Amplifying Youth Voice to Improve School Culture

"I feel like my opinion had lots of power,” shared one student about his experience this year in his Humanities Amped Introduction to Communications classroom. He also explained that early in the course, “I started to notice we were going over things that we use every day. I didn’t really think of the class as a grade, I thought of it as a way to better myself. And as I was excelling in the class, getting all my assignments in, making A’s, I started to notice that I was really actually communicating better.” This dual enrollment Baton Rouge Community College course, taught by Professor Rhonda Levy, was facilitated at Tara High School by Amped Educators Dr. Anna West and Kalivyn Marquix in partnership with Tara teacher Ms. Morgan Becnel-Adams.

At Humanities Amped, we believe that students learn best when they are engaged in meaningful work that matters to them. We also believe that students are experts in their own experiences, and so we design and facilitate classroom projects that allow them to tap into this expertise as they learn and grow. For their final project in this dual enrollment course, the students researched, drafted, and delivered speeches on the topic of improvements to school culture. The teaching team invited students to start from their own experience and choose topics that mattered to them. These school-based topics included transportation, brain-based learning, the school-to-prison-pipeline, and racial bias. One student shared that “Writing the speech was kind of fun, actually, ‘cause doing the research and going ahead and writing it down–I was really interested in my topic. I was really interested in my topic, and I felt proud.”

The success of this sort of civically engaged project-based learning is dependent on pairing challenging work with guided support. One student shared, “Writing the speech, it was the hardest part,” particularly because “we had to find multiple sources, [and] they had to be trusted sources, too.” But then he added, “But it wasn’t so hard because Dr. West and Kalivyn, they hooked up a little format for us to follow. And that really helped the writing of the speech.”

At the end of the semester, several of the students delivered their speeches to an audience of Tara High School teachers and administrators, as well as Tara High’s school board representative Patrick Martin. Dr. West facilitated a collaborative discussion among all the stakeholders in response to the speeches, considering the ways in which the students’ findings might be applied toward improving school culture. One student, who advocated for the inclusion of an advisory period as part of the school schedule, was excited to learn, a few weeks after this final presentation, that a revised schedule with an advisory period is being considered for next year.

This dual enrollment course, and this project, represent ongoing possibilities for Humanities Amped to amplify youth voice through our collaborative partnerships. We are grateful to our partners at Baton Rouge Community College, particularly the course professor Rhonda Levy and Dean of Liberal Arts Rhett Poché. The success of this work continues to be deeply dependent on our strong relationships at Tara, and we are grateful to Tara High Dual Enrollment Coordinator Coach Robinson for all his hard work on behalf of these students. At the end of the semester, all 48 students passed with a C or higher, which means they will all earn both high school and college credit for the course.

You can check out two of the students’ final speeches below. As we look forward to next school year, we are excited to continue amplifying youth voice by making sure young people have a seat at the table!

---

If you would like to support the work of Humanities Amped financially, follow the link below to donate.

DONATE

What's New at Humanities Amped

Summer Hiatus
Our team at Humanities Amped is invested in long-term, sustainable care. And we know that begins right where we are, in our own lives. Showing up for ourselves means being intentional about slowing down and resting. It’s how we re-ground ourselves and build our capacity to show up for the long run. 

It's never an easy choice to care for ourselves. There is always so much to do, and for those of us whose work is caring for our community, we often feel like it is never enough. And yet we know that if we want to show up wholeheartedly, we must invest in our own restoration. 

Following our yearly July hiatus, we hope to come back to you filled with energy, insight, and imagination. You, dear ones, deserve nothing less than our best selves! 

See you next semester!