Collaborating to Activate Student-led Partnerships for Change: From Voice, to Advocacy, to Action
In March of 2020, a dual pandemic of COVID-19 and racial injustice plagued our nation (Martínez et al., 2021). School buildings shuttered in response to a global health crisis, while simultaneously anti-Black and anti-Asian hate ignited more crime and conflict nationwide. As students watched these violent events unfold from their homes, some wondered about the injustices in their own communities and what they could do to advocate for justice and equity.
Our story begins in the San Gabriel Valley of Southern California, where a group of high school students (including the first author of this blog) advocated for systematic implementation of anti-racist pedagogy and conversations within classrooms. The Azusa Unified School District (AUSD) enrolls 7,187 PK-12th grade students. 97% of the student body identifies as Hispanic, with 24.4% of all students identifying as multilingual learners and 77% as socio-economically disadvantaged. To advocate for anti-racist, and culturally relevant curriculum and instruction, students partnered with their district’s teachers and administrators, as well as Diversify Our Narrative (DON) which is a national student organization co-founded by two Stanford University graduates, Jasmine Nguyen and Katelin Zhou.
Partnering with teachers and administrators and organizing through grassroots community in the Azusa Unified School District (AUSD), the students enacted changes in their education system through their own voice and agency. We share a collective story from our experience in 2020 to help other students, educational leaders, and researchers consider possibilities for partnership and inclusive pathways for amplifying student voice toward systems-level change.
Collaborating to Support Student Agency
Research shows that opportunities for students to engage their voice in education can not only improve academic achievement and social-emotional wellness, but also lead to improving educational policies and practices (Holquist, 2019). Survey data show most secondary students in California currently lack the opportunity to participate or make decisions that impact their education (California Department of Education, 2019). Schools can achieve educational equity when students are given leadership and decision-making opportunities to co-create changes in education systems, and we demonstrate how this was possible in AUSD (Equity Accelerator, 2022).
A co-creation perspective provides students with an opportunity to add voice, value, and decision-making regarding their educational experiences. This requires “a shift from doing to or making decisions for students, to co-creating educational experiences with students” (Equity Accelerator, 2022). Below we describe how change in the AUSD was possible through student agency and advocacy work, partnered with the support from district leadership and student-led organizations.
Co-creation of Student Agency and System-wide Change in the Azusa Unified School District (AUSD)
1) A student-led campaign to envision changes in education
In the spring of 2020, students in the AUSD launched a “Diversify Our Narrative” (DON) campaign and established a local chapter. The DON, as a national student organization, provides resources for high schoolers to organize student-led movements towards adopting anti-racist, anti-oppressive pedagogies and diversifying classroom reading materials authored by Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) (Diversify Our Narrative, 2024). For instance, learning more about the contributions of the historical leaders reflective of their diverse community, including Larry Ikneon, Delores Huerta, and Cesar Chavez, was especially important for students in the AUSD.
As they engaged in such advocacy efforts, students met with trusted teachers to learn about the school district’s political landscape and discuss possible approaches to garner support from the district leadership. Students first sent a petition and survey to their high school teachers and reached out to the Board of Education members to explain their visions for change. Equipped with resources provided by the DON movement, students requested the required reading of at least one BIPOC-authored book in every high school English course in the AUSD.
2) A safe space for students and the district leadership to engage in conversations
In response to these advocacy efforts, the school board and district leaders met with the students to learn more about their initiative, discuss the ways in which the district has been addressing systemic racism, and start the conversation on implementing the Ethnic Studies curriculum in classrooms. District leadership committed to advancing the ideas by co-creating an action plan with the students. As a result, a group of students regularly met with the district’s Superintendent and Assistant Superintendent of Educational Services to engage in continuous dialogue about the district’s curricular implementation and students’ classroom experiences.
By providing a safe space for students to share their perspectives about the implementation process, the district could respond to students’ desires for deeper relevancy and cultural responsiveness in English Language Arts (ELA) curricular readings. The continuous conversations between students and the district leadership provided ample opportunities for co-creating the Ethnic Studies courses and engaging in deeper discussions about what changes need to happen in classrooms and schools.
3) Partnership with students, teachers, and the district leaders to co-create changes
The district leadership invited the students and their English Language Arts (ELA) teachers to a meeting during which students presented and explained their ideas for implementing anti-racist and anti-oppressive curriculum. This created an opportunity for teachers to learn more about the students’ experiences in classrooms and engage in authentic dialogue. In the fall of 2020, district leadership continued to meet with interested ELA teachers to reflect on the meeting with the students. The teachers supported the students’ work and felt especially proud of their students for demonstrating their learning through eloquent, organized, and substantive arguments. The teachers then planned their next steps: working with students to co-construct, revise, and select new curricular material.
The team of teachers committed to gathering suggestions and feedback on book selections through surveys to all teachers and students. Within a month of the meetings, a diverse set of books were selected, based on recommendations from students and teachers. These books were purchased by the district for all ELA classes in the AUSD. Evidence from classroom walkthroughs and informal conversations with teachers and students showed a deeper level of student engagement with the diverse selections of books, as well as teacher’ satisfaction.
4) Taking action and furthering the work
The continued student advocacy work led to the implementation of three new courses in the fall of 2022: 9th grade Ethnic Studies Literature; Race and Gender Ethnic Studies, and Ethnic Studies 101, a course in the Early College Program in which students earn dual credit for both high school and college credit. Along with the California state’s Ethnic Studies graduation requirement, the district sought to enact students’ vision for adopting culturally sustaining pedagogy in classrooms. Substantive evidence in other school districts has also shown the positive effect of Ethnic Studies implementation related to improved academic outcomes, as well as an increased level of connectedness to the school community when compared to traditional 9th grade courses (Bonilla, et al., 2021; Sleeter, 2011).
To address the students’ desire for continuous conversations regarding issues of race, diversity, equity, and inclusion in the community, the district established the Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Committee, composed of students, parents, staff, teachers, and administrators. The purpose of the committee is to further the student and district’s work by bringing together the voices of the whole community and discuss DEI efforts in the district. The committee also examines district perception data from surveys like the Youth Truth Survey, with a focus specifically on disaggregated qualitative and quantitative student data findings representative of the themes of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Additional Recommendations for Educational Leaders
When educators invite students to participate as decision-makers in their educational experiences, learning environments are designed with students at the center, providing an opportunity to increase student engagement and agency in their learning (Benner et al., 2019; Conner et al., 2022). Students, teachers, and educational leaders can take a critical look at current educational structures, policies, and practices to determine the ways in which students are involved in decision-making processes.
In advancing this work to allow greater student agency in school systems, equity-focused educators can consider the extent to which they:
● Commit to engaging and elevating student perspectives in decision-making processes, co-constructing changes in policy and practice;
● Support professional learning on culturally responsive pedagogy and anti-biased practices, and reflect on practices leading to systemic and equitable changes;
● Implement student perception surveys to determine student climate and classroom learning conditions that promote equity (e.g., Youthtruth; PERTS Elevate); and
● Align fiscal resources with equitable outcomes and include goals and outcome metrics in Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP), Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC), School Plan for Student Achievement (SPSA) for accountability.
Collective Reflection on the Journey to Make Change
Our story demonstrates how student voice and agency can be a powerful catalyst for policy change on issues of equity and access in the school community. When students advocate for change in their learning environments, via public forums or classroom surveys, the adults in the system must be willing to actively listen and act. By providing the time, space, support, and partnership, students and adults can co-construct meaningful opportunities that will serve as a catalyst for substantive change in a district’s effort to improve equitable outcomes for all learners.
School leaders can facilitate transformational change by prioritizing, elevating, and honoring the voices of the students and co-construct a more diverse curriculum and course offerings reflective of the identities, races, ethnicities, cultures, and languages of the student community. When school and district staff engage in dialogue with students to center the narratives of students and activate student agency, students and staff can collaboratively identify and address inequities that lead to lasting systemic change.
About the authors:
Althea Ito (She/Her) is a lifelong student, storyteller, and activist. Through her activism in organizations like Diversify Our Narrative, Althea has been deeply involved in the growing crusade to implement racial justice and critical pedagogy in classrooms. With her endless passion for civil rights and philosophy, she believes that discussion and education of race in the classroom have immense potential to combat racism and create a more empathetic, understanding group of individuals. Althea served as a California Student Senate Member representing the 22nd District and is currently attending the University of California, Berkeley.
Dayna Mitchell, Ed.D., (She/Her) has served PK-12 public education for 30 years as a High School Teacher and Administrator, Middle School Principal, and Assistant Superintendent of Educational Services in the Azusa Unified School District. Using an equity lens, Dr. Mitchell developed a district-wide professional learning system focused on continuous cycles of improvement designed to increase student achievement, equity, and engagement in order to close opportunity gaps and accelerate learning for all students, with an emphasis on multilingual learners. Dr. Mitchell is an English Learner Specialist for the Center for Equity for English Learners (CEEL) at Loyola Marymount University and is an Assistant Professor, Educational Leadership, CSU Pomona (dlmitchell@cpp.edu).
Emily Southerton, Ph.D. (She/Her) is a recent graduate of Stanford’s Graduate School of Education. With a background in teaching middle school, she now studies the development of youth agency and social justice efforts to understand how they relate to educational technologies and curricula. She is the creator of the Poet Warriors Project, a digital publishing platform that amplifies the voices of on-the-ground and historically underrepresented student writers: www.poetwarriorsproject.com.
References
Benner, M., Brown, C., & Jeffrey, A. (2019). Elevating Student Voice in Education. Center for American Progress.
Bonilla, S., Dee, T. S., & Penner, E. K. (2021). Ethnic studies increases longer-run academic engagement and attainment. PNAS, 118(37), 1–10.
California Department of Education. (2019). California Healthy Kids Survey. https://www.cde.ca.gov/ls/he/at/chks.asp
Conner, J., Posner, M., & Nsowaa, B. (2022). The Relationship Between Student Voice and Student Engagement in Urban High Schools. The Urban Review, 54, 755–774.
Diversify Our Narrative. (2024). Our Mission. https://www.diversifyournarrative.com/
Equity Accelerator. (2022). Elevating Student Voice, Agency, and Co-Creation. WestEd.
Holquist, S. (2019). Consider Student Voices: Striving to Understand Student Experiences to Support Learning and Growth. Regional Educational Laboratory. https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs/regions/pacific/blogs/blog19_consider-student-voices.asp
Martínez, M. E., Nodora, J. N., & Carvajal-Carmona, L. G. (2021). The dual pandemic of COVID-19 and systemic inequities in US Latino communities. Cancer, 127(10), 1548–1550.
Sleeter, C. E. (2011). The Academic and Social Value of Ethnic Studies. National Education Association.
