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Bringing Into Focus: Partnering with Students for Success NCSSLE' s Bringing Into Focus shares carefully selected, high quality resources on timely topics to help educators create safe, supportive learning environments. 

All children and adolescents should be able to feel safe, cared for, valued, useful, and spiritually grounded. As students, they should be able to recognize that schools and related systems are designed to serve them, that positive change is possible, and that they can have agency in bringing about such change.  Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic public health emergency, significant percentages of students have consistently reported feelings of isolation, anxiety, depression and helplessness as forces far beyond their control have already affected school for them over the past year and a half. Additional challenges loom as states and communities continue to contend with COVID-19.   Within this context, K-12 school systems correctly seek to identify, develop and implement effective strategies to reinforce a sense of belonging, safety and security that is essential to students’ positive mental health, and a predicate for academic success.  Strategies selected or developed in partnership with students are more likely to effectively engage them than those that are not. Involving students in making decisions that affect them increases the likelihood they will accept and embrace those decisions, and incorporate them into their everyday lives.  When schools and communities engage youth as equal partners, they can access students’ unique expertise about what works and what does not. When their input helps to shape school climates and programs, students can enjoy improved chances for positive reengagement that will improve their chances for success in school.

FEATURED RESOURCE

Children’s Participation: From Tokenism to Citizenship

This seminal essay, written for UNICEF’s International Child Development Centre, has laid a thoughtful foundation for consideration of motivations and methods to uphold children’s rights and abilities to speak for themselves. This Essay includes Hart’s classic Ladder of Participation (page 8), and offers numerous models for genuine participation of children and youth that challenge systems and formal decision-makers to “climb the ladder” toward the highest forms of partnerships with adults.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Authentic Youth Engagement in Pennsylvania Source: National Resource Center for Mental Health Promotion and Youth Violence Prevention This brief provides in-depth descriptions of how two Pennsylvania counties have initiated and fostered very different approaches to invite, welcome and capitalize on the energetic and imaginative contributions of students to improve support for students’ mental health within their schools and communities.  Youth MOVE National  Source: Youth MOVE National Youth MOVE National is a youth-driven, chapter-based organization dedicated to improving services and systems that support positive growth and development by uniting the voices of individuals who have lived experience in various systems—including mental health, juvenile justice, education, and child welfare. The organization helps to guide the redevelopment of formal systems so that youth can effectively use their power and expertise to foster change in their communities and in their own lives.

Podcast: Creating Meaningful Partnerships with Youth  Source: Reyhan Reid, National Resource Center for Mental Health Promotion and Youth Violence Prevention  In this podcast, a national youth engagement expert, Mr. Reid responds to fundamental questions to define terms and concepts and offer models and exemplars for meaningful engagement of young people collectively in school and community initiatives.   Six Tips for Increasing Meaningful Youth Engagement in Programs  Source: USAID YouthPower Learning This brief captures key themes from a national Youth Engagement Community of Practice facilitated by US-AID Youth Power Learning in 2016. The resource provides six tips for organizations to consider when planning how to best engage individuals for youth programs. Content ranges from advice on program structure to what stakeholders are most important to work with.

NEED MORE INFORMATION

National Center on Safe Supportive Learning Environments | https://safesupportivelearning.ed.gov The contents of the National Center on Safe Supportive Learning Environments' Bringing Into Focus were assembled under a contract from the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Safe and Supportive Schools to the American Institutes for Research (AIR), Contract Number ED-ESE-16-A-0002. The contents of this product do not necessarily represent the policy or views of the U.S. Department of Education, nor do they imply endorsement by the U.S. Department of Education. ‌ ‌ ‌