Smart & Good High Schools - The Flippen Group

(1) scheduling a weekend retreat inviting 40 students, 15teachers, and 15 community members to develop plansfor improving student-teacher relationships and the academicclimate; (2) including students in the future hiringof high school faculty and staff; and (3) strongly encouragingall teachers to use a course evaluation instrumentto get feedback on their teaching and relationships withstudents. All these are meaningful steps toward increasingstudent voice.Other high schools now give an ExitSurvey to all graduating seniors, askingthem to rate how well the schoolmet their needs in areas such asscheduling, making connections withothers, having opportunities to participate,and planning for life after highschool. 30◆ Structure small-group discussionsof whole-school issues.One school superintendent describedhow his high school has for the past two years engagedthe entire student body in small-group, student-led discussionsof whole-school issues selected by students. The firstschoolwide dialogue focused on the question, “What canwe do to improve the school?” An all-volunteer group of110 students was trained as discussion leaders, facilitatedthe small-group dialogues, and then compiled the list ofissues of greatest concern to students. The superintendentcommented:One issue selected by students was the lack of integrationof students from other countries into our school culture.Approximately 15% of our students now come from othercountries such as Brazil, Portugal, Mexico, and Guatemala.Some students made a video based on interviews revealingstudents’ feelings of isolation in the school. One of theresults of discussing this issue was a program called Friends,in which students volunteer to buddy with students fromother countries. 31◆ Create a democratic schoolwide governance systemthat gives students a voice in decisions affecting thewhole school.As students learn to use their voice in small groups suchas academic classes, advisories, and problem-solving discussions,they develop the skills, confidence, and motivationto participate in a vitally important schoolwideprocess: democratic school government that sharesresponsibility for making the school the best ethical learningcommunity it can be.Be who you are and saywhat you feel, becausethose who mind don’tmatter, and those whomatter don’t mind.—DR. SEUSSCurrently, in most high schools, student governmentdoesn’t govern anything. It is typically an isolated groupwith no constituency. Members don’t represent anyonebut themselves; they don’t, in any systematic way, seekinput from or report back to other students. This kind ofdisconnected student government has little or no powerto influence the norms of the peer culture and solveproblems—such as academic dishonesty, social cliques,peer cruelty, bad sportsmanship, abuseof alcohol, and sexual activity—thatpeer culture.CHAPTER 3: The Ethical Learning Communitytypically have significant roots in thepeer culture.Other high schools, however, havedesigned their student government tohave real voice and real responsibilityfor the life of the school. Two ways todo that are representative democracyand direct democracy. Both of theseapproaches have the potential to solvereal school problems and influencestudent behavior by influencing the1. Representative democracy. In this model, elected representativesof each homeroom, family group, or selectedclass period (1) carry input from their group to a schoolwidemeeting of all elected representatives; (2) in collaborationwith adult school leaders, formulate action proposalsthat synthesize the different groups’ ideas; (3) bringthose proposals back to their constituencies for furtherfeedback; (4) carry that feedback into the next schoolgovernance meeting; (5) refine the action proposals; and(6) continue this process until an action plan is adoptedand implemented. Mosher, Kenney, and Garrod, in theirbook Preparing for Citizenship: Teaching Youth to Live Democratically,present a detailed, warts-and-all case study of therepresentative democratic governance model as implementedin a large high school in the Boston area. 32Representative democracy and directdemocracy are two ways to positivelyinfluence the peer culture.We visited one comprehensive high school of about 2,000students where the principal, no longer satisfied withmeeting just with class officers to get input on schoolissues, instituted a representative democratic governancestructure to create broader student participation inschool improvement—and during its first year challengedstudent representatives to use the new system to develop a45Smart & Good High Schools