The Power of Student Voice

When secondary learners understand the power of student voice, they can begin to understand the role they play in being leaders of change. Join Molly, Dr. Eve, and guest Joie Logsdon, Leadership Teacher from Union County High School in Kentucky, as they dig into the impact when students understand that their unique genius could fuel not only their own learning and high-school experience, but extend to people beyond the walls of the school.

Transcript

Molly: [00:00:00] From Leader in Me Studios, I'm Molly Garcia. This is The Empowering Teacher for Secondary 

Think back to your favorite high-school class. When you look around the room, how many of your peers would you say had found their voice? Had you? What do you think it would have been like if everyone in the class had found their voice? Was connected to how their unique genius could fuel not only their own learning in high-school experience but how it could impact people even beyond the walls of the school.

When secondary learners understand the power of student voice, they can begin to understand the role they play in being leaders of change. The question is, how do we intentionally empower students to participate, innovate, and lead efforts to improve their classroom, school, and communities in a practical way? On our episode today, Joie Logsdon, leadership teacher from Union County High School in Kentucky is gonna show us how to find practical ways to unleash the power of student voice. Before I chat with Joie, [00:01:00] Eve, as our FranklinCovey Director of Research, give us the lowdown on the research that supports empowering student voice in secondary classrooms.

Eve: Certainly, Molly. The concept of student voice goes beyond just allowing students to speak up in the class. It's about recognizing and nurturing each student's unique perspective as a valuable contribution to the collective learning experience. So, recent research points to an idea of dialogic spaces in the classroom.

Eve: And these are environments where students' thoughts and questions have to co-construct knowledge, rather than simply receiving it from the teacher. This approach fosters deeper cognitive skills, like metacognition and critical thinking, which as we know, they're foundational for lifelong learning

Molly: So How can educators create these dialogic spaces?

Eve: It starts with adopting a listening culture. And what I mean by this is not just what students say as the extent of listening, [00:02:00] but how they think, how they feel.

Eve: Educators can facilitate this simply by using open-ended questions that invite diverse viewpoints and encouraging peer-to-peer dialogue. It's also about creating classroom ethos where mistakes are seen as opportunities for learning, which helps students to feel safe in expressing their thoughts in this listening ethos. Right?

Molly: So it sounds like this approach could significantly impact How students are actually engaging in the classroom. 

Eve: When students feel that their voices are heard and valued, it boosts their confidence and engagement; they become more intrinsically motivated to learn and explore.

Eve: This empowerment, it, it has a ripple effect,. Fostering a sense of community and empathy within the classroom as students learn to appreciate and learn from diverse perspectives of their peers.

Molly: Eve, this hits home and so many connections [00:03:00] are happening for me and I'm sure the listeners as well. 

Molly:I'm excited to jump into conversation with Joie around practical ways to bring this research to life. Joie, welcome to The Empowering Teacher Podcast for Secondary.

Joie: Thank you. Thank you for having me. I'm happy to be here.

Molly: It's so great to have you with us today.

Molly: Our time for this episode is really all about the power of student voice And sharing those practical tips for our listeners. So, can you share with us what we mean by tapping into student voice. And what does that look and sound like at a secondary level?

Joie: For us here at Union County, the student voice is when a student is owning their learning, owning their future.

Joie: When they feel heard within their classes, within their school, within their hallways, when they can make contributions to the school, to their culture, to the climate, to make their school what they envision it to be, to be welcoming to everyone within the building, and when they can work with their teachers and their [00:04:00] staff to build a sense of community and build on strengths as a school together.

Molly: That's such a collective way of looking at culture, that together we're building the culture in our classes and in our school. With all the competing forces that come at teachers just all at once sometimes we feel like throughout the day, what fuels you to make this a priority?

Joie: A couple of things. One thing is to help students to understand that it is in their control. Their learning, their future, They have control of that. And, the voice and the choices in which they make can lead them that way.

Joie: And, in my pathway, the teaching and learning pathway, I have the great opportunity to have the hard topics of, what do you see as strong in our school? What do you see needs help within our school?

Joie: Our pathways open up an amazing opportunity for student voice in that they are able to, as an incoming freshman, choose a class that [00:05:00] sparks interest to them. Maybe they wanna go into agriculture or they wanna go into engineering, or computer science. So many opportunities.

Joie: Maybe they wanna be that future teacher. So, from day one when they come in to try something that sparks their interest, that they feel like their voice would be heard because they truly are interested in it. So they start off. They get to stay in that pathway. They can switch it, you know, their sophomore year if maybe it wasn't the path for them so much.

Joie: Student voice is always welcomed, and they are learning how to be the teachers, how to be the influencers and the leaders in schools our future. So they are sought after a lot for their voice also,

Molly: Yeah. I as you're sharing, Joie, I'm hearing that, really, voice begins with discovery. Having them have opportunities and pathways to discover what could be their possible passions. 

Molly: Okay. So we have to talk practical. How can teachers build [00:06:00] student voice into daily practices or routines within the classroom?

Joie: In the beginning of the year, Simple things as having them to help create the social norms of your classroom. What is that gonna look like? And we did that this year. We all were given an outline, you might say, of what does your students and you agree upon that you want your classroom to feel like, to look like? So we started with that, making those classroom norms, and you know what it looks like in Miss Logsdon's room isn't necessarily what it's gonna look like in the teacher down the hallway.

Joie: So they got to own what that looks like. let students to establish a goal for their classes. So for each nine weeks, what do you want your goal to be or your grade to be at the end of the nine weeks? And watch them to grow and work towards that. And when they don't, let's work it out and what didn't happen, or what do we need to redo or look at again or revisit with that.

Joie: We have classroom competitions a lot. That's part of our [00:07:00] schoolwide culture. The leadership class itself comes up with different things like, um, we had, like, uh, food drives or we have who has the most class participation in certain spirit days. And we have a board out in the hallway, and it lists what class we, uh, won that day. Like, we just got done with what we have skits, And it's one of the best days here at our school, is Skit Day.

Joie: And we've missed it because of COVID took it away, And the leadership voice, we want it back. That's a great tradition of our high school. Let's bring it back. So they work with administrators, and they got it back for us. And, it was a great day, and the kids owned it.

Joie: And they know that they've reached that, and they made that happen for us. Things like that. we have, clubs within our building. We have a club called Interact, And that club has actually taken, student voice out into our community, and the community has embraced it. They have helped our students in toy drives and food drives.

Joie: And right now, there's a hygiene [00:08:00] drive going on. And a lot of those things go right back to our students here at school. The community heard our students' voices that the community started something called our Morgan Field Junior Council, where they had students from our school actually join their Community Council, and they are doing big things within our town. They're putting on huge events for the whole community.

Joie: And then here recently even, our school board got on board and realized the importance of student voice as well. And we had an election for a student member to our school board. And one of our seniors was voted in, and she goes to all the board meetings.

Joie: She takes any student concerns to the board leaders. so it's just our school has just really embraced the importance and the understanding that students want and need to be heard.

Molly: They want and they need to be heard. 

Molly: It's so empowering to listen to how you are choosing to make student voice a priority on your [00:09:00] campus. If I'm a listener and I'm hearing all of this, and I'm thinking, I don't even know where to start. What would be the one thing that you would tell them, hey. this is the one place in your classroom that you can start, get the ball rolling.

Joie: Conversations. I mean, it just comes back to that student voice.

Joie: The beginning of every nine weeks in my leadership class, I start with, what do you wanna have accomplished by the end of this nine weeks? my leadership class is made up of class officers. So they get with their freshman, sophomore, junior, senior group, and they make a plan. They come up with whatever. And I and they're like, but what if?

Joie: I'm like, no. Dream. Big. Whatever it is. If it's something that seems unattainable, you might surprise yourself, and it's not.

Joie: So they will just, they'll just brainstorm ideas together. So that's where it starts for our leadership class. And I think that would work in any class. What do you wanna accomplish by the end of the nine weeks? Make a list, make a poster, put it on the wall.

Joie: And as it happens, check it off. Yeah. Let them know their goals have been [00:10:00] reached.

Molly: It's Begin With the End in Mind, and we're gonna ask them and we're gonna invite them to dream big. And that's practical. We can ask the question, what do we want at the end of nine weeks? Okay.

Molly: So you started to scratch the surface with this. Would love to hear a little bit more about results. So what results should teachers expect if they implement, really the power of student voice within their classroom?

Joie: For us, I mean, we have experienced drastic results when it comes to student voice within our building. From going to the, you know, our community embracing it, our board members embracing it, our elementary schools and our middle school has embraced having my students there with their voice. It has impacted our school culture in that more students are involved in things, even just more students being aware of the happenings within our building. 

Joie: When it comes to having this in our classrooms, I see it as drastic big changes that are going to lead into everything. I see attendance being better. I see [00:11:00] grades being better. I see students studying more.

Joie: When they can own it and have their voice in it, it truly is a big impact.

Molly: And it's contagious. It sounds like, it sounds like it starts with your leadership class and just, really, marinates the whole entire school, and you're seeing the results completely throughout your high school. Joie, thank you for shining the light on what happens when we lean into student voice and the impact it's having in our classrooms. And to our listeners, remember, you matter, you make a difference, and you've got this.