Students’ ideas, experiences, and identities are centered in decisions that shape what and how they learn.
Elements of Elevated Student Voice
These elements serve as guiding principles or visions of what “perfect” or “ideal” outcomes might look like.
Education Week series, ten Black high school students share what they need from educators to improve their school experience, emphasizing the importance of having a voice in shaping policies, addressing racial inequities, and ensuring representation and support.
Student voice is already there. It’s not something we give. It’s something we honor. And we do when we listen.
– Monte Syrie
Crowdsource Workshops on Elevated Student Voice
Past Crowdsource Recaps
Elevating Student Voice: Empowering Students to Shape Their Learning Journey
This workshop equips educators to transform student feedback collection from a passive exercise to a cornerstone of decision-making. We’ll explore how to gather student input effectively, disaggregate data to identify diverse needs, and use student voice to inform individual and programmatic decisions …
Crowdsource Coffee: Elevating Diverse Ideas, Experiences, and Voices in School Communities
Every member of a community, from students to teachers to staff, brings their unique experience and background to school each day. This Crowdsource Coffee will center discussion around how we acknowledge and elevate a diversity of voices …
Students Are Speaking: Responding to the Evolving Communication Needs of Young People
A 2019 study on workplace readiness, surveying over 3,000 members of Generation Z (those born after 1995), revealed that while students feel confident in their ability to collaborate and take on new challenges, many report feeling unprepared for key communication demands in the workplace—such as networking, negotiating, and resolving conflict …
Webinar: Develop Structures That Elevate Student Voice in Equitable Ways
This hour-long webinar covers the importance of student voice and how to create equitable structures to maximize its use in decision making …
Toolkit Resources for Elevated Student Voice
Listening is Leadership: Elevating Student Voice to Transform School Culture
There are a lot of pressures facing school leaders right now: achievement data, staffing challenges, shifting priorities, etc. It’s easy to get caught in the day-to-day demands and feel like there’s no time to slow down. But one of the most powerful things we can do as leaders is pause and ask: Are we actually listening to our students? …
Student Surveys: Evaluate and Elevate Your School’s Tiers of Support
In this segment, he shares examples of how focused and meaningful student surveys can help keep MTSS efforts, programs, and vision on-track to ensure ALL students are thriving and successful …
Supporting Student Identity and Agency: Cultivating Civic Competency and Anti-Bias Awareness in Our Schools
How do we prepare students not only to succeed in college and career, but also to engage meaningfully and ethically in a diverse democracy? Civic competency and anti-bias awareness are not add-ons or special topics. They are essential to a well-rounded education and should be embedded in the fabric of every school. When students explore their own identities and develop awareness of bias and injustice, they gain the tools to participate more fully in their communities and to advocate for themselves and others …
Structures that Elevate Student Voice in Equitable Ways: Empowering Students While They Develop Life Skills
Student voice and equity have always been at the heart of my work as a school leader. They aren’t just ideals—they’re essential to creating school communities where every student feels a sense of belonging and purpose. In my time leading three high schools across two states, I saw how centering these values could change everything. When students are given meaningful ways to share their perspectives and influence their learning environments, schools become more inclusive, more responsive, and more effective for everyone …
Principal’s Advisory Council: Develop Structures that Elevate Student Voice in Equitable Ways
What does it mean to give students a voice? Not just to speak, but to shape the school they’re part of? For us, it starts with the Principal Advisory Council: a space where students move from being heard to feeling truly elevated. This council is more than a meeting. It’s a mindset that builds community, nurtures leadership, and ensures every student feels represented in shaping the future of our school …
Elevating Diverse Student Voices: Empower Student Engagement and Agency
During a Crowdsource Coffee on December 7, 2023, Portico leaders, coaches, and facilitators shared their experiences and discussed new ideas for how we can all begin taking this challenge on for our students. Not only is it best for our students, but making good and well-informed decisions—and doing our jobs correctly— requires listening to all voices. It is often in that disagreement and tension that we ourselves learn and grow …
Reflection Prompts for Elevated Student Voice
- How do you create an environment where students enjoy learning because it feels purposeful and valuable to them?
- What groups of students at your school need to be listened to more? Generate 3 ideas about how you as a leader can engage these groups in the next 3 months.
- Write down your thoughts on how you are engaging your students to share their experiences and what they need from school.
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