Intervention: Youth Engagement

Intervention: Youth Engagement

“We are young adults. We can give you respect. We are able to understand the issues. We can think for ourselves. It’s our education. If we have a say, it will make a difference”
— Bertha Rodriguez, Denver High School Student

Sustained progress to improve educational policies and programs at the classroom, building, district and community levels cannot be made without engaging education’s primary consumers – young people – in the process. Young people should be engaged in the shaping of beliefs about the purpose and nature of education and the development and implementation of strategies for transforming school and community learning opportunities.

Strategies for engaging youth in the learning process itself – including project-based and active learning approaches – are emerging at schools and districts across the country. In addition, the importance of engaging youth in the civic life of communities continues to gain support from a variety of sectors and systems, including but not limited to education.

But efforts to engage youth should not be limited to strengthening their connections to their own learning process, to that of their peers, or increasing civic participation. Efforts to improve educational opportunities at the building, district, community, state and national levels should include well-thought out strategies for involving young people. Youth need clear opportunities to share responsibility for their own learning and for school and community reform processes designed to improve achievement. They also need opportunities to assume roles that allow them to connect how and what they learn in school with what they do at home and in the community.

Youth engagement in…

Meaningful youth engagement involves both recognizing the strengths youth bring to the learning process and supporting the deliberate practice of those strengths by youth. According to Marge Hiller of the Bridgeport Public Education Fund, “I think we really miss the boat when we don’t involve students in all the policy work around schools. They are the ones there every day. Every time we ask students anything their answers are amazing; they can put their finger on things more accurately than anyone else in the system.”

Through a range of partnerships, initiatives and programming efforts, LEFs can support young people in taking responsibility for their own development and achievement, contributing to support the development and achievement of others, engaging in the civic life of their community and participating in educational change. Examples of LEFs employing these types of engagement strategies – particularly the latter two – are beginning to surface.

While youth engagement is critical enough to stand alone as a strategic intervention, it also serves as a lens through which each of the other six strategic interventions should be considered. For example, young people should be stakeholders in any community dialogue or constituency building efforts. Similarly, they can be valuable partners in policy analysis and work with practitioners. Youth engagement warrants attention of its own, but the tendency to create islands of involvement for the sake of involvement is a risk. In order to be most effective – in supporting young people’s own development and for the sake of systemic growth and change, efforts to authentically engage young people in public education must take place at multiple levels and across multiple strategies. As Cara Stillman at Buffalo Good Schools for All put it, “it really changes your whole world view when you internalize the idea that kids have power too.”

Youth engagement is a relatively new and broad area of work for local education funds. The following vignettes show how local education funds are taking on some aspect of the youth engagement strategy.

San Francisco Education Fund
Engaging Youth to Support their Peers

Challenge
In all schools, particularly large comprehensive high schools, creating a safe and supportive learning environment for all students is one of the biggest challenges administrators face. At an intuitive level, young people and adults alike understand school climate is a key factor in overall school success, positively affecting classroom management and achievement as well as contributing to declines in drop-out rates and conflicts. Many districts are finding that one of the most effective strategies for maintaining a positive learning environment is to engage young people in peer-based activities and initiatives designed to create positive climate change within schools. But engaging students in meaningful roles, and with an appropriate balance of adult support, is easier said than done. To be successful, it requires staffing and structural support, training for young people and adults, and a commitment to taking young people’s ideas and decisions seriously.

Strategic Intervention
The Peer Resources program was created in partnership with the San Francisco Unified School District and the San Francisco Education Fund (SFEF). In operation for 23 years, Peer Resources is one of the most comprehensive peer programs in California and is considered a national model. Currently working in 12 high schools and 7 middle schools, Peer Resources operates peer-based programs in conflict mediation, peer education, tutoring, mentoring, and support groups, training over 1,000 students a year to provide resources and services and reaching 15,000 additional students.

LEF Work
A key challenge for SFEF is not just educating administrators and teachers about how to engage young people in improving the educational supports within individual schools, but how to make it work within large systems. Individual schools approach the LEF to design peer-based programs that address the school’s climate needs. Students become peer mediators by applying to participate in an intensive training. Select school staff members also undergo training and provide on-site support as students mediate conflicts between their peers. Among schools participating in the conflict mediation program in the 2002-2003 school year, 373 youth-led mediations occurred.

Strategies of Successful Students is another Peer Resources program which helps academically successful students in supporting their peers improve their grades, learn specific academic material and improve their study strategies and skills. Each school designs the program to address their particular needs within the broader goal of engaging students to support their peers. Schools set aside money from their district funding formulas to support the costs of a full-time teacher/coordinator or a half-time coordinator for their Peer Resources programs. The LEF raises an additional $350,000 a year to support programming and enhance schools’ capacity to implement quality programs.

SFEF has a strong commitment to youth leadership. Through the LEF’s efforts, young people play a key role in improving the educational experiences of themselves and their peers, and also receive training in areas like communication, planning, values identification, and decision-making. Beyond the school-based work, student leaders serve as coordinators for various initiatives and are responsible for planning and executing projects, running meetings and presenting to a range of audiences about Peer Resources’ initiatives.

Results
The Peer Resources program has had some anticipated results and some surprises. Peer Resources is focused on measuring its success in three areas: experiences of peer facilitators, improvements in school environment, and experiences of youth who have received peer services. A report released in 2003 based on an evaluation currently being conducted by JMPT Consulting suggests gains in the first two areas in particular.

In a survey of peer helpers, 80% report improvements in their decision-making and problem solving skills, and 85% report that Peer Resources has helped them learn how to peacefully resolve conflicts. The majority of peer helpers believe in their own self-efficacy. When asked if they “believe that their actions make a difference”, 42% strongly agreed, and 38% agreed. Beyond individual impacts, 82 percent of participating students agreed that Peer Resources helps them contribute to their school and 61% say it helps them contribute to their community. Four out of five peer helpers report that the skills they learned in Peer Resources have helped them outside of the program context in their school, family, or community.

An evaluation of the conflict resolution program conducted by Milbrey McLaughlin at Stanford University in 1997 revealed a 96% success rate among mediations, with very few repeat conflicts. Schools have also noted that students involved in Peer Resources have taken on leadership roles within the schools that extend beyond their roles as mediators or peer educators. After 9/11, for example, peer mediators took a lead role in creating a climate of tolerance at some local high schools.

A less anticipated result of the Peer Resources program is the role it has played in expanding linkages between school and community resources. To expand its work, SFEF has been successful in partnering with non-profits around the city. Community partners have been particularly helpful in providing training for youth working to educate their peers in specific areas such as sexual harassment and homophobia, but also provide a range of other program enhancements and additional outlets for building youth leadership. Adrian Ruiz, Peer Resources co-director reflected, “We’ve become this vein for non-profits to come in and do what they do best with the school district. We get calls all the time from community-based organizations that have curricula they want to introduce to teachers, and we do that on the other side with teachers as well. We really play that broker role.”

Strong relationships with local organizations have also helped Peer Resources carve out a niche and honor it. “We’re clear about our limits. Peer Resources is great at skill building and helping youth practice and apply their skills within the district. We’re fortunate here to have numerous CBOs with activism as their focus where youth can get involved in a different way. Organizations have told us that students from our program amazing and they thank us for giving them the skills. This way youth have opportunities to practice their skills outside of the district and we can avoid some of the tensions that can arise between the district and the Ed Fund when it comes to taking on tough issues.”

Buffalo Good Schools for All
Engaging Youth in Improving Educational Opportunities

Challenge
When communities come together to surface and discuss compelling community issues, it is rare yet no longer completely uncommon to find young people at the table. Placing youth engagement at the center of community and school improvement conversations can be a critical strategy in building momentum, surfacing meaningful issues, and ensuring action. Yet the best youth engagement plans can fall flat when communities have not had the training and experience to support and utilize young people as critical stakeholders. How can a community involve young people in the decisions that affect them every day in their schools and communities? Buffalo Good Schools for All has created meaningful paths of engagement in the context of the Project 540 model, an approach to engaging young people in decision-making in Buffalo’s schools and in the broader revitalization of the community.

Strategic Intervention
Originally created by youth educators at Providence College and funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, Project 540 provides a vehicle and structure for students to bring peer-level discussions to policy-level environments. Students at schools around the country, including six in Buffalo, have conducted focus groups with their peers, analyzed the information, and created action plans for both building level and city-wide improvements.

LEF Work
The name Project 540 comes from the idea that to effectively engage young people, a community must come full circle – 360 degrees – and then an additional 180 degrees. The name itself implies full commitment and the importance of raising of the bar for engagement, taking young people and adults beyond where communities typically land when soliciting input and involving citizens in decision-making. The model trains young people to facilitate focused conversations with their peers, pull together and arrange themes, develop action plans, and present these plans to district decision-making bodies. The student leaders within each school create a map of the school issues that have been identified, take those themes back to the student body and ask, “This is what we heard and these are the action steps based on those findings, did we get it right?”

This spring, Buffalo Good Schools for All worked with students to compile findings about aspects of school climate and opportunities for student voice with data from the Search Institute’s Healthy Youth, Healthy Communities survey to bring into a local forum. The report included a summary of the state of youth assets, a presentation on what young people need from adults, critical school issues, and young people’s vision for positive youth development. Students identified specific action items, including increasing student voice in policy-making decisions; due diligence on the mayor’s prior agreement to create a youth commission; and the expansion of the role of the inter-high school council. Students highlighted other important issues that remain unaddressed – equity within and among schools (e.g. uneven opportunities to take AP classes among schools); effective outreach to out-of-school youth; and the connection between school problems and political disenfranchisement among certain voter populations.
Buffalo Good Schools for All’s youth engagement efforts extend beyond Project 540; in a sense BGSA serves as a hub, facilitating connections between Project 540 and other related initiatives such as Kids Voting and the Campaign for Fiscal Equity. The inclusion of these initiatives provides a platform to connect building level concerns with global school reform issues as well as democracy education for young people. Kids Voting provides teachers with curriculum related to current elections, while the Campaign connects young people and parents to a critical statewide effort to change the state funding formula for schools.

While rooted in a commitment to youth engagement and civic education, this work has evolved into much more than that. It represents an effort to place young people at the center of several strategic interventions being implemented locally by BGSA – community dialogue, constituency building, collaboration with districts, and policy analysis. Cara Stillman, Buffalo Good Schools for All’s director, commented, “We see this work providing that core base of democratic skills, but we also see it as impacting schools. Young people are so often the object of reform. They need to be involved – they need to have the skills to make that happen and they need ownership in their schools.”

Results

Focusing on youth engagement has had a significant impact on BGSA staff and the organization as a whole. As Stillman described it, “It’s been a huge change in mindset for us. Once you actually internalize a belief that youth have a lot to give, the world opens up and you begin to see them as this huge untapped source of energy. One specific example of our shift is that as of May we have two youth on our board.” Stillman added that this new focus has affected her thoughts about hiring as well. “I have a position open here; being able to do youth engagement work will be a critical criteria as we hire.”

The full-scale implementation of Project 540 is very recent. The students’ June presentation to district personnel and a range of other youth and adults from the community included some very specific requests for which they received positive feedback and verbal commitments to pursue come fall. For example, students asked the superintendent for a more significant voice in decisions made at the building and district levels; her response was an unwavering yes and a commitment to work with the students this fall to figure out the best strategies for implementation. Similarly, they asked the city and county for a concrete role in policymaking in the community. They received a pledge to create a youth commission, and will be working out the details in partnership with the city and county in the coming months.

The youth also expressed concerns that the media gives young people in Buffalo a bad name and requested meetings with the editorial board of the newspaper and the heads of electronic media (many of whom were present at their presentation) to discuss the issue further. Verbal commitments to carry out these meetings in the fall were also granted.

One very concrete request made at the June meeting was acted upon immediately. Every high school student who presented complained about the state of disrepair of their schools’ bathrooms; a group from one school incorporated pictures of their bathrooms into their presentation. The district reacted promptly and those facilities have been fixed.
Lessons for Youth Engagement

Link with outside groups such as non-profit organizations that work with youth to establish or enhance a project, and support training and implementation of youth engagement initiatives. Many of these organizations have developed tools and strategies for action engaging young people. Additionally, many local efforts are finding that a combination of insider and outsider organizational strategies increase the success and reach of youth engagement efforts. At the Bridgeport Public Education Foundation, Marge Hiller emphasized the importance of partners in their youth engagement efforts. “We select some youth to sit on our board, but we steer others to ASPIRA and other local programs where they can get involved.”

Infuse youth at many different levels and in many different roles. Develop pathways for increasing youth engagement. Young people can be engaged in designing aspects of their own learning, setting a climate for an improved school environment, community service, or systems- level change. Within each of these spheres they can participate in a range of activities from serving as participants in a focus group to coordinating a drive to change district policies. Be thoughtful in shaping roles for youth and in selecting a diverse range of young people into those roles. Taj James of Movement Strategies Center put it this way: “young people need to see the rungs of the ladder clearly. Many ladders are missing the bottom rungs – so kids can’t even get started.”

Secure resources for youth engagement efforts. To work effectively, young people need access to resources just as adults do. Often, they need only a modest amount of money to support training, coordinate events or produce materials. Sometimes it is not about money but rather being able to secure space for meetings, permission to conduct a survey or access to individuals. But for youth to have a fair footing in impacting change, tangible resources must be secured that allow them to be productive and to engage a broader constituency of their peers in their efforts. This is how Kara Cayce, a former student organizer with the Colorado Progressive Coalition, put it. “Students need to have a catalyst, like an established organization to make sure you have a thorough understanding of the issues you’re working on and resources to tap into.”

Train adults to effectively partner with youth. Partnering effectively with youth is a set of skills that must be learned. While some adults naturally understand how to partner with youth, often larger scale initiatives give the skills piece of the partnership short shrift. Youth engagement is conceptually simple, but difficult to pull off without intentional training for adults. “Adults need help learning how to collaborate with young people just as much as youth need help adjusting to their transformed role with adults,” notes Wendy Lesko in the Youth Infusion Intergenerational Advocacy Toolkit.

Train youth to effectively carry out their work. Taking young people’s intuitive and experiential sensibilities and perspectives about what needs to be done and shaping them into programs, action agendas, and policy recommendations requires an investment in young people’s skills. Opportunities to build skills, motivation and opportunities are all critical ingredients to young people’s success. Adrian Ruiz noted that youth in San Francisco’s Peer Resources program “receive foundation training in communications, values, decision making and more. As project leaders they also get hands on experience planning and executing projects, running meetings, and presenting to audiences.”

Begin engagement by focusing on youth’s daily experiences with school environments and around instruction. Often the best place to start is to start where young people are. If funding formulas are a concern among advocates but the youth keeping talking about the bathrooms being in disrepair, start by tackling that issue and build connections to the broader concerns or issues that are more often championed by adult school reformers and program planners. Jake, a high school student at the Philadelphia Student Union, describes this dynamic: “students focus on improving relationships, the atmosphere in schools, making schools more comfortable … adults tend to focus on the structural and bureaucratic things. We try to balance the two … the structural end of things, and students’ everyday experiences.”

Tools for Youth Engagement

Listening to Student Voices. School Change Collaborative. (2000). Portland Oregon: Northwest Regional Education Laboratory. www.nwrel.org/scpd/scc/studentvoices/

Listening to Student Voices is a toolkit for K-12 educational leaders that are interested in including students in school improvement initiatives. The materials, developed by the School Change Collaborative, have supported continuous school improvement for over 20 years. The Toolkit recognizes the importance of student voice by promoting the following principles: 1) students are important stakeholders in their own education; 2) student views are distinct from adult perspectives; 3) students who become involved in improvement initiatives reap numerous benefits; 4) by enlisting students in a school’s self-study workforce, students assist a school with self-improvement; and 5) committed students help move the process along. The toolkit contains an informational brochure, an introductory booklet, an overview video, and four school stories offering the perspectives of principals, teachers, and students in diverse settings.

Meaningful Student Involvement – An Idea Guide for Schools. Fletcher, A., Nishida, M., & Williamson, G. (2001). CITY: Washington State Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction. http://www.k12.wa.us/integratedcurr/yes/pubilcations/studentinvolvement.pdf
This guide provides a full range of roles and responsibilities that students can take on at the classroom, school and district levels to support and maintain school change. Broken into idea sections for students, teachers, building administrators and district officials, the guide offers sketches of student participation in action, and provides an edited laundry list of “within-school” opportunities for students to affect school change. Practically written, the guide also lightly introduces four outcomes of meaningful student involvement as the rationale for inclusion: positive effects on general well-being, behavior and values, academic achievement, and the effects on teachers.

Student Involvement Handbook. California State PTA. (n.d.). Available at www.capta.org/sections/membership/student-involvement.cfm
The California State PTA Handbook presents a plan of action for school officials and PTA members who are serious about youth action. The range of information provided includes a rationale for why youth should be involved as well as numerous examples of actions PTA/PTSA participants can undertake to promote projects that benefit and excite both youth and adults. One of the notable sections of the handbook covers recruitment and retention of young people, a challenge for many groups and organizations that desire to build stronger relationships with youth.

Youth Engaged in Leadership and Learning (Y.E.L.L.): A Handbook for Supporting Community Youth Researchers. John W. Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities at Stanford University. (2001). http://gardnercenter.stanford.edu/resources/handbook/index.shtml
Developed by the Gardner Center for its Youth Engaged in Leadership & Learning (Y.E.L.L.) project, the handbook is designed help those training youth become active contributors to decision-making processes in their community. The lessons in the handbook introduce youth to different research methods, analytical tools and presentation skills. The lessons can be adapted to meet the needs and interests of different communities, and can be facilitated by teachers and educators in school and out-of-school contexts. Lesson plans, worksheets and samples of other program documents are included for adaptation and use.

Resources for Youth Engagement
What Kids Can Do is a national nonprofit organization founded in 2001 that documents the value of young people working with teachers and other adults on projects that combine powerful learning with public purpose for an audience of educators and policy makers, journalists, community members, and students. Their web site www.wkcd.org features young people’s stories, resources for teachers, examples of promising initiatives underway across the country, and collections of young people’s work.
www.SoundOut.org is a national online resource center that seeks to promote meaningful student involvement in school change. Their web site provides tools and resources that promote constructive, diverse, and student-inclusion dialogues about education, and offers information supporting meaningfully involve students throughout education. The site also includes an interactive map of youth activism efforts across the U.S. and Canada.
www.atthetable.org, an initiative of the Innovation Center for Community and Youth Development, works to build a national movement for youth participation in governance and decision-making. The website is an online clearinghouse that brings together youth involvement advocates and practitioners by providing opportunities to share information and collaborate. Resources on the site include: a calendar of events and news from the youth participation field; online discussion boards; user-posted handouts and links; and an online workroom for youth voice advocates.
Youth Action for Educational Change: An Annotated Bibliography and Resource Guide
Forum for Youth Investment, September 2003. This guide gathers stories of young people’s involvement in educational change. It features voices, studies, reflections, frameworks, and how-to guides. Criteria used in selecting publications included: publications and articles included speak directly to young people’s work as school reformers, are substantive and useful (in our minds), and were accessible via libraries, the Web, or computer databases. www.forumforyouthinvestment (won’t have full url for another month).