The Road Less Travelled

How far down the road are you as a school community in creating a systemic culture of engaging student voice?

It was the beginning of the school year, and I was visiting one of our K-10 partner schools in Mumbai. I was walking along the corridor on my way to see the head of senior school when I saw a group of students waiting outside her office. They were deep in conversation about their new timetable, and they weren’t happy. As soon as she was free, the head asked the students and I to join her in her office. The students, all from Grade 10, launched into what was wrong with the timetable and then, unexpectedly for me, came up with what they thought was a better and less stressful model. For two or three minutes their head of school listened intently. When they paused for breath, she responded, “I get why you are unhappy, and I’m so pleased that you have come with a sensible solution and not just a problem. But any change must work for Grade 9 as well as for your grade. So, I want you to go away and look at the whole of the senior school timetable to check on the impact of your suggestion on the Grade 9 students and teachers.” The year was 2011.??

Track forward a decade, I am in an international K-12 school in NCR. This time the issue is dress code. If students have strong views about their timetable, they are passionate about justice and implied discrimination! A teacher had confronted one of the students in a corridor about what she was wearing and its suitability for school.?Their counsellor and head of school who addressed the incident with the student and teacher were approached by the student council about the public nature of the rebuke and just as importantly the vagueness and potential unfairness of the school dress code. The teacher felt aggrieved because from her perspective she was upholding what she believed to be the school’s guidance. The response of the school’s leadership after managing the incident? It asked both the student congress and the teachers to sit together and come up with an unambiguous dress code which would be owned by both students and staff.

In both schools, the impact of these individual moments was to affirm the culture of the schools which promoted the deliberate engagement of students in their school life. In the first, the students went away, they talked with and listened to their teachers and crucially got the agreement of the Grade 9 students before they returned to the leadership who promptly agreed to the timetable change. As for the International school, it kept to its promise. After consulting the student forum and undertaking staff consultations, the student congress with their partner teacher presented the revised code at a whole staff meeting. The revised dress code which with minor amendments then became school policy.

As a teacher, a leader, a school inspector and a programme and policy designer and deliverer, I love the fact that in both schools by embracing student and staff voice and involving them in finding a solution, these schools promoted critical thinking, collaboration and consensus, key qualities critical to learning and community cohesion.

My reflection question for us as educators: Could this have happened in our school or network? Can you think of a time when your school promoted and then delivered on student and staff voice. Share the occasion and the conversation with us.

For those of us who don’t have a story, reflect on any missed opportunities and on what you may want to do the next time an opportunity presents itself.?