Students blog

Student trainers can be effective trainers for other students and/or adults. For instance, students can lead trainings around a special curriculum, such as interpersonal violence or environmental issues. On Vashon Island, Washington, students from StudentLink, the local alternative high school facilitated a service learning training event for teachers and youth workers from their community. Over two days student trainers taught about the basics of service learning, implementing a project, and assessing youth voice.

Harmony Education Centerin Indianapolis, Indiana, worked to foster student-led research on education improvement in local schools. From 2009-10, fifty students in Indianapolis Public Schools, freshmen through seniors, researched the implementation of small schools in their district. Working with adult allies from Harmony, students asked several essential questions:

• What evidence do we have from other cities that breaking large high schools into small schools really works?
• Are small schools the only way to personalize learning?
• How can a school change when many of its teachers do not?

The Youth Action Research Institute in Hartford, Connecticut, has coordinated student-led research projects focused on schools and education for many years.

In 2007, four school districts participated in a student action research program as part of the Education and Advocacy Project. This program is a model program that engages students in identifying and researching issues that affect the quality of education in their schools and elsewhere in the state. The program, for fifth and six graders, has nine teachers participating who are integrating student driven action research into their classrooms using cooperative learning methods into core curricular activities.