ExclusiveDom Hustleyouth, community schools, leadership, youth engagement, responsibly, restorativeComment

MCSP Community Schools Youth Coalition Summit

ExclusiveDom Hustleyouth, community schools, leadership, youth engagement, responsibly, restorativeComment
MCSP Community Schools Youth Coalition Summit

[MAR 2024] - How many people can honestly say that they have the opportunity to wake up each day and work towards changing the world. I am lucky enough to say I get that opportunity.

Part of my role as Community Schools High School Manager within the Milwaukee Community Schools Partnership is leading initiative level strategy YOUTH VOICE & ADVOCACY. Twice a year, once during the fall semester and again in the spring; I have the opportunity to spearhead our COMMUNITY SCHOOLS YOUTH COALITION SUMMITS where we convene student leadership teams from across 16 of our full implementation Community Schools.

Community Schools is a nationally recognized, research based school transformation framework in which SHARED LEADERSHIP is a primary pillar, in turn each school has what we call a Community Schools Youth Council (CSYC). We utilize a youth leadership framework TRANSFORMATIVE YOUTH VOICE that we’ve built upon in partnership with Associate Professor Dr. Julissa Ventura at Marquette’s School of Education to assist in the development of leadership skills and expand on the leadership capacities of participating youth council members. Our coordinators spend time throughout the year co-leading alongside their youth leadership teams to work through processes to identify root cause issues in their schools and work through different advocacy strategies to find tangible solutions to address identified problems and issues by adopting the Critical Civic Inquiry (CCI) curriculum and using it as a guide in their facilitation and learning.

While no two summits are alike; we utilize the Fall semester convening to focus on collaborative relationship and skill building across the 16 schools. Highlighting similar issue areas and encouraging synergy in strategy development and implementation, while using the Spring semester convening to carve out space to give school teams the opportunity to share wins, obstacles, and best practices of their advocacy.

This Spring, 160 youth leaders as young as 3rd grade all the way up to seniors in High School gathered at Marquette’s Alumni Memorial Union for our most innovative experience to date. By prioritizing skill and capacity development as a way to not discourage students who were running into obstacles moving the needle at their respective schools, we tried a different approach to our collaborative work. Students were given the opportunity to pre-select an issue area that they felt strongest about that were reflective of student identified issues that were impacting their own school communities (Social Media Narratives, Sense of Belonging, Violence & Conflicts, Positive & Proud School Culture, and City Pride ). A case study narrative was paired with relevant data and students were also given the freedom to research different articles and multi-media pieces to support their thinking. From there, students engaged in a case study activity where they were responsible for 1) Identifying a primary problem / issue 2) data analyzation 3) development of an action plan 4) identifying potential parters that would be ideal allies in supporting them in executing said action plan(s) and 5) envisioning what would success looks like in 6 - 12 months.

Closing with a full group share out and gallery walk where student groups were able to provide direct feedback for their peers to support and fine tune their efforts.

Youth Voice and Choice is at the forefront of our Youth Coalition summits, being extremely intentional about not dictating their experiences but rather centering their voices. Everything from giving individual students the option to select what case study activities they engaged in, to even lunch; given students the option to select if they’d like to build their own burger bar or hot dog. You see the ownership that students begin to take when they feel they are apart of the decision-making table rather than always having their tables set for them by adults. The level of engagement is much higher and their self-efficacy is growing right before our eyes. Relying on the summits as a strategy that really inspires students to continue to insert themselves in the transformation of their respective school communities.

In the latest post summit survey:

  • 83% of Youth Council students feel as if “MY TEACHERS WILL LISTEN TO STUDENT IDEAS” a 10% increase to this same question during the pre-summit survey.

  • 95.5% of students felt confident “THEY COULD OVERCOME and ACHIEVE OUTCOMES THAT ARE IMPORTANT TO THEM”

  • 93.2% of students feel “THEY KNOW HOW TO HANDLE UNFORESEEN SITUATIONS due to their RESOURCEFULNESS”

There is an African proverb that says: “A child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth”

I am thankful to partners and colleagues that stand shoulder to shoulder to create such a meaningful and impactful experience for our young leaders. Extremely grateful for the opportunity to invest time, efforts, energy, and resources to ensuring the next generation can indeed feel the warmth of the village.