BOCES program focuses on student empowerment

On Board Online • September 25, 2023

By Alan Wechsler
Special Correspondent

One afternoon about a year ago, Lucy Szpila, a sophomore at Niskayuna High School in Schenectady County boarded a bus headed for classes at the Capital Region BOCES campus. She joined 83 students from 11 districts around the region to begin a new program called Elevating Student Voices.

The program met four times over the year, culminating in a day-long Youth Summit in April at Proctors Theatre in Schenectady. The idea was to build student leaders who could take skills back to their respective districts and help give students a greater voice in their education.

So, what do students want? A lot of things, according to Szpila. "We need to have relationships with teachers to tell them when we don't feel safe, or are overwhelmed," she said when presenting at a recent NYSSBA conference. "We need time during the day to decompress. We need to have safe spaces. We are very confused teenagers, and we want to be happy going to school."

The BOCES program was developed based on guidance by the State Education Department on Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education ( bit.ly/3PgKIW6 ). Among other goals, the guidance calls for school districts and BOCES to "elevate historically marginalized voices" and "empower students as agents of social change."

A vision statement in the document focuses, in part, on developing students who are "sociopolitically conscious and socioculturally responsive."

Such students must "acknowledge the limitations of their own perspectives," according to the guidance. They also should:

• Have empathy for others while they appreciate and respect others' differences.
• Demonstrate cooperation and teamwork.
• Use active listening and communication skills to resolve conflict.
• Use interpersonal skills to build and maintain strong relationships, including those along lines of difference, in their class and school communities.

The Capital Region BOCES program is an example of an effort to address those state-identified goals.

"Partnering with students is essential," said Eva Jones of S&E Jones Consulting, a former teacher and administrator who designed the BOCES program. "It deepens the learning experience and allows students to express themselves."

Jones wanted to create a program that would address the goals outlined in the state guidance while giving students a chance to build their social and emotional learning skills.

"We know how important it is for students to practice and have an understanding about their own emotions, their own feelings, about the way they respond to stressful situations," Jones said. "The research shows that, post-pandemic, students have struggled with that. We have to help them practice, we have to support them."

During Student Voices meetings, participants had the opportunity to interact with each other to talk about topics including race, mental health and wellness. Students from different districts split into smaller groups, permitting a demographic mix of urban, suburban and rural students.

"At first there's a little awkwardness," Jones said. "Then the energy comes right up and people are smiling."

Students were trained to be "facilitation leaders" to bring these kinds of conversations back to their own districts. In subsequent meetings, students developed action plans to engage students at their schools.

Some students had platforms to exert leadership. For instance, Kylie Slater, a junior in the Mohonasen Central School District, has been a leader of a student newspaper as well as the school group No Place for Hate. "This has opened my eyes so much," she said. "We need to bring this work back to our schools so we can teach students things like equality, empathy. We have so much students can learn."

Another goal identified in the vision statement of the state guidance on culturally responsive-sustaining education involves enabling students to experience academic success in a self-empowered way ("Students are self-motivated, setting and revising personal academic goals to drive their own learning and growth"). The third and final goal identified in the vision statement is to help students develop "a critical lens through which they challenge inequitable systems of access, power and privilege" and "learn from historically marginalized voices."

Szpila, the Niskayuna student, gave an example of how she felt empowered, academically, after completing the BOCES program. In an English class, she was asked to write a report about the Ray Bradbury classic Fahrenheit 451. While she didn't particularly like the book, she saw an opportunity to discuss censorship. The training gave her the confidence to express a strong opinion in her writing, which made her feel more engaged in her work. "I didn't know class could be like that," she said.

And in a history class, she spent part of a class in a deep conversation about the lives of her fellow students. "I'd been going to school with these people for 11 years. I learned so much in just a 30-minute discussion. It was amazing," she said.

She also led a survey of district students, which prompted a presentation before both faculty and the board of education. In one case, she reported how upset some girls were because boys teams had plenty of buses to take them to competitions while some girls teams had no buses at all.

"I was shocked how receptive people were," she said.

Jones noted that students don't have to take part in a regional program like the one she designed to have their voices heard. For example, in one district, students gave a presentation to seventh graders about diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), and then discussed the program with the Board of Education. In another case, a student was invited to be the keynote speaker of a "welcome back" meeting for nearly 500 staff at the beginning of the year.

Jones said other options to address various goals in the state guidance include cultural programs and dinners where students showcase food from their respective cultures; film festivals; discussion forums; visits between districts; and other extracurricular activities designed to bring students together.

Diane Blinn, a student assistance counselor at Capital Region BOCES and Mohonasen, helped create an Ideas Fair unrelated to the BOCES Student Voices program that gave students a chance to research social topics of their choosing and present their ideas to faculty and students.

Topics included food insecurity, mental health, should college athletes be paid, nuclear energy, limiting assault rifles and the appropriate roles of zoos in America.

Working with these topics could earn students a state "Seal of Civic Readiness" sticker for their diploma.

The district took further steps to promote DEI goals through Peers for Peace, which used media arts classes to highlight marginalized groups, for instance creating videos for Black History Month, women's history, pride awareness and autism awareness.

"It was a pleasure to see students engaged, excited and passionate about their individual projects," Blinn recalled. "Students care about different things than we might think they do."

The efforts by Capital Region BOCES and Mohonasen to address the state guidance were praised by three NYSSBA board members who serve as co-chairs of NYSSBA's 22-member committee on diversity, equity and inclusion.

"I have been impressed by the creative ways that school districts and BOCES have been finding to address the goals described in the State Education Department's framework for culturally responsive-sustaining education," said Cathy Lewis, a member of the Schenectady school board, a board member at Capital Region BOCES and NYSSBA Area 7 director. "Empowering student voices is a worthy and appropriate goal for today's schools."

Cathy Romano, a member of the Eastern Suffolk BOCES board and Area 12 Director, noted that we have seen states imposing restrictions on what teachers can teach regarding certain aspects of American history as part of efforts to minimize discussions of diversity, equity and inclusion. "I see the guidance from the State Education Department on culturally responsive-sustaining education as an example of a much more educationally sound approach to the discussion of history and literature by developing students' critical thinking skills."

"We should be encouraging discussion of DEI in a constructive way, not outlawing it," said Sharon Rencher, senior executive director of the New York City public schools and Area 13 Director (voting on behalf of city schools chancellor David Banks).