Making Sure Our Students Voices are Heard!

Coming in as a second year Team Leader at Wright Charter, I had thought a lot about how to make the 2011-2012 school year even better than the previous academic year. I knew that my best brainstorming came through collaboration. If I could find out students needs, wants and grand ideas, then I could help make things happen! I wanted students to be more involved and be a community in our after school and for them to know that their voices are crucial to our program. I realized that a great way for this to occur was through the creation of student council.

After School Student Council consists of 2-3 student representatives from our 5th, 6th, 7th and 7th/8th classrooms! We meet once a week for 30 minutes and discuss the items on our agenda. Opinions are always requested on every topic. Representatives have the responsibility of taking information back to their classroom. They are in charge of announcing upcoming events, collecting feedback about past activities and taking class votes in order to represent a larger class opinion on a particular topic. Every meeting, we go over the class responses and discuss how smoothly the transfer of information went. Providing information and conducting a voting session are not the easiest things to do with a classroom full of your peers!

The representatives have gained a lot of experience through their new position. They have done a spectacular job and have helped create and run successful events and activities. We have come up with class mascots, activities and awards to include in our upper grade assemblies, how to improve our fitness centers, and more. Our first big event was an after school dance for grades 5th through 8th. Representatives helped brainstorm themes, decorations, and music recommendations, as well as help things run smoothly during the dance and help clean up afterwards. Students and mentors alike had a wonderful time and many requested to have more dances!

Student Council Members at the dance they helped to create.

I am thrilled to be a part of After School Student Council at Wright Charter. I cannot wait to see what else we will improve and create during this second half of the year! I believe that the council’s success comes from our students’ drive to help make after school the best it can be and from the support that our fantastic mentors give to their students and staff on a daily basis.

By Jenna Rafalow, AmeriCorps Team Leader at Wright Charter School