“Miss, why do we even bother to tell you what we think? You’re going to do whatever you want anyways.” The student smiled, then returned to the socialization of the high school cafeteria, but her words struck me to my core. Months later, I was still thinking about that comment when spring turned to summer, and we had a chance to catch our breaths. Although it was said in jest and in response to one of my, “What do you think about … ?” questions, I was haunted by the heartbreaking realization that my students don’t think that their voice matters in their school. Not our school—their school.

Last July, I sat in a hotel conference room in Louisville, KY, surrounded by secondary school leaders from across the U.S. at the NASSP Education Summit. The most powerful thing I heard that week was a statistic from the NASSP Survey of America’s School Leaders and High School Students: Only 28% of high school students report their opinion is represented “a great deal” at the school level. I knew that if my own students were sitting beside me at this conference, they would echo this perspective. I could think of a thousand anecdotes to support this data, and it wasn’t something I was proud of.

We are the experts, we have the training, so we call the shots and make the decisions. But often missing in the equation are the students. As educators, we have a tendency to make decisions for them—assuming that we know what is in their best interest—instead of with them, including their perspective and their voice in our work. At the Summit, I knew that I had found my mission for the year: to ensure that student voice was at the center of everything we do.

From left, the leadership team at Cranston High School East: Isa Tejada, assistant principal; Paul Depalma, assistant principal; Kristin Ward, assistant principal; Tom Barbieri, principal; Kaitlin Hitchings, assistant principal for academic affairs; and Jodi Kopecky, assistant principal for special and related services.

Student Leadership

As one of the largest high schools in our state, with approximately 1,600 students, one of our greatest strengths is our diversity and inclusiveness. Our students celebrate their community and its cultural richness and value each other’s unique experiences. I am especially proud of our school’s student leadership cohort, a group started this past summer to bring together students from all aspects of our school community as one representative voice. This group is different from the elected student government or student council positions, which tend to attract outgoing, high-achieving students who are involved in a variety of school activities.

The student leadership cohort is a true melting pot of students who represent our entire student body. Members of this group are either self-nominated, staff-​nominated, or peer-nominated; anyone a member of the school community believes would be a positive, supportive representative of the student body can be nominated. Ultimately, the leadership group serves as an advisory board to the administration.

Finding the kids was the easy part. Fully embedding the group into the culture of the school was more challenging. Many times, we were in the weeds with an idea or a decision and had to remind ourselves to take a hard stop and bring the kids into the conversation. Eventually, we decided to have the group meet weekly during our 25-minute advisory block. We enlisted a teacher to serve as a faculty adviser, and we spent time in the summer creating goals and group norms and establishing priorities. It took work to prove to the students that we were serious about having their voice at the forefront of decisions at the school, and that we were invested in this process and committed to it. The first few discussions/decisions were more surface-level (e.g., organizing homecoming celebrations and painting the bathrooms), but as we continued to build trust and rapport, we involved the voice of our leadership group in more meaningful decisions (e.g., curriculum work, graduation requirements, and budgetary spending).

Reinventing Senior Portfolio

As part of the Rhode Island Department of Education high school graduation requirements, all seniors must present a portfolio prior to earning their diploma. The state guidelines for these portfolios are somewhat loose and differ among school districts. For many years, the senior portfolio in our district has been a scripted presentation of artifacts (e.g., “for standard seven I completed the ball drop project in geometry in 10th grade”), based on common assessments completed by students over their four years of high school.

After two years of a waiver for the portfolio due to the pandemic, we knew that the time was right to revise the expectations and requirements. To that end, we brought the seniors from our student leadership cohort together for a roundtable discussion with the superintendent, assistant superintendent, and several other district leaders to brainstorm ideas for this revision. The meeting was student-led and gave a voice to our students at a district level that they had not experienced before.

As the conversation progressed, the students shared important insights. For instance, they wanted the portfolio presentation to be more personalized and more reflective. They wanted a chance to really talk about their educational journey as a story—where they came from, what they learned, and how it would inform where they go next. It was profound watching them become empowered to advocate for themselves and their peers. As administrators, we accepted their suggestions with open arms—even though it was a dramatic departure from the current process.

That April, my colleagues and I sat on panels eagerly awaiting the “new and improved” portfolio presentations designed by our students, and they were beautiful indeed. The students told their stories in poignant and thoughtful ways and with a maturity that exceeded all expectations. They were proud to have had a voice in their graduation requirements, and it showed.

Credit Recovery

In a post-pandemic world, our school, like so many others around the U.S., quickly realized that our students had not performed as well as we had hoped during their time learning from home. Many of our students continued to work to support their families, or cared for siblings or grandparents, or did not have safe, quiet, internet-accessible places to complete their classes. The trauma of these times was real, but the fast snap back to the expectations of graduation weighed heavily.

Over the past few years, even before the pandemic, we had created after-school credit-recovery programs, weekend classes, and every prescriptive idea we could think of. What we hadn’t done for our under-credited students—those who had suffered so greatly in the past two years—was ask them what they needed. No wonder they didn’t attend these credit-recovery classes. The programs had been designed for what we as adults thought was best and not what would work best for the students.

To improve what we offered, I carved out a full week where I did nothing but meet with these juniors and seniors. As I sat with each of them, I heard stories that humbled me to my core. The 17-year-old who worked overnight shifts delivering for Amazon because his parent was unable to work, or the senior who slept on the couches of classmates for the whole semester because she was afraid to go home and potentially spread infection to vulnerable family members. I asked each of them what they needed from us to be successful, and what would help them earn these credits to get their diploma. There were no perfect answers, no ideal solutions for these kids who had to work twice as hard to get to the finish line. Yet slowly but surely, we built a program to get them back on track.

The strongest sentiment that came out of these meetings was that with everything else they were dealing with in their lives, our students were doing everything they possibly could to be in the building for 6.5 hours each day. They couldn’t come at night, or on the weekends—they had family and work obligations that their survival depended on.

So, using our ESSER funding, we created a Credit Recovery Academy that occurred during the school day. Anytime a student had a test and finished early, had a substitute teacher, had lunch or advisory or came in early, we were there, with Chromebooks and snacks in hand, ready to get to work. If we could optimize the time that they were with us and spend every second that the kids were in the building working toward their diploma, I was confident that we could get them through.

After a year of prioritizing students’ voices, Hitchings has seen profound changes in school culture.

Just these conversations alone—these opportunities to share their stories and tell us what would help—changed the perspective of so many of our students. The glimmer of hope and the knowledge that we hadn’t given up on them pushed them to not give up either. In October of last school year, we had 128 seniors who were in danger of not graduating on time. By June, we had 38 students who did not complete their requirements. We didn’t hand out unearned credits; the students worked harder than I ever imagined they could. They were driven by the idea that their voice and their ideas directly led to this program that was going to help them graduate. They showed us resilience in its truest form, and once again, we saw the value of student voice in education.

Looking Forward

It is easy to pay lip service to the idea that student voice matters in school, but putting that notion into practice is more challenging. After a year of prioritizing our students’ voices, I have seen profound changes in our school culture. The motivation and enthusiasm for learning has increased. School spirit and school pride have blossomed; events that had often been sparsely attended are now packed.

Our students have also started a school spirit club—something that if you had asked me about a year ago, I would have never believed. Our attendance rate is 30% higher than it was last year, and our students report wanting to come to school every day. While these changes can be attributed to many factors, including our fantastic teachers, I believe that by listening to our students and truly putting their voices at the center of our work, we have changed the trajectory of our school community for the better.

Kaitlin Hitchings is the assistant principal for academic affairs at Cranston High School East in Cranston, RI, and an executive board member of the Rhode Island Association of School Principals.