What does it take for students to truly lead school transformation efforts? How do adults need to shift their mindsets and behaviors to enable students to lead in meaningful, non-tokenizing ways? As equity-centered learning facilitators and through Street Data: A Next-Generation Model for Equity, Pedagogy, and School Transformation (Corwin, 2021), we are both very invested in finding answers to those questions. For two years, Shane partnered with district leaders at the Abbotsford School District in a diverse suburb of Vancouver, British Columbia, which led to an initiative to enhance student voice in schools. In those first two years, Shane sought to cultivate the conditions for adults to listen deeply and responsively to student voices and create true change in schools as a result.
The Abbotsford leadership team has had a long-standing commitment to creating equitable schools where all children thrive. Despite their dedication, and like many other school systems, they noticed a significant gap between their intentions and their actual impact. The team was deeply invested in using student voice as a key lever for change, but in practice it was often absent from their work. At best, some educators were holding listening sessions with students to understand their experiences, but little change happened as a result. It was almost as if prioritizing student voice was a transactional experience that was checked off on a list, what we might call “doing equity,” where efforts to increase inclusivity were a series of tasks to be completed rather than a whole system transformation.
Led by Dr. Nathan Ngieng, the deputy superintendent of schools, in collaboration with district and school site leaders, the executive leadership team ultimately decided to take a critical lens toward how student voice could better guide their school transformation efforts. They asked: What would it look like for us to move from espousing our commitment to prioritizing student voice to finding a way that systematically centers and awakens not just voice but student agency? The story of the Abbotsford transformation journey illustrates what goes right in schools when educators are intentional about the process of awakening and honoring the agency of students and themselves.
Amplifying Voice, Creating Agency
There are many elements to letting students lead transformative change. What feels most important to illustrate here is the process and pedagogical practices that created the conditions for authentic student leadership in this district. It was important that this not become another performative or tokenizing chapter in a series of initiatives that aim to center student voices while erecting barriers to real change. To safeguard against this possibility, we designed the Abbotsford Student Voice Community of Practice, and each learning session within it, around the student agency framework that Shane created in Street Data. This framework unfolds around four domains—identity, belonging, mastery, and efficacy (see fig. 1). Our goal was to build a dynamic and radically inclusive learning space at Abbotsford where student leaders would develop a strong sense of voice and agency over time.
The Abbotsford Student Voice Community of Practice evolved over two years. At the start of each year, Shane facilitated a daylong, in-person retreat to build a sense of community, interconnectedness across schools, and shared purpose. Each of the eight participating high schools sent teams of six to eight student leaders, supported by two adult liaisons (typically a principal or assistant principal and a teacher leader), to these gatherings. This structure afforded opportunities to pull aside the adults and coach them on how to decenter themselves as experts and center student voice while providing gentle guidance and facilitation of the process.
The experiential purpose of these retreats was to create an agentic learning and bonding experience for students, with opportunities for long-lasting joy. We wanted the community of practice to feel like a sanctuary space, especially for students at the margins who were struggling to feel belonging at school. The technical purpose of the retreats was to scaffold student teams into initiating localized, homegrown inquiry projects that would allow them to bring true change to their schools.
After each retreat, we met with the student voice teams via Zoom every six weeks to help them build their projects. We took them through the Equity Transformation Cycle, the central tool that Shane developed in Street Data. Students gathered data from their peers and uncovered the “hidden stories” in this data to reimagine a current system or practice in their schools. In one school, this looked like students “pushing in” to professional learning spaces to advise teachers on desired shifts to classroom environment (such as lighting or desk configurations) and pedagogy (such as grading policies or cultural connections). In another school, students prototyped a new, more flexible “timetable” (bell schedule) to bring to the school board. Toward the end of the school year, we held another in-person retreat with all 50-plus leaders in the district, in which teams shared their learning journeys, offering concrete plans and recommendations to transform their schools.
A combination of in-person and virtual convenings that took place every 8–10 weeks across the school year allowed for pedagogical experiences to cultivate students’ increasing sense of agency, working through the four elements of the student agency framework:
Identity
Self-exploration and storytelling matters
Early sessions included a strong focus on identity and storytelling. In the launch retreats, Shane tried to create space for students to explore who they are and what matters to them as individuals. This began with an in-person launch retreat with students and staff that included cross-school community circles around the prompts, Who are you?, What’s on your heart?, and What’s driving you to be a part of this student voice community? Later, students participated in “artifact circles” where they reflected in the circle on a particular item or keepsake, such as a photo, song, or object, that represented courage for them.
Our goal was to build a dynamic and radically inclusive learning space, in which student leaders would develop a strong sense of voice and agency.
Belonging
Collective experience matters
Part of instilling joy in the Abbotsford community was recognizing how many students felt alone and isolated in their daily schooling experiences. Many classrooms offered learners little time for meaningful collaboration and dialogue, and we wanted to build a countervailing space in which student voices and exchanges around ideas became the centerpiece. We also wanted to create a safe and brave space in which every learner could say, “I feel seen and loved here.”
To meet these larger purposes, the in-person retreats included team development activities around questions like, How do our schools define success? and What do we believe about success? One activity included affinity groups, in which students self-organized by racial/ethnic affinities and drew on practices and ways of being from their own communities that they would like to see more of in schools. In Year 2, Shane incorporated “intergenerational” circles, in which students who participated in the first year of the project, now in Grade 12, entered circle discussions with new Grade 10 and 11 students to reflect on three questions:
- Who are you becoming as a leader?
- What have you learned about change through this process?
- What have you learned about yourself?
Mastery
Voice and choice matter
From the beginning of this initiative, we aimed to highlight the British Columbia Critical Thinking Competency, which states that:
People who think critically and reflectively are analytical and investigative, willing to question and challenge their own thoughts, ideas, and assumptions and challenge those of others. They reflect on the information they receive through observation, experience, and other forms of communication to solve problems, design products, understand events, and address issues. A critical thinker uses their ideas, experiences, and reflections to set goals, make judgments, and refine their thinking (British Columbia Ministry of Education).
We wanted students to center their own voices and lived experiences in their change projects and student teams to identify and begin to solve real-world problems in their schools. We wanted student teams to engage in what Jamila calls “radical dreaming” about what their schools could look and feel like if they were truly student-centered (Dugan, 2022). We wanted them to shape a compelling question to research and then gather street data to uncover underlying stories and truths about student experiences. Here are a few examples of inquiry questions the teams developed:
- How can we incorporate more think-time in our classes so students can process what they are being taught?
- How does bullying affect a student’s school experience, and what can be done to solve this issue?
- How can we change the grading system to make it more accessible and less demeaning toward students’ mental health?
Credit: Photo Courtesy of Nathan Ngieng
Student voice leaders from Robert Bateman Secondary School create a “skinny action plan” for transforming their school.
Efficacy
Collective action matters
Finally, for students to authentically lead, they needed to move from inquiry into action. The time invested in developing students’ sense of identity and belonging, coupled with the intentional shaping of local inquiry questions, served as the foundation for students to take collective action. We tried to ensure that student teams had clear pathways to action by working with the adult liaisons, as well as district staff (the superintendent and assistant superintendent) to leverage their influence in service of students’ inquiry projects.
The final public learning days at the end of each year created a critical space for adult listening and accountability to students. Teams presented their findings and recommendations to small groups of district and site administrators and teachers, making asks of these positional leaders and fielding questions. Through this process, students learned to use their voices in powerful ways and to make evidence-based claims, rooted in the voices of their peers.
When Students Lead Change
It’s been a year since ending the formal facilitation of the community of practice in Abbotsford, and it’s been incredible to see the emergence of student agency in so many unexpected ways across the project and still today. Students have reflected in powerful ways on the work they did and the skills and capacities they have built. One learner said, “The empathy interview work we did to look at the experience of international students [in our school] was impactful. It helped to inform and shape the work we are doing this year.” Another noted, “It was important to be able to network with other schools. I felt empowered that I could share my ideas and stories with my peers.”
Credit: Photo courtesy of Shane Safir
Student voice leaders chat with a provincial education leader as they prepare to speak at the British Columbia School Superintendent’s Association Conference.
In addition to growing the capacity of student participants, the project has led the Abbotsford leadership team to be more intentional about integrating student voices into policy decisions and reinforcing students’ belief that they can make a difference. For example, the Abbotsford School Board (the equivalent of a school district in the U.S.) has had a longstanding commitment to work toward improving educational partnerships with Indigenous communities in the region. The legacy of assimilationist schools meant that the voices of Indigenous students and families were rarely, if ever, taken into account when developing school policies. To address these issues, an Enhancement Agreement was made with the local First Nations community to hold the school board accountable to tangibly moving toward repair and reconciliation. The agreement includes goals, policies, and practices that are to be implemented in Abbotsford schools. While various forms of listening sessions had been held in the past, it wasn’t always clear what role the voices of students could play in enhancing the agreement. In concert with the student voice project we had been leading, this year, the Abbotsford School Board leadership team decided to work with the First Nations community differently. Previously, students’ needs were discussed without their presence. Now, students are front and center, providing input on changes and witnessing their suggestions being incorporated at the sharing and signing of the agreement.
One area of importance in the Enhancement Agreement for students was the negative impact of having support staff (a role incorporating student guidance, emotional support, and relationship restoration) move between campuses every year. Students felt that this hindered their ability to build and sustain strong relationships with support staff and, ultimately, adults overall at school. The Enhancement Agreement now includes the commitment to keep support workers consistent at school sites.
Students have also advocated for change in school board meetings and challenged educators in professional development sessions to think deeply about the relevance of classroom curriculum and to ask students what they want out of the schooling experience. To encourage other districts to meaningfully center student voice and agency, students from the community of practice had the opportunity to share the importance of their work with over 500 school board trustees and senior school district leaders at the Ministry of Education, which provides support for 60 districts across British Columbia.
Students have also seen a change in their daily school experiences because of these efforts. “Since we began organizing student voice, we’ve noticed an increase in communication and open conversations in the classroom,” says program alum Ishi Sharma. “Teachers started asking more about student voice, and we felt more comfortable sharing our ideas and concerns, making the learning environment more inclusive.”
We wanted student teams to engage in 'radical dreaming' about what their schools could look and feel like.
Creating the Conditions for Lasting Change
Our goal has been to illustrate the expected and unexpected changes that can occur when we develop a clear vision for integrating student voice into our practice. We also want to emphasize some essential conditions that we believe are imperative as you undertake similar efforts.
Courageous Leadership Matters
This journey toward student agency was not without its challenges. There was significant turnover in the district, pressure to abandon the work, and fear that adults might lose control if students were brought to the table. Despite these ever-present challenges, Deputy Superintendent Ngieng and his team never wavered in their commitment. Even when funding changed and the community of practice ended, Ngieng found ways to incorporate the work. When he tried listening sessions and adults did not show up ready to receive what students shared, he went back to the drawing board and considered what adults he would need to keep moving toward the vision. This takes incredible courage and, without it, the work could have stopped before it truly took root.
Structure and Support Matter
Ngieng knew that starting the student community of practice without adults as guides would likely lead to limited change. For students to be agentic, they would need support to help them navigate adult spaces. As a result, he asked for each school site to have at least one staff member to act as an advisor to students and made the financial and staff resource decisions to make sure that could happen.
The student community of practice was not thought of as a one-time event. The team considered the structured learning opportunities adults would need before and throughout. Through listening practice, team members felt more ready to lift up students’ voices. Throughout the entire community of practice, the adults came together between student sessions to debrief, problem solve, and strengthen their work together. The structure and support helped minimize feelings of the work being burdensome and instead nurtured momentum.
Anything Is Possible
As we reflect on the work of the district team and the student leaders within the community of practice, we are reminded that anything is possible in schools if we have the courage, strategy, and patience to do it. The student leaders in this project have gone on to share their ideas with leaders across the province, mental health researchers, and assessment policy experts. They have done so with excitement, passion, and focus—something they chose to do on their own after learning in the community of practice. This is student agency in action.
Centering student voice is transformative. It enables concrete shifts in school policy and teacher practice that would otherwise feel unattainable. And more importantly, it grows an enduring resource that will outlast a student’s schooling experience: agency and efficacy. Student voice is, in fact, the heartbeat of a thriving democratic society and more important now than ever.
