Developing Voice in Middle School Through Examining Essential Questions

Abstract

A democratic education in this context means knowing that you have choice over what you do and how you spend your time. You know that you can speak up and your voice will matter.

SEEQS: the School for Examining Essential Questions of Sustainability

What: Public Charter Middle School

Where: Honolulu, Hawaii, USA.

Who: SEEQS currently serves a diverse population of ~180 students in grades 6, 7, and 8 (ages 10–14). Authorized to expand to high school (grades 9–12, ages 14–18).

When: Operating since August 2013

Mission: The diverse community of SEEQS fosters a joy of learning through collaborative, interdisciplinary examination of questions essential to Hawaii’s future.

Vision: SEEQers will be stewards of planet earth and healthy, effective citizens of the world.

Design Principles:

• Real-world situations and real-world contexts enable real-world learning.

• Learning occurs when learners take ownership of their learning.

• Everyone is a teacher; everyone is a learner, all of the time.

• A learning environment is composed of its community members, cultural values, and physical surroundings.

• Improvement of an organization requires consciously collaborative participation by its community members.

How Did SEEQS Come to Life?

My passion for education and sustainability developed over the course of my life. The daughter of a teacher, I’ve always paid close attention to how people (including me) learn. An undergraduate geology major, I moved to Hawaii for graduate school in 1999, where my already strong commitment to sustainability grew even more robust as I experienced living in an island community that sees the challenges and impacts of climate change as part of our daily lives.

In the process of completing my MEd in Geology, I taught undergraduate intro-level geology courses, and I realized how much I enjoyed it. After graduate school, I began teaching in the K-12 setting. I loved the work, but was frustrated by many of the structures within all the schools I knew of—limited focus on the whole child and limited opportunity for interdisciplinary learning (which meant limited opportunity for learning about real-world challenges including sustainability).

I developed the concept of SEEQS during my year in the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s School Leadership program, School Development strand. In Richard Elmore’s course, we were challenged to define design principles for an ideal learning environment. In Linda F. Nathan’s course, “Building a Democratic School,” our tasks were very tangible: each week we designed specifics of our school model, from the weekly schedule to the annual budget to our approach to engaging with parents.

These exercises in mapping out both the big-picture philosophy and the minute details of an ideal learning environment became part of the charter application that led to SEEQS. A small group of founding board members and I submitted the charter application that same year—2012—to the Hawaii Public Charter School Commission to start a public charter secondary school in Honolulu, Hawaii, the place I call home.

What Ideas Is SEEQS Based On?

In the early years, SEEQS was a collection of ideas borrowed from other pedagogically aligned schools and best practices: project-based learning, arts-integration, long blocks of time for academic content courses, late-start to the school day, social-emotional learning, Advisory structures, Town Hall, restorative practices, etc. We built a lot in! All the pieces weren’t exactly woven together, but they were all there. One of my mottos was “How you spend your time is how you enact your values” (a catchphrase I first coined while completing the Building a Democratic School course task of designing the weekly schedule). And the SEEQS annual and weekly schedule (now only very slightly modified from its original version) built in everything we value most in a school environment; it is a manifestation of our values. Fundamental elements of SEEQS’s weekly schedule include long blocks of time for authentic work, opportunities for community involvement and for students and teachers to work and play together, and extensive time for teacher planning and collaboration.

The schedule, shown below, represents a typical week at SEEQS and the basic structure of the schedule is the same for students in all grade levels; all students enroll in an Essential Question of Sustainability (EQS) course as well as a science, math, English Language Arts (ELA), art, and history course each term.

How Do All of These Ideas Fit Together in a School Model?

Keeping all the various structures functioning well proved to be a challenge for teachers and, by extension, students and parents. They needed clarity on how all the pieces worked together. It all, of course, made sense in my brain, but in order to help others see how it all worked together, we needed a model.

With a few years and several really good minds working together, we articulated a school model that helped weave together the various parts. It is made up of the components below, which use the analogy of a sprout developing into a strong tree and the key elements required in order for it to thrive: rich soil, good seeds, and nourishment of the seeds in the soil.

Community: Deliberate community-building and maintenance (and restoration, when needed) create an intellectually safe learning environment and set the stage for collaborative co-learning.

Content Courses: Academic content courses, which enable teachers to teach their passions, engage students in cultivating the knowledge and skills of the academic disciplines. Students are enrolled in English Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies, Arts, and Elective courses each semester.

Essential Question of Sustainability (EQS) Courses: Interdisciplinary project-based, inquiry-driven courses are at the heart of the SEEQS experience. Each is designed around an essential question such as “How do humans and the oceans impact each other?” or “What is required to feed our community?” They create real-world opportunities for students to get outside of the classroom and apply the knowledge and skills from content courses to impact the world around them.

SEEQS Sustainability Skills: Over the years, students grow in their ability to reason analytically, manage effectively, communicate powerfully, collaborate productively, and think systemically—the five SEEQS Sustainability Skills. They grow into lifelong learners prepared for success beyond SEEQS.

This model helps us describe the inputs—all the things we deliberately nurture to create meaningful learning experiences for students. But how do we know what works? We build meaningful assessments of these various elements. From standards-based grades to portfolio defenses, and student-led conferences to public exhibitions, these elements were already part of the SEEQS school design. Articulating their role in assessing various parts of our school model helped us clarify how we ultimately measure whether we are on track to helping SEEQers live out the SEEQS vision of becoming stewards of planet earth and healthy, effective citizens of the world.

What Makes SEEQS Democratic?

Explicit and intentional structures—many of which are invisible to the external observer—enable students and teachers to have a voice in the learning environment they are part of every day. This voice in, and ownership of, how they spend their valuable time doing meaningful work that matters is the fundamental basis of what makes SEES democratic.

When I was a student, I never felt ownership of my learning (and it never occurred to me that I should). I was a serious student who understood her job to be to absorb the information passed on to her. I rarely spoke up; I did what I was asked and did it well: I was a “straight-A student.”

In college and graduate school, I had experiences, including travel, that helped me realize that my voice did matter. By the time I became a teacher, I had a much stronger sense of my self-worth and an inclination to make meaningful contributions to the school environment I was part of. However, I didn’t find the systems and structures within the schools in which I worked to be conducive to incorporating teacher voice in meaningful ways.

Thus, I designed SEEQS with structures intended to give voice to students and teachers in ways that I never experienced myself.

For students, these school-level structures include Town Hall, course selection, long blocks of time for academic content courses, standards-based grades, restorative disciplinary practices, and a student ambassadors program. At the classroom level, students have (age-appropriate) choices within our project-based learning environment.

For teachers, there is time built in for the things we value: building community (and maintaining it), co-planning courses that are co-taught, ongoing and embedded professional development, fortnightly meetings with the school leader, and weekly faculty meetings that enable collaboration on implementation of school-wide structures (student-led conferences, portfolio defenses, common advisory lessons, etc.). The value of teacher voice is also manifest through practices and protocols such as sitting in circles at faculty meetings, collaborative and transparent faculty meeting agendas with feedback structures built-in, and use of protocols to guide conversations. We also are continuously and collectively creating, revising, and referencing collaboratively edited “guidebooks” that describe the various elements of our school and how we carry them out.

I’ll describe each of these briefly, though you can read more details about many of these structures at the SEEQS website, www.seeqs.org. (We share our systems openly; another of our democratic beliefs is that ideas are for sharing.)

Town Hall

Town Hall is a structure enabling students and teachers to work together to steer the school. Any member of the school community (student or staff) can propose a motion to be considered at Town Hall by the body. The meetings take place approximately once per month during our long block on Wednesdays. Students have the option to attend Town Hall or Study Hall (thus, attendance at Town Hall is voluntary); teachers and staff take turns attending Town Hall or proctoring Study Hall. It takes two-thirds of the majority of people present to pass a motion, and every vote counts the same—student or staff—so the stakes are real and the students know it. The leadership team (school leader and/or executive director) has “veto power” if a motion is passed that cannot be implemented for some reason, but we have never had to use this power. The format of the Town Hall structure, which includes turn-taking with people speaking for or against the motion, makes it so that people truly listen to each other, and they often end up changing their vote based on newly considered perspectives.

Motions that have been considered through Town Hall structure through the years have ranged from organizing a school dance to adding long-sleeved uniform options to banning single-use plastic drink containers on campus to changing the schedule so that the passing period after lunch is longer. Many Town Hall motions don’t pass—the two-thirds threshold is intentionally high—but the discussion is always robust.

Town Hall gives voice to all members of the community and allows everyone to contribute to the decision-making process at SEEQS. By building transparency and involvement in this process, our hope is that students will begin to think about how social structures come to be, gain confidence in their potential to make change, and grow into engaged citizens.

Course Selection

Most courses at SEEQS are topical in nature; e.g. instead of “seventh grade English,” course offerings might be “Mirrors and Windows” or “Dystopian Fiction” or “Writers Workshop”—all of which are multi-age, sixth to eighth grades. As such, we allow students to choose which courses they enroll in as much as our scheduling allows. Most students get to select the following courses: English Language Arts, Social Studies, Elective, Arts, EQS, and Physical Activity.

For our project-based Essential Question of Sustainability (EQS) courses, it is especially important that students get to select which course (and by expansion which team of teachers) they are particularly interested in because they spend so much time (eight hours per week) in the EQS course. EQS groups spend time on field experiences, engaging with community partners and designing and carrying out projects—so we want students to be spending time on things they are interested in and with adults they value learning from. To that end, we do a form of “EQS course shopping” at the start of each school year, spending a few days during the EQS block and allowing students to experience a short version of the courses and the teachers before ultimately selecting their top choices for which EQS course to enroll in.

For Physical Activity, likewise, the priority outcome is for students to move their bodies and get blood flowing in the mornings, so it is important that they get a choice in how they prefer to do that. Physical Activity groups meet twice per week for 45 minutes at the start of the school day, and Physical Activity offerings range from low-intensity activities like gardening or walking to high-intensity sports like basketball or ultimate Frisbee. In addition to choosing which Physical Activity they enroll in each quarter, students get to suggest things they might like to learn or even lead themselves in upcoming quarters. As a result, we have also been able to offer skills-based Physical Activity options like Polynesian dance, Aikido, or pickleball when there are teachers, volunteer community members, or students with the expertise to lead them.

At SEEQS we believe that how you spend your time is how you enact your values. Every student has their own set of discrete values, and they should have a voice and choice in how they spend their time during their days, both deepening and expanding their values.

Project-Based Learning and Long Blocks of Time for Academic Content Courses

Project-based learning is a pedagogical practice common in many schools, including SEEQS. Real life is full of projects, and thus students learning through projects is a natural approach. Projects let them explore topics through a variety of perspectives, apply multiple skills at once, collaborate with peers, and so much more. Project-based learning allows students to apply the skills and tools they learn to things that matter. Voice and choice are inherent in project work, and thus project-based learning is an inherent part of our democratic school model.

Similarly, academic content courses are scheduled for 70-minute blocks. EQS courses are scheduled for 115 minutes. Longer blocks of time allow for authentic investigations, robust discussions, and meaningful learning experiences.

Standards-Based Grades

Standards-based grading is not a structure unique to SEEQS, but it is important to note the role of standards-based grades as part of our democratic school structure. Standards-based grades give students the information they need in order to learn and grow. Students’ progress at SEEQS is reported using the language of “Starting, Striving, Succeeding, or Soaring” on discipline-specific content and performance standards. Work habits (e.g. “participates effectively” or “completes assignments on time”) are reported separately, using the language of “Minimally, Somewhat, Mostly, or Completely” and do not count toward the assessment of whether a student has mastered the standard or not.

Compared to the nebulous and subjective A–F grading system, standards-based grades democratize the learning process and help students know what success can and should look like (as well as provide information about what it would look like to go above and beyond). They give information about specific areas of strength and growth, and they don’t conflate good (or bad) habits with mastery (or lack thereof).

Restorative Disciplinary Practices

Like standards-based grading, restorative practices are not unique to SEEQS. However, it is crucial to note that in a school that values student voice so much, a top-down, one-size-fits-all disciplinary approach would not be aligned. Restorative practices, in contrast to traditional disciplinary practices, value community and teach students to self-reflect and understand the impact of their actions on each other. Much of this happens through students talking with adults and with each other; the value of student voice is inherent in restorative practices.

Student Ambassadors

Student ambassadors represent the student voice of SEEQS to our broader community. They represent us when we have visitors who would like a tour of our school or to learn about our project-based EQS courses; they co-present at our Open House Info Sessions for prospective families (and lead short campus tours for those families before the event begins); they host admitted students for a “shadow day” prior to enrollment to help them get a feel for the school before they join our campus the following year. Additionally, if SEEQS is invited to participate in a conference, to be interviewed by the media, or to attend an event, student ambassadors are who we call on to participate.

The ambassador program is entirely voluntary. At the start of each semester, we put out a call to all students to attend an informational session during lunch to learn about the ambassadors program. Many students new to SEEQS already have a sense of the ambassadors program because they had a positive experience interacting with an ambassador before they enrolled, either through an Open House Info Session or through the shadowing experience as a prospective student. Thus, they already have a positive impression of the role of ambassadors and want to have the chance to share that warm welcome with future students, families, and guests.

Students who are interested in becoming an ambassador have a short application to complete in which they explain why they’d like to be an ambassador, and they must get signatures from teachers indicating permission to be excused from class for short periods of time to engage with visitors. In many cases, students’ teachers or advisors will encourage introverted students or students who might not see themselves as ambassadors to consider becoming one. These students often become our most earnest ambassadors; having someone see their strengths often helps them recognize and appreciate them, too.

Students can volunteer to be either a class ambassador or a school ambassador. School ambassadors—almost always in pairs—lead school tours; they begin by sharing about the SEEQS model and the SEEQS schedule, and then they walk visitors through the campus, stopping at each classroom. At that point, one or more class ambassadors will approach the visitors, introduce themselves, share about the class they’re in and the activity they’re currently engaging in, and answer questions the visitors may have.

We hold training sessions (usually during lunch) for students to become ambassadors. In these sessions, we make sure that school ambassadors practice using the language of the school’s vision, school model, and elements of the weekly schedule. We help class ambassadors practice sharing about the class and make sure they know the course name and essential question. We also help ambassadors think through what types of questions visitors most often have about SEEQS, and which details are interesting to share.

But for the most part, the training comes through practice. New school ambassadors do their first school tours with experienced school ambassadors taking the lead. Class ambassadors often begin in pairs so they can build off each other. The more experiences engaging with others they have, the better students get at articulating what they want to share.

Student ambassadors, without fail, charm everyone they engage with (including me, every time). They speak with authenticity and tell their truth in ways that only middle schoolers can. Most importantly, though, they speak with ownership of their learning experiences and a subtle pride that they are trusted with this important role of sharing about SEEQS.

The school ambassadors program is the program at our school that I am the most proud of and the one that I think teaches students the strength and power of their voice in the most long-lasting, impactful ways.

Faculty Community-Building (and Community-Maintaining) Time

The basis of any highly functional work environment is a strong sense of community and intellectual safety. It takes time to build (and maintain) these things, so we factor time for this important work both before the school year starts and throughout the school year.

At the beginning of the school year, we typically schedule seven days with faculty (and one additional day at the start of it all with just new staff) before students arrive so that we can build our own community together, collaborate, and prepare for students. One of these seven days we schedule as an off-campus retreat-type day; on this day we prioritize getting to know each other (through reflection and sharing prompts in small and medium groups), playing together (e.g. playing Frisbee, going hiking, swimming in the ocean, and playing board games), and doing service together. In the past we’ve held these retreats at sites ranging from a community farm to a North Shore beach house. The result is always a closer, tighter faculty community that has built connections that extend beyond the academic contexts.

At the end of each quarter of the school year, we reserve a paid work day without students to ensure that teachers have time to finish grades prior to a school break. On these work days, we take time to either start with a “shout-out circle” in which staff members sit in a circle taking turns sharing appreciation of and with each other or to do physical activity together. When possible, we do both. Our faculty loves to play dodgeball and kickball; we have a competitive crew and we have so much fun (and build so much community) by getting to be silly and sweaty together without the responsibility of caring for students.

Faculty Meeting Practices and Protocols

Weekly faculty meetings are 85 minutes on Wednesday mornings. Much like long content courses allow for meaningful learning for students, longer faculty meetings—scheduled at the start of the day when teachers are fresh, not exhausted at the end of the day—allow for meaningful collaboration and the ability to maintain cohesive school-wide structures and systems for students (e.g. student-led conferences, Portfolio Defense, Advisory). Typical faculty meetings include a combination of professional development, announcements, and time to reconnect to and recalibrate ongoing school structures that all teachers implement. Most faculty meetings have multiple facilitators; the school leader sets the agenda but incorporates other staff and teacher leaders to lead various parts of the meeting in which they are experts.

The shared, continuously running document for the faculty meeting agenda plays a role in democratizing faculty meetings. All faculty members have access—before, during, and after meetings—to meeting objectives, discussion topics and notes, and hyperlinked documents.

The running agenda document includes several open-source sections: housekeeping—in which anyone can contribute notes ranging from “don’t forget to clean your stuff out of the staff workspace” to “here’s a great upcoming professional development opportunity you might want to check out”; plus/deltas—in which meeting attendees can provide feedback about things that worked well in the meeting (plusses) and suggestions for improvement (deltas) for future meetings; and suggestions for future meetings—a table at the end of the document for folks to add suggestions for topics they would like to have included on upcoming meeting agenda (e.g. “Can we revisit and calibrate on Work Habit scores?”).

Additionally, at the start of each meeting, the facilitator asks for volunteers: a time-keeper to help keep the agenda on track and a note-taker to record key points of discussion so that everyone (including those who missed the meeting) can refer back to the document later. The faculty meeting agenda document ultimately serves as a record of information discussed in meetings.

All faculty meetings begin in the same way that days begin for students: with the group sitting or standing in a circle, followed by a greeting and sharing in that circle arrangement. Greetings can be short or long, silly or serious, but by the end of the greeting every person has been acknowledged by name by one or more folks in the room. Likewise, sharing prompts can be silly or serious, and they can be random or connect to the topics on the agenda for the day, but always provide an opportunity for faculty and staff to connect with each other.

This is a crucial part of the community-maintaining we do throughout the year that fosters the collaborative work environment. The parallelism between activities for students and for teachers adds yet another dimension to the intentionality and impact of structures that enable a strong community.

Teacher Leadership Roles

Teachers are the experts in many elements of the SEEQS model, as they are the ones who directly implement them with students. Thus, having teachers who serve as these resident experts benefits the entire school and makes for a better student experience. Teacher leaders organize logistics and details for students, contribute to school-level leadership team meetings, lead professional development sessions for their peers, work from and contribute to guidebooks, and more.

Teachers who have been at SEEQS for more than a semester can apply for leadership roles; they are compensated with a stipend and in some cases additional release time. Teacher leadership roles include Portfolio Defense Lead, Advisory Lead, Student Ambassadors Lead, Physical Activity Lead, and EQS Lead. The roles and responsibilities for each are outlined in a shared document that teachers who have served in those roles in the past helped create (including determining fair compensation for the role based on estimated hours needed for it).

In the event of a change in school leadership, having teachers hold the expertise and ownership to carry out our fundamental SEEQS structures ensures that students can continue to have cohesive and high-quality experiences.

Ongoing and Embedded Professional Development

Professional development and collaboration time is built into the start of the school year (the seven days prior to students arriving, as mentioned above) and throughout the school year. Four other professional development days are scheduled throughout the school year (not counting the “work days” described above for grading and progress reporting); during these days there are opportunities to dive deeply into priority topics as determined by the school leadership team. These topics range from assessment practices to place-based learning and culturally responsive practices. Professional development may be led by the school leader, by another faculty member, or by an external consultant or community partner.

Professional development is also built into weekly faculty meetings and afternoon job-embedded professional development (additional paid hours for teachers beyond the contracted work day). More than half of faculty meetings, on average, are reserved for explicit professional development.

Co-planning and Preparation Time

Meaningful learning for students requires thoughtful and collaborative planning by teachers. As such, time is scheduled within the year and within each teacher’s work day for preparation, collaboration, and co-planning.

At the start and end of each quarter, faculty work days and professional development days enable teachers to plan, assess, and learn.

All teachers within a disciplinary content area have the same preparation period; this enables informal collaboration (as happens naturally in the faculty-shared workspace), as well as formal department meetings when they are scheduled.

EQS “pre-brief” is collaborative planning/preparation time for teaching teams who co-teach EQS. On Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, those teams meet in their small groups from 8:00 a.m. to 8:25 a.m. (prior to students arriving) and use their time as needed to coordinate their course. During that same time block on Fridays, all the EQS teaching teams meet together; this enables all teams to be aware of what each other is doing and to collaborate/co-plan as needed. It also provides opportunities for teams to check in and co-plan structures that all EQS groups have in common, for example, EQS camp (two days of field experiences), EQS project exhibitions (end-of-semester showcases of student project work), and more.

Fortnightly Meetings with the School Leader

Regular and open lines of communication and connection with school leadership are fundamental elements of teacher voice in a democratic school community. Teachers are on the ground with students every day; they know them the best. They also have direct insights into how school structures and norms work (and don’t work).

Fortnightly meetings, scheduled every two weeks for 25 minutes between each faculty member and the school leader, ensure each teacher knows that they have one-on-one time to share celebrations, concerns, ideas, and more. Agenda for these meetings is typically open-ended; discussions may include recent lessons, classroom challenges, opportunities for leadership, plans for the future, struggles at home, and so much more.

Most importantly, the frequency and regularity ensure that the school leader has a constant pulse on how each teacher is feeling and how to support and/or amplify them best. It behooves any school leader to get insights directly from teachers in order to keep a strong community and collaborative relationship between teachers and administrators.

Guidebooks

Guidebooks are digital documents shared—and collaboratively created and revised—within our school community that document how we do things. From an overarching “Faculty Guidebook” to structure-specific “Assessment Guidebook” and “EQS Curriculum Guidebook” to role-specific “Office Procedures Guidebook” or “Business Managers Guidebook,” these shared Google documents collectively describe how to run SEEQS.

Some elements of these documents are specific to our organization (e.g. reimbursement procedures), but many of them are shareable within the broader community, for those who are interested in doing something similar (e.g. Portfolio Defense Guidebook).

Each guidebook is “owned” within the SEEQS organization; most members of the community have view-access and a few have comment-access. Each document has a few members who have edit-access to make changes and updates as they are needed—in many cases, it is a teacher leader who is the primary editor. But because they are digital documents, everyone within the organization can see the most current version of them at all times.

Collectively, these structures allow faculty members to contribute their passions and expertise to continuously improving the school and the experiences for students (and to continuously grow and improve themselves), and for students to experience developing and using their voice and seeing the impacts of it, all within the intellectually safe community we consciously work to build and maintain.

What Am I Most Proud Of?

We recently celebrated our tenth anniversary: SEEQS was authorized to be a Hawaii public charter school on December 13, 2012, and we held a tenth anniversary fundraiser in December 2022. Attendees included community members and donors, current and former families, and current and former board members. We also invited a few of our SEEQS alumni who had moved on to high school or college to sit at tables with guests and share about the impact of their SEEQS experiences.

Our event hosts and hostesses included none other than our current SEEQS ambassadors, who volunteered to attend the Saturday evening event and speak about their classes and SEEQS experience to guests. The ambassadors (more than 20 of them) set up around the school building in various classrooms and hallways and enthusiastically described the various structures of SEEQS—from our schedule to our arts program and portfolio defenses—to event attendees who opted to tour the school building. Guests reported utter exuberance from the ambassadors.

The alumni who attended as invited guests sat at tables with complete strangers decades older than them and held their own in conversation, sharing what they had learned from SEEQS and how it has helped them in the years since middle school. Again, the guests who engaged with these alumni reported being incredibly impressed (notably, we received more donations from guests sitting at tables with alumni).

All SEEQS faculty members were invited to attend as sponsored guests, and—with the exception of one teacher still on paternity leave for a newborn—every one of them showed up and had a fantastic time.

This is what I’m proud of. In a school where you know your voice matters—because you have had opportunities repeatedly embedded in your experience—you show up to use it. Our whole community showed up to celebrate our milestone event together. It was spectacular.