Last Updated on July 13, 2023
Student engagement is key to building a safe, positive school culture that increases achievement, fosters creativity and community, and decreases boredom, alienation, and drop-out rates (Marks, 2000). Lifting up student voices and involvement in your classroom is an important factor in building positive classroom culture.
In the 2016 article “Giving Students a Voice,” published by the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Gretchen Brion-Meisels details five ways to integrate student voice into your classroom practice. One way she recommends cultivating a great educational experience is engaging students “in studying and assessing their school.” At Listenwise, we think that you can extend this even further and try to engage students in studying and assessing the world around them.
Using Listenwise to Establish a Culture of Student Voice
Listenwise podcast and video lessons can help get your students excited about sharing their experiences and perspectives by showcasing youth voices. An example of a Listenwise lesson that can help to get your students excited about surveying and researching their lives is “Mall Culture Used to Connect Teens”. Coming to us from Youth Radio, the story features Madeleine Veira, a youth reporter who tries to investigate the interesting disappearance of teens from malls. You might ask your students to discuss the places that they hang out and where teens in general typically hang out nowadays. Another way to engage student voice is to discuss what they would like to report on if they were to become investigative reporters and potentially develop a project with that focus.
Incorporating Listening and Writing to Elevate Student Voices
Another great resource on empowering student voices in the classroom is the Edutopia article “Establishing a Culture of Student Voice”. In the article, John McCarthy talks about how journaling can make students more comfortable sharing their thoughts and emotions in the classroom. The ability to write them down and organize them can make speaking up in the classroom less intimidating and more enjoyable.
One way to get students journaling effectively is to invite them to respond to stories about interesting, relevant topics. Three Listenwise stories that can be leveraged for this purpose are “Identity Across Generations,” “Growing up With a Single Mom,” and “California Teen Lives Life Between Borders”. “Identity Across Generations” is part of the NPR Generation series, and it features an interview with a mother and a daughter about their experiences as members of the LGBT community from very different generations. The other two stories offer explorations of other youth voices at interesting intersections in their lives.
Student Voice, Student Choice
You might optimize student choice by inviting students to select a Listenwise story on any topic of interest, listen to it, and respond via writing, online discussion, or small group discussions. For example, they might choose a current event and report the 5 Ws (who, what, where, when, and why) or choose a debate story and write an argument, taking a position and supporting it with evidence from the story. They might choose different stories on a given topic such as climate change or elections and then share what they learned in small groups using the jigsaw method. You might also engage students in developing their own podcasts, using Youth Radio stories in the Listenwise collection as models.
Inviting your students’ involvement in the classroom and creating a classroom where they feel encouraged to participate at appropriate times are important keys to promoting their success as learners and community members.
Listenwise Podcast Lessons That Highlight Student Voices
Below for more Listenwise stories that can provide avenues for your students to discuss and explore their own perspectives and experiences, as well as more resources addressing the benefits of uplifting student voice and strategies for pursuing that goal.
Elementary Lessons
- 9- Year Old Journalist Supports Food Banks
- A Kid’s View on the Pandemic
- Appreciating Differences in “A Place at the Table”
- Girl Scout Cookies and Business
- Hearing But Deaf
- Not Your All-American Girl
Secondary Lessons
- Adopted by a White Mom
- Aging Out of Foster Care
- California Teen Lives Between Borders
- Identity Across Generations
- Lunchtime Anti-Bullying App
- Promposals
- Teen Girls and Positive Social Media Messages
- Teens on Coping With Climate Change
- Young Adult Dystopia
ELD Lessons
- A Positive Response to Bullying
- First African American Winner of National Spelling Bee Reflects on Her Success
- Hearing But Deaf
- Immigrant Experience
- Young Inaugural Poet on Her Journey
Looking for podcast recommendations? Check out our blog: Top 10 Listenwise Podcasts for Students of 2022/23
