Incorporating Student Voice and Choice to Build and Deepen Engagement
This post is part of a four-part series on Best Practices for Addressing Pandemic Learning Loss & Reengaging Students at Secondary Schools, sharing best practice strategies that can make a big difference for secondary students’ learning and engagement: dedicated time for relationship building, extra-time intervention, incorporating voice and choice, and scheduling strategically.
Most school and district leaders already know that increasing student engagement increases attendance, motivation, and academic outcomes. A common strategy for improving student engagement in secondary schools is to find dedicated time in the schedule for building relationships, but engagement can also be improved by giving students more control over what is in their schedule. This is especially relevant for middle school students who often want more voice and choice than they are traditionally offered.
Student Voice: Getting Students’ Input on Course Offerings
Student voice means giving students input into what courses are offered. The easiest way to learn what interests students is, well, to ask them! A student voice survey is often the best way to begin this journey. A two-step survey can be more effective. The first survey is an interest survey; it seeks to understand what excites kids. It asks questions such as “What activities do you most enjoy outside of school?”, “What topics do you follow on social media?”, “What is your favorite type of music to listen to?”, and “If the school added one new course, what should it be?”. The second survey reframes what’s learned in the first survey and asks students to rank which potential new courses interest them the most.
One of the implied goals of non-core classes, which account for 30-40% of every student’s day, is to build student engagement and interest in school. However, many offerings haven’t changed much over the decades, and don’t tap into student interest and passion
There are three ways to update and invigorate non-core offerings to better engage students:
New, specialized flavors of old favorites
Art and music are still very interesting and important, but they can come in many more forms. With this strategy, keep the non-core course already offered, but upgrade the content and units within the courses to add specificity and focus. Music, for example, moves from a generic survey course to one of any number of specialty areas such as electronic music, world music, or DJ-ing. Similarly, PE becomes yoga, free weights, jogging, or team sports.
This is also an issue of equity. Often non-core course offerings are not culturally relevant or affirming for students of color, as they were developed by and for white middle class teachers and students. Greater student voice in course design will help teachers and leaders better understand what is relevant, culturally affirming, and engaging for a more diverse student body.
Embrace modern trends and technology
Some of today’s hobbies didn’t exist 20 years ago. It’s not surprising that some new courses are needed. This strategy involves updating the list of non-core courses offered. For example, app design or entrepreneurship shark tank.
Look to the core
Surprisingly, many popular non-core classes address topics best taught by core subject teachers or are spinoffs of content or units from core classes. For example, fantasy sports math, podcasting 101, or social justice.
Student Choice: Letting Students Select Courses of Interest to Them
While student voice gives students input over what courses are offered, choice gives students the ability to select what courses they take from a menu. Even with increased voice, few offerings will excite all students.
While student choice is the standard at most high schools, choice is less common at middle schools. Fortunately, there are options that can mitigate the concerns and many ways to increase student choice. Rather than offering students full choice over all the electives they take, bounded choice can be a great compromise. Bounded choice ensures students sample all the disciplines, but still have much autonomy. For example, they might be required to take one art, one music and one PE course each year, but within each of these areas there is a great deal of choice. Scaled choice is also a popular middle ground that allows students to rotate through a set of exploratory courses in art, music, and PE in lower middle school grades before allowing student choice in upper middle school grades.
Staffing Student Voice and Choice
The hope for giving student voice and/or choice is often dashed on the rocks of staffing concerns. While some may initially see it as an obstacle, staffing can be an opportunity when it comes to student voice and choice. Here’s how.
Matching courses offered with staff interest
“What if kids want a class on the big bang or Shark Tank and we don’t have any staff with availability in their schedule who are prepared to teach these courses?” In the short run, the answer is, don’t offer them! Giving students voice doesn’t mean they have the final say. They provide input, and school leaders always make the final call. Most often, schools offer non-core classes that kids want to take and that staff want to teach.
Assuaging staff fears with a clear process
A common, more serious concern is how changing student interests will impact job security for teachers. The worry is if only half the students sign up for music, then half the music staff will be let go. If staffing is adjusted every year based on student course selections, then no one would ever have job security, they reason. This legitimate concern can be easily addressed. A simple no reduction-in-force rule can assuage this worry. Schools must be prepared to adjust staffing over time through attrition to better match student interest.
Finding the Time in Staff Schedules
Look to existing staff first to teach these courses. In some middle schools, math, science, English, and social studies teachers have or could have an extra teaching block available each day. For example, many high school teachers teach five periods a day, and in the same district middle school teachers teach only four. If middle school teachers taught an elective as their fifth period, no additional staffing would be needed to offer a class in racial justice, the big bang, or the math of fantasy sports.
Too Hard to Schedule? Not Necessarily
Even strong advocates for increased engagement through student voice and choice sometimes like the idea in concept, but the reality of the scheduling challenge worries them. The truth is, that voice and choice is hard for some people to schedule but very easy for others.
A skilled scheduler armed with good software and the necessary staffing and student interest information can build even the most complex middle school schedule in about three days. Being worried who or how to build the schedule shouldn’t be an obstacle to voice and choice.
Offering students an opportunity to voice their input on course offerings and some choice in selecting the courses on their schedule can make a big impact on building and deepening student engagement. With a clear process and by matching courses offered with staff interests, staffing can become an opportunity rather than an obstacle when it comes to student voice and choice. Don’t let the schedule be an unnecessary barrier to deepening engagement with students – with the help of a skilled scheduler and the right software, building a schedule that incorporates student voice and choice is entirely within reach.
