Listening to Students to Improve Schools

Corporation grantee Transcend aims to facilitate deep listening of students’ experiences, believing that the voices of young people should help inform educational decision-making

By Carnegie Corporation of New York May 6, 2022

Carnegie Reporter Winter 2022 Student Success

How can we better listen to students as we work to improve schools? Transcend, a Carnegie Corporation of New York grantee that supports school communities to reimagine education, has developed a set of tools to help schools shift from an industrial model of education to an approach oriented toward equity, students’ personal growth, and social justice. The nonprofit organization recently launched its Conversations with Kids toolkit, which includes resources and recommendations for talking to students about school. To model how it works, New York City high school students Mia Payne and Kenisha Mahajan sat down for a conversation with Jenee Henry Wood, Transcend’s head of learning. Progress begins with deep listening to young people in encounters like this one, aiming to understand students’ current experiences of school while raising their voices in educational decision-making.

Jenee Henry Wood

Jenee Henry Wood: So Kenisha, tell me about something you’re doing in school that matters a lot to you, and why.

Kenisha Mahajan: There are two things. First, I was really excited to take history courses, especially American history, as it’s a direct product of the social injustices we experience in our everyday lives. My school has less than five percent Black and Latinx students, so I wanted to see how the teachers were adapting to being empathetic to them and to presenting American history in a way that’s fair to groups that aren’t really represented in the usual stories. And I’ve had a pretty positive experience. I’m seeing certain administrators and teachers go out of their way to teach the different facets of American history, putting a progressive new curriculum within the framework of the dated larger curricula that are still in place.

The other important thing for me is my school newspaper. I’m an editor for the paper, and I feel like that is a real service to the school community. In your publication, you’re able to pinpoint things that need change, you can say what you want to happen to address them. In the past year, we’ve written editorials about students’ mental health, calling for policies we want to see implemented, or other opinion pieces — a lot of work representing a lot of different perspectives. I really like being able to put all those different voices out there.

Wood: How about you, Mia?

Mia Payne: I think of school projects that I get really into. If I put a lot of work into something, I feel very proud of myself. Right now, I’m taking AP Computer Science — and I never thought I would be a coding girl, but I love coding. I’m also working on ways to address student apathy from the pandemic and advocating for study sessions and student mental health.

Wood: Kenisha, what did you like most and what did you like least about remote learning?

Kenisha Mahajan

Mahajan: I liked not having a commute. My commute was really long, three hours round trip every day. So that was exhausting, and then more work on top of it. Another thing I liked was that instead of having 10 class periods a day, we had five double periods, alternating to give us more flexibility on when to get work done. The school was listening to feedback from students about what was needed, because things we had done in person just weren’t feasible anymore. It opened up more pathways of communication between the administration and students.

The thing I liked least about remote learning was there was no motivation to learn. Some days, you’re at home, you’re zoned out, or you’re tired of, like, staring at a screen, so you don’t pay attention. Some things about being in person make it really worthwhile, like learning from your peers, and being able to see your teacher after class, or just have the classroom atmosphere. It’s not the same online. And last year my screen time was like 17 hours every day, which is insane. And then there’s the lack of reward. You lose social life because in high school your social life is centered around school. The sense of community was really lost online.

Wood: Mia, can you make choices about what you’re doing at school?

Payne: I don’t feel like the school reflects my identity as a black woman, so I try to bring black studies into what we’re doing. In my AP English Literature course, we were reading books like Othello and Frankenstein and Shakespeare, but nothing that I really related to. I wanted to read the great books that my peers were reading, not Romeo and Juliet and stuff like that. And then when in my classroom we did start talking about race, it was kind of casual, as if these discussions just happen every day in America. But no, they don’t just happen. There’s also a barrier that hasn’t been addressed, a kind of uncomfortableness for white students in the room or for anyone who’s not in the same place.

Wood: Does your school let you read other things?

Mia Payne

Payne: The curriculum was already set. I asked my teacher about that because nobody in my class actually read Frankenstein — it was all SparkNotes. None of us were interested, and it was very hard to read. And so we were like, “What are other books we would actually read?” My friend who is in regular English, she has to write a social justice research paper and I’m like, “Oh, why am I not in that class?” I want to do those interesting things, stuff that I feel is helpful and beneficial to me.

They could do a summer survey asking, “These are the books the College Board covers, and what do you guys feel like doing?” If you know what the students coming in will be interested in, you can still work with the books the College Board offers, but now students are going to be engaged, they’re going to want to come to class, wanting that information, yearning for it.

Mahajan: There’s a really wide array of courses I can take in my school, but the required ones are still pretty Eurocentric. A lot of teachers are like, “You’re gonna read this book written by this old white guy, and we’re going to talk about it.” They’re kind of forced to do that by the state and the curriculum, and there’s conflict when they try to accommodate that while also listening to students. So there’s definitely a huge disparity. I agree with Mia that students should have more agency over what they’re being taught.

Wood: Some people say that school is not for reading about people who look like you or share your perspective, but for learning about things outside your experience. So why are we so hung up about identity?

Payne: Well, what do you think your child is forming eight hours a day if it’s not their identity? But I’m really interested in other perspectives too. When I go out in the world, I’m going to be surrounded by people from all types of groups and demographics and I want to know about them and their experiences and their culture. That’s what education is. In school, I found my identity, and now I’m trying to learn: What is it to be Black in America? Even some of my Black teachers are teaching a Eurocentric pedagogy. And that’s frustrating.

Mahajan: Honestly, that’s the entire point. For a large percentage of the population, the Eurocentric perspective is the same as theirs. But that’s not the way the world works. The reason we have school is to transform you into a functioning human and a free thinker, but you can’t do that unless you are exposed to a wide variety of perspectives. The white male canon is the basis for the society we live in — that’s an objective fact. It’s the basis for so many inequalities in our world. And unless we recognize those inequalities and try to remedy them, they’re not going to be fixed.

Wood: So when do you get to be yourself at school, and what does that feel like?

Payne: When I’m writing. I really love poetry, and that’s where I kind of found a voice. There’s a lot of power in it and those words stick with you forever. When I write, I’m speaking from my heart and I’m being as vulnerable as I can be. It’s not something I have to analyze. That’s when I’m able to be myself.

Wood: Kenisha, does your school make you feel proud about your neighborhood, your home, or where you’re from?

Mahajan: Maybe it’s more like acceptance. My school is majority middle-class and low-income students, a large percentage first-generation immigrants like me. So there’s a sense of camaraderie, even though it’s a really competitive place, very academically driven. I see things break down when I’m assigned hours upon hours of homework, and there are other people who don’t have outside responsibilities like chores or making dinner or working a job or caring for siblings. That makes the experience a lot harder. You do feel pressure to keep up with everyone. But no one at school ever really talks about these outside factors that might make school more stressful.

Payne: I’m grateful to go to a very ethnically diverse school, considering that the New York City school system is highly segregated. But we still have an all-white administration. So do you really understand my identity and what needs to be changed, or is it just an image thing? They do approach it, but it needs to be more dedicated.

Wood: Who loves and cares about you at school? And how do you know that?

Payne: It’s my friends mostly. But I do have one or two teachers that I can go to and just vent to, who genuinely care how I’m doing in school — or in general.

Mahajan: Besides my friends, maybe no one. There’s maybe one teacher I could talk to if I really needed to. But usually teachers don’t ask a casual question like, how are you guys doing? Maybe it’s more among STEM teachers versus humanities teachers. My English teacher is also the faculty advisor for our newspaper. So I have sat down a few times with him just to talk about things. And my history teacher shows a genuine interest in who students are. But there’s not really any feeling that you can go and maybe sit down with them when they have a free hour just to talk.

Wood: That hurts my soul. I wish you both felt there were teachers in the building who loved you like your friends do. If you could make one change in your school that would make a significant difference, what would it be?

Payne: It would definitely be testing. It defines students because that’s really what school is. That grade is what the community wants. It’s not really about the information you have. Everything is just around this one little test. But maybe I could have presented in a very different way to show that I gained the skill you wanted me to gain from this unit. I know it’s led to anxiety and suicides and some very alarming mental health. If we could reimagine the way that we assess students’ knowledge and understanding, that would make a drastic change in the system.

Mahajan: For me it would be getting rid of advanced placement courses. I’m coming from a privileged standpoint of a school that has a lot of resources and can teach what they want to teach — and we have a lot of choices. But smaller schools can’t do that, so they have to be very restrictive. Teachers who give electives are much more passionate about teaching and that makes for a better experience for everybody.

Wood: Are there spaces, perhaps even outside of school, where you feel listened to — seen and supported on your path?

Payne: The activities that I engage in outside of school are profoundly instrumental to my educational experience because they are typically where I intentionally place myself when the school system fails to provide me with the knowledge and experiences that would benefit me culturally. In particular, YVote, a nonprofit that fuels youth civic engagement, has been a program that not only exposed me to the root causes of issues such as criminal and environmental justice, but also equipped me with the tools and resources needed to combat these issues civically. For me, my work with outside organizations feels more purposeful and intentional compared to school, where everything is structured and it’s a one-size-fits-all formula. And because it’s such a massive and complex system, no one is willing to drastically challenge the status quo.

Wood: Ladies, I cannot tell you just how soul-filling and heart-filling our time together has been. I don’t get to work with young people in my day-to-day anymore and you all have truly made me miss this. I appreciate your vibrancy, how thoughtful you are, how engaged in the outside world you are, and how deeply nuanced you are in your thinking. I’ve really seen brilliancy and complexity in your thought, in ways that have pushed my own thinking. This was a gift to me to get this time with you. Thank you both so much.

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Transcend and Carnegie Corporation of New York are grateful to New York City high school students Kenisha Mahajan and Mia Payne for taking the time to meet with Jenee Henry Wood and sharing their insights on their school experience.

Kenisha Mahajan, a junior at Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan, is a writer and first-generation immigrant from India who is active in groups promoting racial justice and criminal justice reform, voting, and young people’s civic engagement, including YVote, the Youth Civics Initiative, and Art and Resistance Through Education.

Mia Payne is a Bronx native and senior at Talent Unlimited High School in Manhattan, where she seeks solutions to issues of criminal and environmental justice by participating in YVote and other civic education groups, and by promoting computer literacy. She recently served as one of four youth cochairs on the education transition team for New York City mayor Eric Adams, and she continues to advocate for change in her school community by serving as chair of her school’s Intergenerational Leadership Team.

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