Student Voice

by Jon Bosworth, Principal, Richland Center High School 

How much voice should students have in how a school operates?  Should students be allowed to express their opinions and included in decision making?  

As the 2017-2018 school year began and I was entering my seventh year as building principal at RCHS, our high school student council was turning to its fourth adult advisor in those same seven years.  As all of you leaders know full well, it is difficult to sustain momentum and achieve accomplishments when leaders (any employees really) turn over frequently. Fortunately, our student council had a blueprint they had been following, which may not be too different from your schools.  They organized all of our homecoming activities. They had a couple of fundraisers and did some positive activities, for example organizing blood drives and sponsoring a family at Christmas time. Their year concluded with a selection process for the following year’s members. Our students and adult advisors followed that blueprint almost exactly for six years and were successful at it.  Heck, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Right? However, as I looked at our student council, our student leaders, it was very difficult to distinguish them and the products of their organization from any of our other clubs.

In 2016, after watching our student council cycle through adult advisors and lather, rinse, repeat their activities for  a number of years, I began to talk with our student council leaders about becoming more of a true governing body and giving the students a voice.  I had conversations with students and adults. The ideas were planted, but did not necessarily grow at first. Timing is everything. Our fourth set of adult advisors and incoming student leadership were able to get on the same wavelength and the seeds that had been planted came to fruition with a new blueprint.  

Our student leaders wanted to give their fellow students a voice.  The student council began the year by surveying all of their fellow student constituents about their concerns and desires for improvement in the school.  As you can imagine, the number and variety of student concerns and desires from the general student population were numerous and diverse. Despite the diversity, our student leaders identified the most common ideas and decided to focus on them for the 17-18 school year.  Within their council, they developed separate committees and tasked each committee with doing research and working to institute these specific ideas for improvement. Remember that blueprint I spoke about before? Our student council did keep some of the same activities, but dropped some activities too, especially those that fit more appropriately with another one of our student clubs.  It was not realistic to think they could do everything they had done in the past as well as spend time addressing student body concerns. High school students are extremely busy.

One of the top student requests for change was our school mascot.  Students did not want it changed, but rather updated. Our hornet (“Homer”) had not been updated for 22 years, but had been updated about six times over the course of our school’s history.  On average Homer had been given a facelift every 15 years, so it was arguably due. Our student council paid for the service of a professional graphic design company and sent designs to the high school students and staff and surveyed for likes and dislikes.  They gave the feedback to the graphic company, which then came up with two designs incorporating many of the favorite aspects of the first round. Student council again surveyed the student body and staff and came up with a final mascot design. Our high school student council surveyed the middle school students and staff asking for their input too.  In addition to the design they now have official font, colors (pantones), and a background design. Our students are currently researching the copyright process to ensure the mascot is used in the manner they wish. Student council is creating guidelines for all clubs and teams to use when using the mascot.

Student voice can be a powerful influencer.  Our district was using different mascots in different buildings and those mascots were not just slight alterations.  Our high school was orange and black hornets, our middle school was blue and white raiders, one of our elementary buildings was green dragons and one of our elementary buildings did not have colors or mascots.  We had arrived at this point by the choices of adults and it was a point of division between the various adults in the buildings in the district. The concept of being unified was brought up from time to time by adults, but often tradition and money were used as barriers to unification and the status quo remained.  

After involving our high school and middle school students in selecting a high school mascot, our high school students took things a step farther and reached out to the elementary buildings.  Student council again paid a graphic design company to develop “softer” versions of the high school mascot and presented them to elementary staff and administrators. The feedback was positive to adopt one set of colors and mascot across the district.  The final step in their unification vision was to present their results and recommendations to our school board. Their presentation was tremendous and the school board voted unanimously to adopt a district color and mascot across all buildings. The high school student representatives gave the entire school board presentation themselves.  None of the adult school administrators present were involved in the presentation or question and answer session. It was a remarkable accomplishment.

In addition to the mascot upgrade, our student council committees addressed student improvement requests like having open campus for lunch, the quality of water fountains in the building and our current grading scale.  They found that logistically open campus was not feasible due to time constraints and geography. I am guessing this may have been disappointing, but we let them research it and arrive at that conclusion themselves. Now student leaders can address that question with students who wish it were different.  Student council solicited and raised funding to improve our water fountains and upgrade to bottle fillers. The adults in our buildings don’t use the water fountains as frequently as the students do, if at all. This was about the furthest thing from the our minds for improvement, yet it will make a healthy improvement in the student’s lives.  The grading scale committee did some good research, but have not found enough to institute change yet.

Our adult advisors allowed our students to research different improvement ideas regardless of where the adults felt they might end up.  The process of leadership and research was more important than the final product. We are attempting to teach servant leadership, governance, democracy and give our students a voice.  When I observe our adult advisors meeting with our student council president and small executive staff, they are in the room together conversing. When I observe our adult advisors at a full student council meeting they spend most of the time outside the door in the hall allowing the students to work through things by themselves.  

Giving your students a voice can be a scary endeavor.  It makes adults nervous because students don’t always say what we want or expect them to, but they say what they feel is important to them.  As all of you leaders know, including constituents in the process leads to more sustainable change. The past few years I have included student council leaders or student class leaders in important interviews for new staff.  I need to hear their perspective.

I have been so fortunate to work with a number of leaders throughout my life and am thankful for those experiences.  My most recent professional learning experience in Viterbo University’s superintendent program was tremendous and helped shape my leadership philosophy greatly.  It directly influenced my ability to foster this type of student voice and involvement and I would recommend the program. Giving students a voice is not a token endeavor meant to appease the masses, but a true gesture meant to involve the most important members of your schools in the improvement process.  If you truly want their voice, this is one way to get it.

We are entering a new school year and our student council has been working hard over the summer.  They are prepping for homecoming activities. They recently took a team building trip to Devil’s Lake.  They plan to repeat the solicitation of student ideas for improvement and work to implement positive changes this school year.  They are truly an impressive group of youngsters.

What is leadership?  I suggest to you that leaders exist for their followers, not the other way around.  Leaders succeed when their constituents succeed. Leaders are stewards, not autocrats, of the buildings and organizations they work for.  Leaders can be made and part of our responsibility is to develop more leaders.

It is my hope that you may find something of use in this article. Thank you to Jim Lynch and his staff at AWSA for all that they do for the educational leaders in WI.    

 

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