A WestEd webinar held April 23 featured a presentation on approaches and best practices for engaging youth as critical partners in fostering safe, healthy and supportive learning environments and real-world examples of empowering youth in Northern California’s Nevada Union High School District.
Improving student engagement
WestEd Senior Program Associate Jenny Bentz provided an overview of what student engagement looks like through the lens of the organization’s Continuum of Participation for equitable, healthy and responsive systems.
Bentz noted the guiding principles and encouraged participants to focus on “thinking about what power dynamics are at play in any given situation and what part does that relational trust play in this kind or work?”
Breaking down the continuum
Inform: This stage involves providing frequent, useful and accessible information to the people it will affect most. This helps stakeholders to understand how and why decisions are made, how decisions impact them and how they get involved if they want to do more.
Consult: This step means not just telling students about an initiative, but asking them for feedback — what do they think is needed? This could be accomplished a number of ways, such as through a survey or a tip box. Bentz emphasized the importance of closing the loop with students — even if you can’t do what they have asked for, it’s important to go back and thank them for their participation and explain the reasons why something could not be implemented. “This is where we really start building that relational trust,” Bentz said. “We’re not just taking input but closing the loop and respecting opinions.”
Involve: This phase is about structured conversations, but with a more focused group, which enables the collection of different perspectives to make sure the initiative is aligned with the people it will affect. “This is our opportunity to really think about representation and diverse perspectives,” Bentz said. “Who is missing from this group and what can we do to figure out who else needs to be here?”
Co-design: This involves co-designing strategies or the steps that will be taken in the initiative with students. Allowing students to meaningfully contribute to what the plan is going to be also helps ensure it is relevant to students. This stage is about shared decision-making. “This is where power dynamics come into play and where relational trust is really needed because young people really start having shared power, and some adults can be threatened by that,” explained Bentz.
Co-lead: This step whittles down direct participants to just a few and is where capacity-building and leadership building come in and the need for representation. Having a student board member as an example.
Nevada JUSD’s RAYS program
Illustrating the Continuum of Participation in action is a team of students from Nevada Union High School who run the Restorative Accountable Youth Solutions (RAYS) program. RAYS is an alternative-to-suspension program that is primarily youth-led (with two teacher advisors).
When a student makes a poor choice that could traditionally result in suspension, they may be given the option to go through RAYS instead of a punitive response. In order to be eligible for RAYS, the student must take accountability for their action and be open to repairing any harm caused by their action.
Once referred to RAYS, the student team holds a RAYS circle for the student and creates their restorative plan. The student has 30 days to complete their plan with the support of a student supporter and staff champion.
The restorative plan includes a requirement that every student going through RAYS come back to sit with a student team to support another student going through the program, make a plan to repair any harm caused from their actions, a community engagement project that gives back to the school community and access to support services, such as counseling and tutoring. Student supporters use some of the circle time to find out any passions that the offender students have and use those interests to help them craft an appropriate community engagement project.
Several students from Nevada Union High who participate in the RAYS program as peer supporters spoke about the program and its benefits. “Why should a student choose RAYS? A big part of RAYS is that it is all done during school time — you don’t get pushed out like for a suspension,” said Devon, a RAYS student supporter. “They also have an opportunity to give back in a positive way through community engagement and the structured conversations, just as a way to start the cycle of positivity. They are also able to repair harm and go forward feeling better. The last great thing about RAYS is they get access to support they may not have had before, such as counseling or tutoring.”
Watch the webinar here.
