September 2016 Student Organization Feature — YouthTruth!
There are many organizations similar to Student Voice who share a common mission: to make sure all students can have a voice in their education. As a part of Student Voice’s new Monday night programming structure, we are working to feature the work that these organizations are doing. We are continuing to build our network and recognize just how valuable and important other organization’s work is and as a result, we hope to make you, our followers, more informed and aware of all the groundbreaking work being completed in education spaces throughout the US.
YouthTruth is an organization based in San Francisco, California that was founded in 2008 to provide students with useful tools to effectively communicate with their school administrations. According to their organization’s mission statement, “YouthTruth harnesses student and stakeholder perceptions to help educators accelerate improvements. Through validated survey instruments and tailored advisory services, YouthTruth partners with districts to enhance learning for all students.”
We sat down with members of the external marketing and student coordination team to learn more about the work that YouthTruth is doing in schools today. Here is what they had to say:
SV: What does the concept of student voice mean to your organization?:
YT: Student voice provides powerful insights that are uniquely grounded in the day-to-day experiences of the very people education programs are created for. It means that students are active partners in their education and have mechanisms that meaningfully incorporate their feedback. We believe that student voice is a critical, yet often overlooked lever for change that can help drive meaningful improvements in school systems.
SV: How does your organization help students?
YT: YouthTruth is all about student voice for school improvement. We partner with districts and networks to administer anonymous surveys for students in grades 3–12, school staff, and parents/guardians on the topics that matter most to creating learning environments where students can succeed. Students give feedback on a variety of aspects of their school experience including student engagement, academic rigor, relationships with teachers and peers, and school and classroom culture.Our online, interactive reporting platform and rapid turnaround of results allows educators to make meaning out of the feedback data to drive real-time change. We believe that listening to students and stakeholders is not only the right thing to do, but the smart thing to do. Since student perceptions are empirically linked to academic outcomes, it’s smart for educators to know what students are experiencing.
SV: If you could pick one to three primary rights from the Student Bill of Rights that your organization addresses, which ones would you choose?
YT: Safety and Wellbeing, Diversity and Inclusivity, and Institutional Agency
SV: Can you share a story that exemplifies what you are doing to provide students with greater agency in their education and community?
YT: Yeah! There is a particular story that we all really admire and it gives a perspective of student voice from an administrator’s point of view. Check out what our partner Nikki Hinostro, Director at High Tech Middle, has to say about her experiencing using YouthTruth data to elevate student voice:
Creating a loving space for kids is an important part of running a school. One of the ways we ensure that the students at High Tech High know that they are important to our school community is by listening to them. Embracing the opinions of students creates a stronger culture, one in which students feel comfortable to try new things, to stumble and ask for help, and where students are encouraged to share ideas and solve problems together. However, figuring out a way to gather those opinions and implement changes in a meaningful way has taken time. It required us to evaluate and even change our school culture.
At High Tech High, reflection is an important part of our culture. We are constantly reflecting on ways that we can better support our students. We have found that student voice often gives us the greatest insight on what needs exist. However, embracing student voice has certain risks. We risk knowing what students really think, which can be difficult to hear and is often times humbling. This has also created a shift in our traditional paradigm. I experienced my own paradigm shift as well. I recognized that if you’re going to grow, if you’re going to improve your school, embracing the honesty of student voice is a risk you have to be willing to take.
I still remember the day I received a text from one of my students, “Q,” that said, “We need to talk, NOW!”
As a school administrator, this text made me worry. When we sat down, Q told me he wanted to talk about Boys’ Group — a supportive group of students, teachers and faculty that allowed young men to come together and talk about their feelings and the issues they’re facing in a safe place. My conversation with Q validated the importance of this group and the benefit it offered to our community. By listening to Q, I knew that we needed to ensure that Boys’ Group continued in the new school year.
Student voices offer an honest look at the experience each student is having in school. We’re running schools with authentic, real world projects and programs aimed at helping students succeed — but what do students really think about those programs? Are students actually being helped?
To answer those questions, we need to create different spaces to hear from our students as individuals, as groups, and as a whole. While we work daily to maximize opportunities for students to share their voice and for educators to listen, we are constantly looking for ways to improve. Some students are more comfortable sharing within our school community, and others are not. The students from which we don’t often hear are often the ones that need to be heard the most. Providing each student with a forum in which they are comfortable is important.
For over four years, we’ve used YouthTruth to survey student opinions on a variety of topics — so we have a pulse on the experiences of all students and not just the ones texting us or visiting our offices. It’s also allowed us to know where to focus, where to dig deeper and ask more questions as well as where we can celebrate success. It started as a pilot with my team promising to review the results with students and staff. Working with YouthTruth has allowed us to shrink the mountain of data into logical and concise information. It has helped us have some of the tough conversations about how we can improve.
We shared the data with our students and asked them to work with the administrators to come up with ideas for improving.
Boys’ Group had previously been an informal meeting. After seeing survey results based on how young men perceived their relationships with other students as well as teachers, we recognized that Boys’ Group should be a formalized offering for students.
It was that same collaborative approach that led to the creation of Black Student Voices. After seeing some differences in the survey data among our black students we recognized that this was an area where we could improve opportunities for more students to be heard.
But the biggest — and most important — change that has come from empowering students to share their experience has been within the students. They are more open, more confident when it comes to speaking their minds, and more empowered in their own education.
That’s why the conversation with Q is so important to me. A student was actively coming to me to engage in an open conversation. And he was comfortable enough to honestly discuss an important issue that directly affected his education.
If you think about it, in our traditional classrooms, students have always been the receptive party. They receive the lessons that their teachers give them. They follow the schedules that the school administrators set for them. They operate within the school experience designed before students take their first steps on campus. When we truly value and listen to students’ voices, they are no longer passive participants: they are invested partners in their own education.
We can, and should, invite students to shape their learning experiences and help create a safe and loving learning environment. Empowering students is central to our work at High Tech High schools and, I hope, this will become the norm at more schools.
To learn more about YouthTruth and its resources, visit: http://www.youthtruthsurvey.org/
