Students ought to be the driving force behind everything taking place in education. The speakers at the “Student Voice in School District Governance” roundtable at the AASA national conference in New Orleans spread this message to other superintendents to encourage the appreciation of student voice.
Michael Wegher, superintendent of the Taylor School District in Taylor, Mich., began using an advisory committee of students as a principal. He began to understand the importance of student voice when “we were dealing with discipline, but the kids didn’t understand the why.” They were not at the table at the time, Wegher said.
“It’s not just giving them a voice, but the next part is action,” he said. Before having the student advisory council, he would send out surveys regarding equity and inclusion to students and not receive meaningful responses. However, once he involved students, the results increased greatly.
“The kids went in the classroom and encouraged their peers to take the survey, and the students on the committee felt like they helped secure the data,” Wegher said.
Who is included in a student advisory group also affects the results, Glenn Maleyko, superintendent of Dearborn Public Schools, in Dearborn Mich., said. “Leadership comes in all forms, not just the 4.0 GPA or student council representatives,” he said.
Maleyko emphasized the importance of ensuring diverse backgrounds on a student advisory body to get the perspectives from a wide array of students.
Both Maleyko and Wegher serve lunch during their student advisory group meetings to foster casual conversations. This led to Wegher and his students beginning an Instagram account. “That’s their world,” he said, adding he uses this account to reach a broader range of students. In addition, social media-savvy students help make his content more approachable.
“You can see the culture change when you include these programs,” Maleyko said. Including students in conversations accelerates problem solving in ways that teachers may not know about, Wegher said emphatically.
(Ruthie Feinstein, a sophomore at Benjamin Franklin High School in New Orleans, is a reporter for Conference Daily Online.)
