Changing Systems: Student Voice on Educational Equity

The Challenge:

Issues in education surrounding equity are complex and difficult to solve. Creating a more equitable system will require the buy-in and perspective of stakeholders across the system. However, student voice is often missing from these problem solving efforts, despite being the group most impacted by many of these efforts.

The Approach:

Following the murder of Michael Brown in 2014, several high schools hosted Gateway2Change Student Summits on Race to talk about the equity challenges faced by the region and to provide a forum for students to talk about their ideas for driving change. SKIP partnered with the Social Systems Design Lab at the Brown School to host one of these summits.

Fourteen of the Social System Design Lab’s student interns from Ritenour and Jennings School Districts designed a workshop focused on understanding and addressing structural racism in schools through a system dynamics lens. Forty students from the St. Louis region participated in the 3-day summit, working together to develop causal loop diagrams that represented their view of the system. The students then presented their work to a wide group of stakeholders, including education administrators who had the power to incorporate their work into schools’ educational initiatives.

The Result:

This work has grown into the yearly Changing Systems Youth Summit hosted by the Social Systems Design Lab. Students have tackled issues ranging from educational equity, the need for increased emotional support in schools, gun violence, and youth homelessness. Their  perspectives have informed SKIP’s own strategy around educational equity. Changing Systems provides a space where students from all across the Saint Louis region can come together to talk about and work towards positive change in their communities.

To learn more about the Changing Systems Youth Summit, visit the Social Systems Design Lab’s website.