also conducted focus groups with students, teachers and administrators. Out of the project, they developed a 22-minute video entitled The Problem We All Live With.
From her research, Bernice says that she confirmed what she had already suspected.
| "I'd say that students in urban schools are not receiving the challenge that is needed to go onto higher education," she says. "The educational opportunities are not on par with the suburban schools. When we were going to the suburban schools, it was tough for me and my group members. The whole realization stuck that we really aren't getting what we need at our schools, and, yeah, that really hurts." |
Bernice showed the video to students and teachers both at her school and at national school conferences. While what she found was disheartening, Bernice says that the project helped her connect back to her school.
| "There have been times when I felt like giving up, but now I feel more motivated," she says. "I have the desire to learn. There is no use in sitting there saying, 'I don't have this, I don't have that.' . . . I'm going to continue to show the video and have students join the discussion." |
Bernice is involved in another high school research group and leadership class as well. In addition, she is planning a curriculum to help students conduct more active research and take leadership roles in the school.
| Click here for descriptions
of meaningful student involvement in elementary, middle, and high school |
Alaska: Engagement Through Responsibility -
Growing Student Leaders "Ursa Major's fifth and sixth grade Student Asset Ambassadors are making a positive difference at their school, and their comments express their feelings of empowerment. One ambassador recalls being thanked by a student's parents for helping their son get through his first day at Ursa Major. The boy was grateful as well and told the ambassador, 'You're cool.' Another young man says, 'I like being an example for younger kids.' A fifth grade girl beams, recalling the time a second-grader told her, 'I want to be just like you when I grow up!' The ambassadors promote a positive, orderly atmosphere at their school by helping others and modeling great behavior. Each morning, an ambassador greets students and helps direct front door traffic. Ambassadors maintain order in the halls, help keep the school clean, and rotate breakfast duty, which entails chatting with peers as they wipe tables and tidy the lunchroom. They also help new students settle into life at Ursa Major by providing school tours and joining them for lunch. School staff has empowered the students to recognize good behavior by issuing Caught Being Good tickets to classes behaving in a quiet and orderly manner in the halls. Taku Elementary's student ambassadors help host parent-teacher conferences
and have developed Welcome Packets, which they deliver to new students in their
classes. The Taku Elementary staff has found that challenged students will rise
to meet expectations if given opportunities to succeed, so ambassadors are chosen
for their leadership qualities, rather than academic excellence or popularity.
Counselor Autumn Grice highlights one student's experience as an example of the
benefit the program can have for students. The young man has trouble focusing
his attention, but he has found his niche with the Taku ambassadors. Since joining
the group, the boy has become very reliable and never misses a meeting. Ms. Grice
says, 'Some of the ambassadors would not have had an opportunity to shine if it
were not for this group.'" |
The organization that funded Bernice's project, What Kids Can Do, also oversaw an 18-month project in Chicago, Houston, Oakland, and Philadelphia in which teachers, students, and a local organization collaborated on research projects. The schools were mostly medium to large urban high schools that faced numerous challenges. The effort was funded by MetLife and included several parts: (1) helping students conduct survey research about their schools, (2) analyzing the results, (3) supporting dialogue and constructive action around the research results while nurturing youth leadership, and (4) taking action. Student-researchers addressed such areas as school climate, student-teacher relationships, teaching styles, academic expectations, safety and discipline, student voice, and improving student learning.
Fostering Non-Traditional Student Leaders
The project coordinators were encouraged to enlist students who were not recognized leaders in their schools. "We believed that engaging students who are not academic or social standouts (though the student teams did include these traditional leaders too) would enrich the participatory process," according to Students as Allies in Improving Their Schools, an October 2004 report on the project. "The questions they would ask - and the kids to whom they'd put their questions - would bring out student voices that otherwise might go unheard." At one school, teachers enlisted students who always seemed to be in trouble or whose black attire, body piercing, and attitude seemed to say "off limits."
Those students ended up being the team's most reliable members. In Oakland, the student participants were enrolled in a special class designed to cultivate non-traditional student leaders.
Student Comments About TryUMF,
A Leadership Class at Oakland Tech High School "What TryUMF does is provide a forum, like a family, for us to say what we want. Because we're in a program, it's easier for us to say something positive and not get shot down." "Oakland students, particularly minority students, are at a disadvantage. We're seen as ignorant, dumb, so we need to represent ourselves well to buck those stereotypes. We need to listen, watch how we speak and with whom we speak. We need to know who we are and what we want. This program teaches us these things." "I think TryUMF offers a way for students to change the vibe of a school and how it operates. A lot of times students are scared to stand out and do something different or positive because there is a lot of antagonizing. In Oakland schools, many people don't want to see anything positive; they're satisfied with the status quo and just come to school to kick it and not really to learn." Source: What Kids Can Do and MetLife Foundation. (October, 2004). Students as Allies in Improving Their Schools: A Report on Work in Progress. Providence, RI: Author. |
| Click here for Tips from
Student Researchers |
Student Researchers Report Positive, Troubling
Findings
Student-teacher research teams in 20 schools across five cities designed and administered a survey to 6,350 students and 446 faculty in 2003 and 2004. They found both positive and worrisome results. Among the positive findings: (1) 89 percent of students polled said, "I really want to learn," (2) 87 percent said that they respected most of their teachers, and (3) 84 percent said that their teachers respected them. The researchers also reported more troubling findings. Among the students who reported that they had considered dropping out of school (18 percent), 58 percent cited not getting along with their teachers as the biggest factor. Only a quarter picked bullying or school safety. What's more, 66 percent of the students said that their teachers don't understand them or their lives outside school, and 25 percent said that there isn't a single adult in their school whom they believe they could approach with a problem. In Chicago, just 27 percent of students said that their teachers often talked to them one on one about classroom participation and academic performance, while 80 percent of the teachers said they brought up these subjects often in one-on-one conversations with students. Students said the following actions would help them in school:
Here's how they summarized their collective views on how schools can better engage students: "Start by including us in your planning and conversations, knowing that we care just as much as you do about creating high schools that bring out the best in students and teachers. Invite our ideas and perspectives. Let us explore together where we agree and differ, what's doable and what's not. Make us part of the solution and not the problem. "If you asked what we most want, here's what we would tell you. We want policies that produce schools where . . .
And where . . .
Source: What Kids Can Do and MetLife Foundation. (October, 2004). Students as Allies in Improving Their Schools: A Report on Work in Progress. Providence, RI: Author. |
High School Takes Action to Improve Student-Teacher Relations
Webster Grove High School was one of the St. Louis high schools that took part in the project. The school of 1,400 students is in a diverse community with about 25 percent African American students, says John Raimondo, assistant principal. Even though the school had a student advisory committee of 40 students, staff were still not sure that they knew about the concerns of the student body at large. After the student-researchers collected and analyzed the findings, the school held a weekend retreat attended by students, teachers, community members, and parents. The participants reviewed the findings and drew up an action plan to respond to the concerns.
| "One of the key findings was student teacher relationships," Raimondo says. "It did come out as one of the areas that was of consistent concern with a lot of kids. They wanted more acknowledgment from teachers, and they wanted the teachers to ask more about them." |
Some of the changes were easy to make, such as putting up more student work on school walls, allowing students to pursue independent projects, and encouraging teachers to stand at their classroom door and greet entering students. The administration also made a bigger change: Students would be part of all hiring decisions at the school and would regularly evaluate teachers.
| "We feel that giving them a voice is very important," Raimondo says. "Students, especially high school students, have good ideas. We just brought 15 students to a central office meeting on the racial tensions at Webster. People are still talking about how powerful that was and how insightful the kids were about their own experience. Not only does it empower the kids, but it brings good ideas to us." |
Service-Learning
Some of student involvement falls under the rubric of service-learning. Service-learning is a teaching strategy that links community service experiences to classroom instruction. When done well, service-learning can increase students' connectedness to their school and community, says Shelley Billig, vice president of RMC Research Corp. in Denver, Colorado, who has done extensive research on the topic.
| "We've been able to generate research that shows that students who participate in service-learning are more connected to their schools and their communities than those who are not," Billig said. "What we think is happening is that kids feel like they are making a difference. We also have a lot of data that show that peer relationships and relationships to the outside world improve with service-learning. Students gain greater undertstanding, empathy, and a more systemic view of the world." |
The most high-quality service-learning projects are planned, developed, implemented, and evaluated by students, Billig says. Students also have a chance to reflect on what they learned. About 30 percent of all public schools are involved in service-learning, according to Elson Nash, associate director of Learn and Serve America, a federal program that funds service-learning projects from kindergarten through college. He says that high-quality service-learning programs meet a defined community need that engages the youth in the process of determining and defining that need.
| Click here for characteristics
of effective service-learning programs |
| "It's really an opportunity for young people to get to know their broader community and understand the roles they play in that broader community," Nash says. "And we hope to create engaged citizens." |
Shelley Billig summarizes key research findings on service-learning between 1990 and 1999:
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Educators and students in schools with strong service-learning programs reported a more positive school climate through a feeling of greater connectedness to the school.
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Middle and high school students who engaged in quality service-learning programs showed increases in measures of personal and social responsibility, communication, and sense of educational competence.
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Students in elementary and middle school service-learning programs showed reduced levels of alienation and behavioral problems. Students who engaged in service-learning were less likely to be referred to the office for disciplinary measures.
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Students who were engaged in high-quality service-learning programs showed an increase in the degree to which they felt aware of community needs, believed that they could make a difference, and were committed to service now and later in life.
El Puente Academy for Peace and Justice, a high school in a low-income section of Brooklyn, N.Y., ties its curriculum to issues that are relevant to students including their culture and their community. Each year the school community picks a theme to study. One year, the theme was sugar - a relevant topic to many whose families come from the Dominican Republic, where sugar is a major export crop. The neighborhood where El Puente is located also has a sugar refinery, which affects the neighborhood economy and pollutes the environment.
With help from the school's teachers, students at El Puente frequently engage in service-learning projects. They helped create a coalition of African American, Hispanic, and Chasdic Jews to block an incinerator that the city planned to build in their neighborhood, which was already polluted. Students studying advanced math developed a skateboard park in their neighborhood.
Involving Students with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders
Howard Muscott, a professor at Rivier College in Nashua, New Hampshire, has frequently organized service-learning projects for students with behavior disorders. This includes students with formal emotional disturbances, those who are frequently suspended or disciplined, and students with learning disabilities that have a behavioral component. According to Muscott, service-learning can be a natural way for students who have not experienced success to take responsibility and feel competent in their work.
He prefers long-term community projects rather than one-time opportunities, such as a clean-up day, because it gives students more of a chance to learn. They can also make deeper connections between their school work and community needs. Like others, he said that a structured reflection time is critical for students to think about what they have learned and to incorporate it into their future work. He has overseen a project in which college and high school students with behavior problems tutored younger students who also had behavior problems.
| "They are not the first ones to be considered to be doing service-learning. They are the recipients of services," Muscott says. "Doing this meets their needs for generosity." |
Shelley Billig adds that her research has shown that children with behavior disorders often make great strides after participating in service-learning.
| "What we are finding is amazing stories of how service-learning has transformed their lives," she says. "They were alienated and found no meaning in their school work. They felt they had no need to pay attention. Now they see why they are learning. It doesn't matter that they are not 'book smart.' We get the highest yield from kids who don't perform well in school - gifted kids and low-performing kids. They don't respond well to traditional instructional learning. Service-learning is a fantastic way to get disengaged kids involved again." |
Still, service-learning for children with emotional and behavioral disorders requires special care in planning and implementation, Muscott says.
| Click here for suggestions
on planning and implementing service-learning projects for students with emotional
and behavioral disorders |
Youth Courts and Crime Watch
Youth courts are another way that students can take responsibility. Youth courts are a program in which youth who have committed minor offenses, such as misdemeanors, are sentenced by their peers. The courts can be operated at schools, police departments, local court houses, and community agencies. They offer an alternative to the regular juvenile court process. Youth courts can address violations of school policy as well as criminal offenses, such as larceny, vandalism, minor assault, possession of alcohol, and minor drug offenses.
Depending on the model, youth volunteers may serve as the jurors, judge, prosecuting attorney, defense attorney, clerk, or bailiff. Peers hand out sentences that can include written apologies, repair of the harm caused, community service, and educational workshops. Most of the youth who work in these courts are volunteers, but many are also former defendants who return to participate in other cases as a condition of their sentence.
An evaluation of youth courts by the Urban Institute found that the programs that seemed to have the strongest results were ones that gave youth more responsibility for the conduct of teen court hearings.
| "When a young person charged with a minor offense appears before a court of similarly aged peers, it may help to counter the adolescent notion that criminal behavior is 'cool' and that 'everyone does it,''' write Jeffrey A. Butts and colleagues in The Impact of Teen Court on Young Offenders (2002)." |
Another way to connect youth is through programs like Youth Crime Watch of America. The program brings together youth of all backgrounds to identify and correct problems in their community.
The project had its start in North Miami Beach Senior High School in 1979, where in the first year, students helped reduce their school's drug problem by more than half by pinpointing drug pushers. Chain snatching was decreased by three-quarters. The students' attitudes also changed. According to the Youth Crime Watch of America Web site, students saw that they could make a positive change in their lives and the lives of the community. Student-led programs encompass up to nine key components that encourage "watch out" activities, such as crime reporting and youth patrols, and "help out" activities, such as mentoring or mediation. These are just a few examples of the myriad opportunities students have for becoming connected with their community in meaningful ways.
Today we looked at ways that schools can encourage students to engage in meaningful
involvement. As we have seen, there are many paths to providing that involvement.
The key is in giving students real decision-making power. Tomorrow, the last day
of this course, we will look at the roles of the prevention coordinator, principal,
teachers, school staff, parents, and community members. We will also present an
array of resources to help you as you find ways to increase the connectedness
at your school.
Click here to print a PDF of today's materials. |
Discussion Questions
Please think about the questions below and share your responses, comments, and/or any questions about today's material in the Discussion Area .
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This completes today's work.
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References for Day 4 materials:
Billig, S. (May, 2000). Research on K-12 School-Based Service-Learning: The Evidence Builds. Phi Delta Kappan, 658-664.
Billig, S. (February, 2005). Personal communication.
Blum, R. (February, 2005). Personal communication.
Butts J., Buck, J., & Coggeshall, M. (2002). The Impact of Teen Court on Young Offenders. Washington, DC: Urban Institute.
Fedestin, B. (February, 2005). Personal communication.
Fletcher, A. (2005). Meaningful Student Involvement: Guide to Students as Partners in School Change (2nd ed.). Retrieved February, 2005 from http://www.soundout.org.
Fletcher, A. (February, 2005). Personal communication.
Miller, J. (November, 2004). Involving Students in Governance. Citizenship Education. Denver, CO: Education Commission of the States.
Muscott, H.. (February, 2005). Personal communication.
Nash, E. (February, 2005). Personal communication.
Osher, D., Sandler, S., & Nelson, C.L. (Winter, 2001). The Best Approach to Safety is to Fix Schools and Support Children and Staff. New Directions in Youth Development, 92, 127-153.
Raimondo, J. (February, 2005). Personal communication.
Safe and Drug-Free Schools, Anchorage School District. (in press). Helping Kids Succeed-Anchorage School District Style. Anchorage, AK: Author.
What Kids Can Do and MetLife Foundation. (October, 2004). Students as Allies in Improving Their Schools: A Report on Work in Progress. Providence, RI: Author.
Whitlock, J. (2004). Places to Be and Places to Belong: Youth Connectedness in School and Community. Ithaca, NY: Family Life Development Center, Cornell University.
Whitlock, J. (February, 2005). Personal communication.
Youth Crime Watch of America. Retrieved February, 2005 from http://www.ycwa.org.
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