I made a parenting mistake today with my middle school daughter. I’ve made this mistake before. I’ll probably make it again. 

She got into the car after a long day of both school and over two hours of rehearsal for the school play and my brain went straight to this question and I couldn’t stop it from leaving my mouth – “How was school today?”. You can probably guess her answer – “fine”. 

At schools we sometimes make this same mistake when we check in with our students about how their classes are going and how they feel about the school in general. Even that student who ended up in my office, the dreaded principal’s office, because they were disrupting class and/or failing the class, would say the same thing when I asked how classes were going – “fine”. 

At the Social Justice Humanitas Academy, a high school in Los Angeles where I was previously a principal and teacher, we took this as a challenge to create a space for us to ask better questions to get feedback from our students, but to also help them generate better answers. Student Steering Committee came out of this combined need for feedback and to empower students by building their capacity to give that feedback. 

To start the process, SJHA teachers generated a set of specific questions for each grade level of students. These questions came from issues that teachers saw students facing regularly, from students themselves through conversations, or just from teacher curiosity. A question might be “What makes you feel safe or unsafe while you are at school?” or “How do you feel about the homework and classwork load in your classes this past semester?”. For the questions to really work, they needed to be authentic and open-ended. 

These questions were presented to students in their grade-alike advisory classes where students chose peers to facilitate discussions on the questions while teachers were not in the room (don’t worry – they were right outside with the ability to look in the window). These student facilitators would take notes on how others in the class responded. In most cases, 12th grade peer mentors would help 9th grade advisory student leaders to facilitate.

Advisory leaders were then invited to an after school meeting with their teachers (pizza and drinks included) to talk about the results. There were a variety of protocols used in this part of the work, but it was commonly a “fish bowl” discussion with just the students on the inside while teachers sat outside to listen and take their own notes. Roles would then switch and teachers would talk about what they heard and/or ask clarifying questions to the students.

This process not only gave both the teachers and students a lot of very helpful data, but also helped all of the students move beyond “fine” to deeper responses that led to collaborative agreements about how teachers and students could work together. After having several chances to participate in Student Steering Committee, students often shifted from responses like “fine” and “I’m bored” to statements like “I have trouble engaging in class when I don’t know why we are doing a specific worksheet” or “It would be really helpful if teachers would stagger due dates for big assignments so they are not due on the same day.” At the same time, teachers were able to shift from discounting certain student opinions because those opinions only belonged to that one student who was always in trouble to hearing how there are patterns that most students are seeing in their classes that could be fixed.

“As a principal, Student Steering Committee gave me data that I could actually use to support our students and teachers directly…”

As a principal, Student Steering Committee gave me data that I could actually use to support our students and teachers directly focused on challenges they already opened up and discussed together. Their needs were not intended to align with goals and outcomes generated outside of our building. Those who were closest to the students, their teachers, were able to support an experience where actual concerns that they saw could be addressed in a way that was productive and safe for their classroom communities. There was certainly work that had to be done to build a culture that was ready for these conversations – early iterations did lead to some hurt feelings and tears. However, both what we learned about our students’ experiences and how our students learned to advocate for themselves made Student Steering Committee and incredible experience.

And, if you’re wondering, I am doing a better job at asking both of my daughters questions like “What made school fun or challenging today?” or “What is something that you learned or improved on today?”. I get much better answers to those questions, especially if they’re paired with picking up boba.

If you would like to learn more about Student Steering Committee you can reach out to Jeff at jeff@teacherpowered.org or current TPS Ambassador and SJHA teacher Kaitlin Smith at Kaitlin@teacherpowered.org.