Sample strategies for consulting and listening to students and analyses of when and why they might be appropriate and effective​

• What does student input look like in your ideal classroom?

• What strategies would you use (specifically) to gather student input?

• How might you draw from it?

Two of the biggest themes that emerged in my email and FaceTime conversations with my partner were the need to learn skills that would be useful for both higher education and beyond and the idea that information must be useful for the educator rather than the learner. Both of these themes also appear frequently in the large group dialogues and even in the self-facilitated dialogues. The first theme of needing to learn useful skills is apparent in the language that my partner uses in both individual and group dialogues. She often talks about how school is just for getting an education and leaving - “go there, do what you need to do, then you leave” - and how she is very goal oriented without ever worrying about whether or not she feels that she belongs at the school. She also emphasizes that specific skills that are being taught in math and English may be useful because they allow students to figure out “how to articulate [themselves] properly, because [they] need to speak to managers, getting a job, writing papers for college” and figure out how to do taxes. In this respect, high school is place where students receive a very specific type of education, one where students are only focused on the next chapter of higher education or vocational training for future jobs. All of the learning that is done is perceived to be useful for the future. This leads into the second theme of the dialogue which is the idea that these meta-analyses of their classroom dynamics is only useful for educators (Bi-Co students) listening in on their thoughts rather than being a self-reflective practice that may be useful for them. At the end of my partnership, my partner explained how she wished that our conversations focused more on the educators rather than inconsequential things like what students do or don’t like in the classroom. Many of the other students also expressed this sentiment in the last few dialogues and during their time on our campus through expressing their usefulness to this program as allowing educators to see what a high schooler's feelings were. While this is true, I found myself wanting my partner to think more about how this partnership could help her enhance her own learning without trying to provide answers that she felt would appease the teacher.

 

Some of the themes that I have gotten from the larger dialogues is the idea of respect, how teachers can be more approachable, and how students are challenged in the classroom effectively and ineffectively. Many of the students agree that they just want teachers to understand and respect where they are coming from as students. From the first weeks, in terms of describing actions that they described as teachers being disrespectful (i.e. seeing themselves as superior, leaving no room for argument) to the last few weeks when students describe what kind of classrooms they prefer to work in. As one student explains, “teachers also have to understand they were kids once and they did the same thing once.. So they shouldn't really get mad.” While students understand the power dynamic between the teacher and student in the classroom and can respect those boundaries, they still expect some understanding on the teacher's part of where they are in their lives and the mundane nature of the classroom. Another theme closely relating to this is how then can teachers be approachable to students and challenge them in effective ways. This was especially prominent in conversations about how teachers might engage in discipline and classroom management in ways that respect the student while also providing ways for teachers to get to know their students better. While the students recognized that teachers should not be a “pushover,” they often expressed that teachers should still be a “fun teacher” where an explanation of rules and expectations can also be accompanied by icebreakers and allow students to have both the serious and fun aspects in their learning. Whether or not a teacher engaged in these practices also often determined whether students felt that they could approach the teacher later on about other issues, how engaged students felt in the class, and how much students liked the teacher as a whole.

 

The biggest challenge of this dialogue project was figuring out ways to communicate with a high school student in a way that was relatable and allowed the student to be honest. One of the most frequently expressed sentiments from my dialogue partner was that she felt she was unable to really say how she felt in the group dialogues because she felt that the teacher had certain expectations of what should be said and also because the questions were not as direct as they needed to be so that she could think of a response. Trying to navigate our conversations with these critiques in mind was somewhat difficult because it it can be difficult to discern whether or not being intentional about certain actions is enough to alleviate these worries. (See "Dialogue Analysis" for more in-depth discussion.) 

 

Seeing my student partner during the normal school day did little to change my perception of her. She conveyed her heavy focus on academics through our conversations, and she engaged in her classes in ways that accurately reflected that. In the math class that I sat in with her on, she completed her work very quickly and participated when called upon. She also followed along very easily and rarely got distracted by what others were doing in the room. What was interesting though was being able to see moments where she was really engaged with people at her school, whether it be her peers or her favorite teachers. Often during our conversations, it seemed that she was very tired or bored and, while she still expressed those feelings in her class, she also came to life when introducing me to her favorite teachers which I found to be a welcome change to the (understandably) tired demeanor she often had. 

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For more specific thoughts, themes, and learning from this experience, continue reading in my "Dialogue Analysis" paper. 

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**Teacher Note: This Dialogue portion is supposed to be in Section II, but I moved it to reflections because it seemed like a better fit there.