Student voice has been influencing the school environment here at West for nearly 15 years. Changes that have been made in the past include, but are not limited to, student and staff member of the week and the exam special schedules. These changes affect everybody at school in one way or another, whether or not they are aware of the origin being student voice.

  “Some of the things we’ve started are student of the week, staff person of the week, the academic communities, so the fact that we have the STEM community, and the arts community, global community, those all came from ideas from student voice. The exam special schedules, the new cafeteria furniture, new as in the last couple years, came from student voice, the red security jackets [and] there’s been a couple bathroom changes,” Biology teacher and student voice facilitator Kate Heydlauff said.

  The student voice program has influenced many decisions made at school and has the chance to create even more impact at their next meeting on March 18. Topics covered at the meeting can range anywhere from AI use to problems with the bathrooms. 

  “In student voice we might talk about how do we better recognize students in this building, or what [we should] do about bathrooms, or how [we should] tell our student body how to use or how not to use artificial intelligence,” Heydlauff said.

  The whole purpose of student voice is that it is student led, however the original idea was actually proposed by teachers. A handful of teachers also facilitate the program, while still allowing students to run things and express their opinions. 

  “It’s very much student-led. While Ms [Ingrid] Pylvainen and Coach [Jason] Morrow and myself will facilitate and get the conversation going, we kind of stay out of it because we want it to be totally student driven,” Heydlauff said.

  Student voice was established as a platform for student voices to shine, as both students and administrators alike felt that student opinions were relevant and necessary to the development of the school. Although teachers and administrators were once students themselves, it can be difficult for them to truly understand issues from a student perspective due to changes in technology and overall society. By bringing in student voices, it can be more effective to solve problems that continuously plague the school, as well as come up with plans to address future challenges, for example how to handle AI as it becomes more prevalent.

  “[We] look for little things we can do to make the school more effective or efficient from a student point of view, because we realize a lot as principals, or teachers, or security staff, we went to school but it was super different 20, 30, 40 years ago, and our experience is very different, so getting that feedback from students, particularly, you know, we use the survey to identify problems, and then we take a couple of those, and we go to student voice and go ‘what would some solutions to this be?” Head Principal Joe Esper said.

  Back when the program originated, around 2012, surveys were sent out as an early form of student voice. However, administrators soon realized the system was faulty since the surveys lacked student names, making it impossible to follow up on some of the ideas put forth by students. By creating student voice, it became easier to put a name to the idea and ideas progressed further and faster once a connection was established to the student. 

  “We were doing some student surveys at the time and they always thought the feedback we got from students was really interesting. [However,] if you see an interesting comment on a survey, they’re anonymous, so you can’t go ask that student more about it, or what it would look like, or how they would like it to be, so they came up with this protocol for student voice. We’ve changed it slightly over the years but it’s really the same process at its core that we started with in 2012,” Esper said.

  High approval from staff and students, as well as impactful changes, implies student voice is a program here to stay.

  “I think what we really want to make sure is we have a good culture here, and I think part of a good culture at school is that students feel like they’re heard and their voice matters. While we can’t do everything that students might want to do, there are some really awesome ideas that students have that as adults we might not think of, so I think it’s a really great opportunity for students to come in and share their thoughts,” Heydlauff said.