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| Student panel helps Middle-High Forum teams think about issues in their schools |
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When you ask students what improvements their schools have made lately, you don’t necessarily expect expanding class times to top the list. But lengthening each period, from just under an hour, to an hour and a half, was one of a range of innovations students cited during a panel discussion at The Consortium for Public Education’s latest Middle-High Forum. Among others: providing time and opportunities for student internships and job-shadowing; creating classroom leadership roles for seniors; launching mentoring programs; beginning a school Crime Watch club; and making some courses available online.
Tapping students for feedback on problems or new programs is a relatively recent trend in education, but has long been a feature of The Consortium’s work and is a current emphasis in the Forum, which brings together teams of educators from 15 districts to improve the experience in their middle and high schools. Participating teams, which include teachers and administrators from multiple schools within each district, receive Forum support and coaching to identify problems affecting academic performance and to design, implement and evaluate interventions.
A number of innovations mentioned among the 10 students on the panel representing five of the Forum’s districts arose from the work of their districts’ teams. Among them were Greensburg-Salem High School’s peer mentoring program and a senior assistantship at Chartiers Valley High School. Both programs won praise for offering additional support to students who need it and for affording upperclassmen opportunities to develop leadership skills and help peers.
Student panelists
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For example, Greg, a senior at Chartiers Valley said he enjoys the leadership aspects of the assistantship he’s serving in an advanced geometry class and finds “it’s my favorite period of the day. It’s nice to help someone who’s having trouble and it’s also a good review for me.”
Also winning accolades from students were various initiatives to connect seniors with internship and job-shadowing opportunities or at least to provide scheduling flexibility for them to pursue such options on their own. Several students said they had personally benefited from these programs, in some cases if only by finding out early that they were not as interested in a particular career path as they imagined once they’d had exposure in an actual work setting.
Students gave mixed reports on how much they believe their ideas are included in decision-making in their schools and districts. Some said they thought they’re concerns had been taken to heart at the school level. For example, Joe, a West Mifflin student said “I think our school listens to us.” He noted, for example, that concerns raised about safety resulted recently in a Crime Watch club to help identify problems and “make the school a safe environment.”
Others, however, felt there was a need for more communication. For example, one student said, “I think teachers and administrators need to be more open and I think there needs to be more understanding of what’s on our minds, rather than just setting rules.”
Specific issues over which several said students had little influence were budgetary and policy matters.
In addition to Greensburg-Salem, Chartiers Valley and West Mifflin, students from Elizabeth Forward School District and Laurel Highlands School District participated.
Middle-High Forum members examine their work from the perspectives of different audiences
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