Posted by:
Nelson Beaudoin
K-12 Classroom teacher
Kennebunk, ME

Topic:
listen to individual, authentic student voices

Message:
I really believe that giving students a voice and learning to listen to those voices should absolutely transform your school. I think it is one of the most important things that you can do. Through my career--and I have been an administrator for 24 years now--I have come to learn that.

When I learned it, it really changed the way I approached my work, what I feel like in the morning when I get up to go to work, and what I feel like at home when I finish the day. I really think it is what I am all about, and what my schools are about, and I kind of tripped over this by mistake. I don't know how, it wasn't anything intellectually that I came to; it's just something that happened. As an administrator, I have always had a pretty simple motto, and I think it ties into student voice in a number of ways. There were three things that I think I stand for as a person and as an administrator. The first one is that I listen more than I talk. The second one is that I care more than I judge, and the third one is that I understand more than I guess. And, all three of those are imperative if you are going to listen to what students have to say.

The first thing about caring, I think if we are trying to reform schools, we need to get away from the "school for all kids" model: that every kid fits into the same hole and you can do a program for all kids. I think we are trying to shift our school to being a school for each kid instead of a school for all kids. In order to do that, you need to care about the kids that you have, every single one of them. Listening is an essential part of giving students voices; without it, you may have token student voice as opposed to authentic, really usable student voice. Many schools try to reform things from the outside in, they try to say, "We need to give students a voice. Let's put a couple of people on a committee." And really what you need to look at, is reforming from the inside out. If you can change the belief systems in the school that listen to student voices, all of those other things will happen. All of these programs that we are going to talk about this morning will happen from a different perspective, not from the perspective of being imposed on a school, but growing out of a belief that's within the school.

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