Trust

I came across a LinkedIn post last week from Bill Drayton, a former MacArthur Fellow and founder of Ashoka, an amazing organization that supports social entrepreneurs around the world, including young entrepreneurs through its Youth Venture program. In the post, Drayton explains that when he was a child he wasn't a good student, but he liked to create things, such as a school newspaper. He sometimes missed class because of these projects, which worried his mother. He was not always where he was "supposed to be."

Drayton's school principal, however, advised his mother to trust him: "Don't even show him that you're anxious."

Can anyone imagine a principal saying that to a parent today? Even without the fear of being sued if the child got hurt after the principal said it was OK for him not to be in school, we simply don't trust young people to take ownership of their own learning. Drayton had to organize fellow students, make sure articles were written and the paper edited, and he had to get it out to readers beyond his own school. He didn't learn how to do this in the classroom. In fact, he had to miss class in order to learn it!

Drayton's mother, like any mother, was uncomfortable allowing him to not follow the rules. But it is only in allowing young people the freedom to experiment that they develop the ability to choose between alternative courses of action, solve problems and learn from their mistakes. These are critical civic competencies, and they only come when we begin to trust young people.

Sefton and Knowsley Young Advisors Showcase

I recently visited Young Advisors in Manchester, U.K. I had a great time and learned a lot about Young Advisors in general and about the work done by teams in Knowsley and Sefton. Young Advisors act as paid "social action consultants," providing a variety of services designed to provide young people's perspective on issues, programs, services and events that affect them.

The work done by the Sefton and Knowsley groups includes, among many other projects, consultation and workshops for a local workforce development department on the use of social networking, providing feedback on a new curriculum in the "centers for learning" that replaced local schools, awarding funds across England to young people learning media skills, making recommendations to local councilors about how to make their meetings more interesting and accessible to young people, developing workshops for young people designed to raise awareness and understanding of mental illness, getting out the vote for the U.K. Youth Parliament, and providing young people's perspectives on "Section 30," a law that allows the police to disperse groups of more than two people--a law that many young people believe is disproportionately and unjustly applied to them.

This is an excellent model for youth participation. Take a look!

California bill would excuse students from school for civic leadership activities

California Assemblywoman Wilmer Amina Carter has sponsored a bill that would allow students to be excused from school to participate in civic engagement and leadership activities. Eligible activities would include serving on a community committee, an advisory board or task force, attending a town hall meeting or an educational conference on the legislative or judicial process, or becoming a member of a youth commission. Participation in political campaign activities would not be eligible.

Assembly Bill 796

A different kind of charter school

A school in Leicestershire, England has created a student participation charter that lays out, in detail, the ways in which students will participate in the governance of the school. The document was created by two members of the local youth council with the support of the borough council and the county council, and will be piloted in a Leicestershire school with the support of a nearby college.

The Forward, written by Gareth Williams, the Director of Children and Young People’s Service for the county, acknowledges the link between student voice initiatives the a healthy democracy:

Encouraging young people to both understand the importance of democratic decision-making and also to develop the skills that go with participative democracy in our communities is a high priority for us.

The democratic life of our country is dependent on future generations playing a full and active part in their communities and making informed choices in elections.

The charter includes numerous criteria by which a school can gauge its commitment to student voice. Schools judged by the Healthy Schools Student Participation Quality Assurance Group to have achieved "advanced" status will receive a Student Participation in School Award. Examples of the criteria include:

11.4 Student Representatives will be involved with the appointment of staff and are suitably prepared for this work (understanding the processes, weighting given to their views and equal opportunities).

12.7 Students will be given the opportunity to be part of the quality assurance process for teaching and learning within the school.

Leicestershire Student and School Participation Charter

The role of intermediary organizations in sustaining student voice initiatives

There's an article in the current Teachers College Record by Dana Mitra of Penn State, describing the importance of outside organizations in sustaining student voice initiatives in schools. You have to be a subscriber to read the whole thing (about fifteen bucks a year, and well worth it), but here is the nickel version:

Findings/Results: The data indicate that the persistence of a student-voice effort after the initial influx of funds and support disappeared requires support from an intermediary organization (IO)—an organization located outside the auspices of school walls. IOs can help with fostering a clear and long-term vision, providing a more stable source of leadership, identifying ongoing financial and collaborative resources, and building a network for knowledge generation and sharing.

Conclusions/Recommendations: Although they are a part of many reform initiatives, partnerships with IOs are usually considered to be short-term relationships during the implementation phase of an initiative. This research instead suggests that IOs might be better suited as long-term partners in many change efforts. An awareness of the important roles that IOs can play in the long-term work toward change could help researchers, practitioners, and policy makers think more intentionally about how to plan for stabilizing such partnerships as an avenue toward sustaining reform initiatives.

The Role of Intermediary Organizations in Sustaining Student Voice Initiatives