This is Jennifer Gonzalez, welcoming you to episode 260 of the Cult of Pedagogy podcast.

In this episode, we'll explore seven teaching practices that nurture student voice.

In our efforts to improve school, especially in the United States, student voice has really gotten lost.

We focus on test scores, top-down curriculum, and measures of success that never quite get to the humanity of our students.

Not only have these efforts not succeeded in raising test scores, they haven't given us much satisfaction in other ways either. In a recent

survey, nearly half of educators reported that student behavior was worse than before the pandemic,

and that number had grown since teachers were surveyed just

two years earlier. Although there are most certainly individual schools where great things are

happening, too many schools are still missing the mark. Too many schools keep trying to address

these problems without hearing from the very people who are impacted most,

the students. But there is another way. Four years ago, I started talking a lot about a new book

I'd read called Street Data. The book offered an approach to school improvement that was different

from anything I'd seen before. It focused on having

slow, thoughtful listening sessions with students at the margins, those whose voices were rarely

heard and whose needs weren't being consistently met at school. From those sessions, new solutions

could be developed, piloted, and then iterated and improved on, followed by more

listening sessions to guide further change. Unlike so many other programs and approaches I'd seen for

making schools better, many of which are quite expensive to implement, the model outlined by this

single book seemed like it could actually work. I really wanted

teachers and school leaders to try it. So I started by having the authors Shane Safier and Jamila

Dugan on episode 178 of the podcast. Not long after, I offered to produce a mini documentary

of Shane and Jamila guiding two schools through

...