Less Empowering, More Silence

1 min read

In the quest for "authentic" learning, we often wade into and through conversations about student voice, and how to empower it.

A couple notes and observations on student voice: 

• Adults don't need to empower student voice. Students have it; whether or not they choose to share it in your presence or your class is a different question.
• If you're serious about student voice, you need to be comfortable hearing things that are inconvenient, and are difficult to hear.
• Student voice also incorporates the notion of student presence. What are you doing in your interpersonal communication and in your classroom setup to ensure that the presence of every student is implicitly and explicitly valued?
• Sometimes respecting student voice means respecting the rights of students not to speak.
• Student voice requires that the adults respect where students come from, and who they are.
• If a key element of "student voice" requires sharing student work, ask yourself who the sharing benefits most. Appropriating student words is not the same as student voice.

Getting comfortable with student voice means recognizing the need for adult silence.