Impacting Community through Student Voice

"The tongue can paint what the eyes can't see."—Chinese Proverb

Using our personal experiences to dive deeply into what our students truly need is a powerful way to provide opportunity. As an introvert growing up in a family of extroverts, it was a journey to find my own voice. As the years passed, I have worked hard to find impactful ways to get my ideas across to others. The silence around me is loud, and I pause often to reflect on the voices that are not amplified. In a school environment, it is sometimes the students who are the least heard and therefore the most misunderstood. Empowering student voice allows students to take an active role in reshaping the school community. As a school librarian, my focus is on students who are not typically given a platform to express their thoughts, feelings, and ideas. There are specific ways that amplifying student voice has progressed in my library that offer students an authentic audience.

Every Wednesday after school, I meet in our newly student-designed "Stress Less Space" for students to share, write, and discuss poetry. Often, these meetings take on the role of a safe and brave area where students can speak freely to share what is on their minds. Often, the meetings include topics that students are unable to bring up in the classroom. Often, the topics are from students of color who feel like their voices are overshadowed, misunderstood, and misinterpreted. Often, it is students who are questioning their identities and need a welcoming environment to share their words through poetry. There are opportunities for students to share their work not only within the club but also through open mics and a statewide festival where teams from schools meet to compete. The mission of the festival is about creating community through student voice and teens not only feel validated but also part of an authentic space for artistic expression.

In my first year as a high school librarian, I collaborated with the town library director to create a joint teen advisory board (TAB) with the intent of making room for teen voices within the libraries and the greater community. Ten years later, TAB is a venue for students to bring to the table issues that are impacting them and to allow them to bring their voices in a powerful way for direct change. One such issue is mental health. This school year is year two of a student wellness advisory group within TAB. The student group is funded through the Shine Initiative. Through this initiative, teens are tasked with working together to destigmatize mental health and educating the school community. We meet weekly to discuss implementation of the grant and upcoming events. Some past activities have included yoga, sound bath, and a refresh (mental health) day as well as adding suicide text line decals to all bathrooms and creating a space specific to de-escalation of emotions. Several of the students in the group share about their personal experiences with their mental health and offer suggestions of helpful things that the group can do. Ongoing collaborations with mental health clinicians in the school are also an important aspect of educating the community. Students are passionate about assisting teachers understand the stress of their students as well as providing some outlets for students and educators. Students appreciate the opportunity to discuss this topic and to learn and grow as a team.

In my experience, offering outlets for student voice has helped to amplify the issues and allowed students to be part of the solution while also working through complex emotions. The examples above are two of the ways that school libraries can provide the platform, the ways to engage community organizations, and authentic experiences to amplify student voice. When we are able to develop awareness in relation to our individual community's issues, we can provide the authentic audience that students crave and need for personal growth. Empowering students to speak out about issues that impact their lives impacts the way they view their peers, teachers and the school community as a whole.