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What student voice and parent engagement do NOT look like, and thoughts on what to do about it.

"One of the principles guiding the transformation work at Sammamish is that student achievement and engagement will increase when students have more ownership of their school community..."

Teachers know that making lessons relevant helps motivate students. The most frequent approach is to link curriculum to learner interests. Two educators, Mario Fantini and Gerry Weinstein, in two now out-of-print books, Making Urban Schools Work and Towards Humanistic Education, pointed out that it would be more effective to link curriculum to the concerns of learners. (You can find used copies of both through Book Finder.) What do kids worry about? What anxieties sometimes keep them up at night? What peer interactions churn up their emotions? How do they deal with their fears about the future, college admissions, employment or bullying?

""When adults dine, we don't just think about the food," explained Orla O'Keeffe, the executive director of policy and operations. "The food is important, but so is what's going on around it: the ambience, the service, the company. Why would we assume kids are any different?""