Activities: Crossroads of Student Voice, Competition and School Culture

School culture is built through the experiences students share each day – in classrooms, hallways, athletic venues, auditoriums, club meetings and countless other spaces throughout a school. Those experiences become even more meaningful when students have an opportunity to help shape them.

Amanda Jones-Weis, Brad Nye and Nelah Thompson believe school activities provide an ideal setting for that work. Activities bring students together around shared interests, create opportunities to develop leadership and provide a natural avenue for students and adults to learn from one another.

For Jones-Weis, an assistant principal and activities director at Greeley West High School in Greeley, Colorado, that connection is one of the greatest strengths of activities.

“Having a diverse offering of activities, some that compete and some that don’t, allows all students to have an avenue where they can belong,” she said.

Nye, an assistant principal and activities director at Fossil Ridge High School in Fort Collins, Colorado, describes activities as a “natural laboratory” where students can practice leadership and engagement.

And for Thompson, a senior at Doherty High School in Colorado Springs, Colorado, student voice has become an important part of her own leadership journey as a student-athlete and student body president.

“Students having a voice in their school gives them another reason to want to come to school,” Thompson said. “We spend nine months here, so it’s important that we have a voice in what happens and that each school day is a meaningful experience.”

Creating Multiple Pathways
Activities create numerous opportunities for students to find their place in a school community. A student may discover a passion through athletics, music, theater or FFA. Others may find a sense of belonging through Dungeons & Dragons, an honor society, a career and technical organization or a club built around a shared interest.

Each provides an opportunity to connect with others, and each can become a pathway to leadership.

At Fossil Ridge, the marching band has sectional leaders and drum majors who communicate with students and help bring ideas and concerns to band directors. Nye sees similar leadership structures within honor societies, leadership classes and other organizations.

“We need to hear from students of all backgrounds and experiences – athletes, students in leadership classes, performing arts students, students who aren’t involved in anything, 4.0 students, 2.5 students, and everyone in between,” Nye said.

Providing multiple pathways for participation also creates multiple pathways for student voice.

Expanding the Leadership Table
At Greeley West, Jones-Weis has worked to broaden that table. The school previously held monthly Town Hall meetings, with representatives from advisory classes responding to questions developed by the student council. While the process provided valuable feedback, Jones-Weis and her colleagues recognized an opportunity to expand the conversation.

That led to the creation of the “G-Dub Club,” bringing together three to five students from every school organization, sport, activity and club. More than 100 students are represented. The purpose extends beyond planning the next dance or assembly. Students are invited to discuss the broader school experience and identify ways to strengthen their school culture. The results have been meaningful.

Students have raised ideas about equal recognition among groups and ways to strengthen teacher support in classrooms and at events.

“Those are not event-planning conversations,” Jones-Weis said. “They are culture conversations.”

Thompson understands the importance of creating that kind of access.

“Some students don’t feel like they have much of a voice, and I think a lot of that comes from a lack of empowerment,” she said.

That can include students who are shy or less expressive, as well as those who may not see themselves as traditional student leaders.

“We need to make it clear that their ideas are welcome,” Thompson said. “There’s no harm in sharing an idea.”

The Gift of Different Perspectives
When students with different interests and experiences come together, they bring something valuable to the conversation: perspective. Jones-Weis calls it the “gift of lenses.”

A Dungeons & Dragons club president might sit alongside a track captain. A student who recently arrived from another country might sit beside a student involved in ballet folklórico. Each brings a different experience of the same school.

“They all have unique and diverse experiences at Greeley West,” Jones-Weis said. “Their experiences are very different, but they are all (Greeley West) Spartans.”

That exchange benefits adults as well.

“If we don’t give them opportunities to share their voices, we’re working from assumptions and biases,” Nye said.

Student voice also helps students develop the confidence to communicate beyond their peer groups.

“Activities have helped me develop the skills to communicate with people beyond my peers,” Thompson said. “I’m more comfortable approaching adults, including principals, and presenting an idea or proposing something.”

Those experiences prepare students for the world beyond high school by developing communication, listening, empathy and collaboration.

From Participation to Partnership
The most powerful student voice opportunities can move beyond conversation and into action.

At Fossil Ridge, freshmen in SaberCat 101 learn design thinking by identifying opportunities to improve the student experience. One group identified a need for clearer signs and visual markers throughout the school to make the building easier to navigate. The idea moved through student leadership groups, administration and staff. Senior class officers eventually worked with a local company to develop a plan, with the senior class using its class gift to fund the project.

“It started with freshmen saying, ‘This would improve the student experience,’” Nye said.

Another Fossil Ridge example began with the environmental club. Students wanted to establish a composting system and worked with Nye, kitchen staff and custodians to determine how the idea could become sustainable. Thompson recently experienced a similar student-adult partnership.

Cafeteria and custodial staff members joked that they contributed so much to the school but did not even have a picture in the yearbook. Thompson brought the idea to the yearbook adviser, and the school is now developing an appreciation page recognizing those employees.

“It felt good to take what they felt was a joke and actually turn it into something,” Thompson said.

These examples demonstrate an important evolution: Students are not simply providing feedback. They are helping identify opportunities, develop solutions and create positive change.

Making Student Voice Part of the Culture
For student voice to have a lasting impact, it needs to become part of the regular rhythm of a school.

Nye emphasizes the importance of making it purposeful and ongoing. That can include formal opportunities such as surveys, leadership meetings and student committees, as well as informal conversations in cafeterias, hallways, classrooms and activity spaces.

“Student voice needs to happen in multiple modalities,” he said.

Jones-Weis recommends a simple three-part approach: gather student voices from across the school, give those voices a seat at tables where school culture is discussed, and repeat the process throughout the year.

Face-to-face conversations are particularly valuable.

“Surveys are a wonderful, quick way to get feedback,” Jones- Weis said. “But they remove the need to look at somebody’s eyes and understand their unique perspective.”

Those conversations help students develop empathy, listening skills and the ability to synthesize multiple perspectives into solutions that serve a broader community.

They also build trust.

“When I trust you enough to know that you have my best interest at heart and that you’re actually going to listen to me, I start breaking down those walls,” Jones-Weis said. “Trust develops, I become vulnerable, and I want to be part of something.”

The Crossroads
Activities sit at a unique crossroads in a school. They bring together students who compete and students who create, students who lead from the front and students who lead quietly, and students with diverse interests and experiences. That makes activities an essential part of the conversation about school culture.

“If I only look at things through a sporting lens, I’m missing the other half of my population,” Jones-Weis said. The opportunity is to bring all those voices together.

For Thompson, that begins with recognizing the value of every student’s perspective.

“Your voice is powerful,” she said. “Your voice is just as powerful as the student sitting next to you. There’s nothing that makes one student’s voice more important than another’s.”

That may be the greatest promise of activities: They give students a place to belong, opportunities to lead, and experiences that prepare them to contribute beyond high school.

They also give schools an opportunity to build culture with students rather than simply for them.

“Unless we have their voices,” Jones-Weis asks, “whose culture is it really?”

The answer can be found at the crossroads – where activities bring students together, where different perspectives become shared experiences, and where student voice becomes student leadership.

Ultimately, the goal is more than participation. It is partnership.

Rashaan Davis is assistant commissioner of the Colorado High School Activities Association and a member of the High School Today Publications Committee.