What If Students Ran the School? (#SOL meets #EmpowerBook)

I was scrambling down the stairs when a bounding 5-year old announces  “It’s class time! It’s class time!” He leapfrogged from one group of scattered students to the next with his broadcast. As I made my way to the canteen, hurrying to grab a cup of coffee, I noticed that the duty teacher was patrolling the sprawling play space with the same message: c’mon kids, break time is over.

You see at our school, we don’t use bells to signal the end of class periods or break times or even dismissal. In many ways, this seems more natural and authentic, but it also challenging to accept this switch from Pavlovian antics to try to round up and herd children back to their classrooms, especially when we give students free reign over a large swath of our campus. We have a single whistle and a wonderfully orange vest to suggest our authority which entitles us the right to call them off the playground.

But as I was walking back from class, a “what if” began to bubble up in my mind: What if we gave students an orange vest? How might that impact managing break or lunchtime recess? And more importantly, what message would that suggest to our students? Furthermore, what would be the impact on our school culture?

So as I think about the everyday structures and routines of our school’s life, I wonder what sort of power are we hoarding that could release to our students to give them more agency and develop more self-management skills? I wonder about an experiment in which we gave some students an orange vest to provide them the opportunity to assist the duty managers. Also, I wonder if there are other areas that we could root out in our school’s community which would give students an opportunity to engage and influence the very place that is designed for them. To me, an orange vest is really the tip of the iceberg.

I bet if we posed the question What if students ran the school, how might it be different-what would you change? Now I’m sure we would get answers like more playtime and ice cream served at lunch, but we also might get some genuine gems that would provoke and inspire us to create a more student-centered culture.

Judy Imamudeen

Developing learners as leaders is my joy! I am committed and passionate International Baccaluearate (IB) educator who loves cracking jokes, jumping on trampolines and reading books. When I’m not playing Minecraft with my daughter, I work on empowering others in order to create a future that works for everyone.

judyimamudeen.com