THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS THE VOICELESS: LISTENING TO THE VOICES OF 

ELEMENTARY YOUTH TO AFFECT SCHOOL CHANGE 

 

 

 

	

	

 

 

 

 

	

	

	

By 

	
							Courtney Camille Mauldin  

 

 

 

 

 

 

A DISSERTATION 

 Michigan State University 

in partial fulfillment of the requirements 

for the degree of 

K-12 Educational Administration— Doctor of Philosophy 

Submitted to 

 

 

2020 

 

 
 
 
 

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS THE VOICELESS: LISTENING TO THE VOICES OF  

ELEMENTARY YOUTH TO AFFECT SCHOOL CHANGE 

ABSTRACT 

 

By 
 

							Courtney Camille Mauldin  

Using an arts-based methodology, this dissertation project moves beyond the traditional 

	

bounds of student and leader in schools by examining how elementary-aged youth of color are 

positioned to affect change within their school by way of centering student voice. Further, this 

study examines how school leaders engage the voices of elementary-aged youth of color. While 

there has been emerging research on the inclusion of student voice in the field of educational 

leadership, there is limited literature that provides an in-depth description of how school leaders 

implement student voice in the elementary school setting. Drawing from a critical leadership 

framework and Black feminist practices and epistemologies, the aims of this study are to 

contribute to the literature on student voice in the educational leadership field and to examine the 

ways in which youth voice can influence more critically reflexive approaches to school 

leadership practice.  Using an art-based approach in our weekly dialogue group allowed for 

students to create poetry, collage, and other constructed artifacts that conveyed their ideas about 

what leadership should encompass and the changes they desired to see in their school, society, 

and local community. Through a thematic analysis of field notes, artifacts composed by the 

youth, recorded dialogue sessions with youth and repetitive interview sessions with the school 

leader, this study documents both youth and school leader perceptions of student voice and 

leadership in the elementary school context. 

	
	

 

 

 

 

	

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

For my grandmother, Ella Mae, my first teacher. 

iii 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 

 

It has always been a personal commitment of mine to tell the people in my life just how 

much they mean to me in the moment. And so, this section is just a snapshot of my gratitude for 

those of you who have become solid fixtures in my life.  

First, I want to thank God and the ancestors for keeping me. There were many times that 

I questioned if pursuing this degree was the right “fit” for me and if I was honoring my best self 

and my talents in the academy space. My faith has remained my anchor during these moments of 

questioning, reminding me that the path is already laid before me. In fact, it has reminded me 

that in God I live, and move and have my being. This knowing has given me a very special kind 

of peace and resolve as this particular chapter comes to a close.  

To Black women, thank you. Without your presence as leaders of households, nurturers, 

freedom fighters, scholars, and caretakers— I wouldn’t be here today. Ella Mae, you were my 

first teacher and while I couldn’t have imagined losing you during this program, you’ve become 

a guide that continues to teach me beyond the physical realm. This is for you. Ellen Shaw, it was 

purely divine that I chose Michigan State and was blessed enough to have a grandmother who I 

could laugh with only one hour away. You have been a warm hug, an affirming word, a place of 

love that I am so thankful for. I’ve recorded all of your stories Granny, they were too good not 

to! Mrs. Claudia Joyner, thank you for sharing my history with me at an early age. Even in your 

eighties, you would walk me from Alcy Elementary and share stories that have shaped my 

commitments to justice in this world today. I have always held those stories close. Leesa Gunter, 

you have been an “othermother” to me in ways that I could not have even thought to ask for. 

Thank you for gifting me my very first typewriter, for holding space for me in your heart and 

 

iv 

family. You are still worthy of writing poetry for, you have been that much of a light in my life. 

To Cheryl Beard and Mrs. Liz, thank you for pouring spiritual guidance and support into my life 

at an early age. I am forever grateful for the long rides to church, the scriptures, Sam Cooke 

cassette tapes, and vulnerable conversations that helped shape me into the woman I am today. 

Mrs. Hill, as my fourth and fifth grade teacher you were the first teacher who reflected me. 

Thank you for bringing my novels from home into the classroom, for summer escapes, and for 

remaining a constant even now. Mom, thank you for instilling a love for reading, writing, and 

history at an early age. Because of your early investments, I discovered gifts that became tools 

for healing— I am so grateful you gifted those to me.  

I am fortunate for the loving family, students, friends, sister scholars and committee 

members who have supported me. Christopher and Christian, thank you for being my rocks. I 

love being your big sister; you both keep me together more than you know. To Dominica 

(Briley), Cierra, Andrew, Parrish, Jacque, and Dominic – you all hold very special places in my 

heart. I am grateful to have you.  

I would not have made it through these years of graduate school without special people 

like Taeyeon Kim who has always been a friend and sister that supports and made me feel like I 

could actually do this. Alounso, I could not have asked for a better cohort mate. Thank you for 

always taking the time to be “human” with me and reminding me to take care of myself. Briana, 

thank you for becoming a sister and friend who offered authenticity. You are such a breath of 

fresh air and a sweet reminder of home for me. Cierra, I am so happy that we developed the 

friendship we have while we were in Cuba, it has sustained me more than you know. Davena, 

thank you for being a sister scholar and friend who does not hold back any truth. Molade, you 

know this dissertation would be incomplete and unformatted without you. Ha! Thank you for the 

	

v 

unconditional care and love you provide; it is such a gift. To my sister scholars, Rachel, 

Dwuanna, Briana, and Mari, thank you for being cheerleaders and making every conference 

unforgettable! To Effat, Eliana, Adrianna, Bria, Missy, Sandra and Pam, thank you for showing 

up right on time, always. You each have been a friend and thought partners that made me and my 

work better.  

To my former students at Cane Ridge Elementary, you all gave me purpose and are the 

people that I will hold in my heart, always. To Danielle and Brynn, you are both powerhouses in 

your own right. Encountering your brilliance, wisdom, and confidence was life giving for me. 

Thank you for seeing something magical in me and saying so. You both have been models of 

what it means to honor self and to fight for justice, thank you. To my friends who have 

demonstrated radical love and care, I am so grateful to you. Camille, I didn’t know if you would 

be the reason I finished or didn’t finish my dissertation, ha! Thank you for listening to the very 

early parts of my research, forcing me to practice presentations with you and reminding me to 

laugh, the belly-aching kind. Gosh, I’m so grateful we met. I also could not have penned these 

stories without you, thank you for your creative eye and beautiful spirit. I think everyone needs a 

“you” in their life. Dr. Val! Thank you for being my prayer partner for all these years, for being 

so selfless, loving, and modeling grace and kindness. More importantly, thank you for showing 

up at my doorstep in August 2018 as I navigated grief during this program, you helped me to 

find joy again. Thank you, kindred sister.  

Finally, I want to close with expressing my supreme gratitude for my committee.  

To Dr. Terah Venzant Chambers, I am not sure how I could even begin to thank you for this 

experience. I think the video of Langston convincing me to choose MSU was the start of you all 

becoming extended family.  I will miss your dining table as it holds so many conversations, good 

	

vi 

meals, baked goods and laughs. You truly were the chair, advisor, and friend that I needed. Dr. 

Carter Andrews, I was ecstatic when I found out I would be working with you in my first year. 

You have pushed me in the best of ways, made time for mentoring conversations, and poured 

wisdom into me all while keeping it very real. Thank you for that authenticity. Dr. Gonzales, I 

knew I wanted you on my committee the first day we met. While you are a methodological 

genius, your spirit is magnetic, your hugs are genuine and I value how you have lovingly pushed 

me as an emerging scholar and given me room to expand my ideas. I have been blessed to know 

you. Dr. Butler, thank you for introducing me to work that speaks to the core of who I am. Your 

course made me want to write more, read more, and to go to vulnerable places within self. I am 

also grateful that you believed in me enough to see to it that I made it to Dakar, Senegal and was 

able to share my work and my thinking with new audiences. I am so appreciative of you and 

what your creative work means for Black girlhood.  

To the mentors that have transformed my thinking, writing, and presence in the academy, 

I am more courageous because of you. Dr. Terrance Green, thank you for having multiple 

conversations with me before I even thought to submit an application to graduate school. You 

have remained an example of what it means to “lift as we climb.” Dr. Judy Alston, I met you in 

divine timing. Thank you for sitting with me mid-conference and uplifting my spirit with 

wisdom and knowledge that helped me to embrace my own truths. Dr. Lolita Tabron, I am so 

grateful that we developed a relationship after you quizzed me on my research agenda over 

dinner. You have called me in and gathered me in the best of ways and always in the right 

timing. Dr. John Yun, you are unmatched. I can not thank you enough for advocating for me and 

seeing me through statistics, you believed in me and that mattered so much. Dr. Johnson, thank 

you for always pushing me to return to my truest self when writing, presenting, and showing up 

	

vii 

in the world –even if I was resistant at times. I am grateful for your mentorship and friendship. 

There are not enough pages allocated here to thank all of the people that made this journey 

possible. However, I am thankful to all of my loved ones who made my world bigger and saw 

that this was possible, even before I could. Thank you for your unwavering love and support.  

 

 

  

 
 
	

	

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

viii 

TABLE OF CONTENTS  

 
LIST OF TABLES ......................................................................................................................... xi 

LIST OF FIGURES ...................................................................................................................... xii 

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................... 1 
Statement of the Problem ................................................................................................................ 1 
Explanation of the Study ............................................................................................................. 4 
Overview of Dissertation Chapters ............................................................................................. 5 

	
CHAPTER 2: REVIEW OF LITERATURE .................................................................................. 6 
Youth/Student Voice in Educational Research ........................................................................... 6 
Youth Voice in Educational Leadership ..................................................................................... 9 
Who are Youth of Color? .......................................................................................................... 14 

	
CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY ................................................................................................ 16 
Methodological Perspectives and Research Design ................................................................. 16 
Research Questions ................................................................................................................... 17 
Positionality and Subjectivity ................................................................................................... 18 
Toward a Leadership Framework for Youth Voice .................................................................. 23 
Principal Orientations for Critical Youth Educational Leadership (POYCEL) ........................ 25 
Black Feminist Epistemologies ................................................................................................. 26 
Constructing an Arts-Based Methodology ................................................................................ 27 
Conducting a Critical Narrative Arts-Based Qualitative Study ................................................ 29 
Student Recruitment and Participation ..................................................................................... 32 
Criteria for Participants ......................................................................................................... 32 
Principal Participation ............................................................................................................... 36 

	
CHAPTER 4: EXPLORING POSSIBILITY IN EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP ................... 47 
Storying Moments of Possibility & Data .................................................................................. 49 
Towards an Arts-Based Inquiry ................................................................................................ 50 
Framing Student Voice at Sunflower Elementary .................................................................... 51 
Story 1. Change in Our Hands? ................................................................................................ 52 
Story 2. Does Your Voice Matter? ........................................................................................... 59 
Naming Change and Seeing with Possibility ........................................................................ 62 
Story 3. If I were Principal for a Day… .................................................................................... 65 
Story 4.  Because We’re a Person and Not a Thing .................................................................. 71 
Listening to Elementary-Aged Youth ................................................................................... 71 
Story 5. Are We Doing a Leadership Role Here? ..................................................................... 74 
Positioning Youth as Educational Leaders ........................................................................... 75 
Story 6. Social Justice Warrior ................................................................................................. 79 

	

ix 

Checking for Student Voice .................................................................................................. 80 
Story 7. Mrs. O’s “Agenda” ...................................................................................................... 82 
Story 8. Engaging Youth Voices at Sunflower Elementary ..................................................... 85 
Story 9. “There’s Always Another After” ................................................................................ 89 
Story 10. What’s New? ............................................................................................................. 93 
Returning to Change ............................................................................................................. 94 
Exploring Possibility ............................................................................................................. 95 

	
CHAPTER 5: DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS ................................................................. 97 
Overview of Dissertation .......................................................................................................... 98 
Employing Possibility Through Art ........................................................................................ 101 
Summary of Findings .............................................................................................................. 105 
Implications and Conclusion ................................................................................................... 120 
Leadership Preparation ...................................................................................................... 120 
The Possibilities of POYCEL .............................................................................................. 120 
Social Justice Leadership ................................................................................................... 121 
To Elementary Youth Leaders of Color .............................................................................. 122 

	
APPENDICES ............................................................................................................................ 125 
APPENDIX A: Principal Interview Protocol ......................................................................... 126 
APPENDIX B: Initial Student Voice Unit Plan ..................................................................... 128 
APPENDIX C: Modified (with Arts) Lesson Plan ................................................................. 135 

	
REFERENCES ........................................................................................................................... 142 

	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	

	

	

	

 

x 

LIST OF TABLES 

	
	
Table 1. Student Voice Unit Plan ............................................................................................... 128 

	

	

 

 

xi 

LIST OF FIGURES 

	
Figure 1. Research Timeline and Data Collection ........................................................................ 43 

Figure 2. Coding and Analysis Snapshot of Voice Leader Artifacts ............................................ 44 

Figure 3. Thematic Coding and Analysis of Voice Leader Artifacts ........................................... 46 

Figure 4. Brainstorming Map on Change ..................................................................................... 53 

Figure 5. Front and Back of Niecey’s Change Hand Artifact ....................................................... 55 

Figure 6. Snapshot of Initial Student Voice Unit Plan with Literacy Focus ................................. 59 

Figure 7. Emma’s Illustrated Portrait ............................................................................................ 66 

Figure 8. Kelsey’s Illustrated Portrait ........................................................................................... 66 

Figure 9. Voice Leader Playbook .................................................................................................. 78 

Figure 10. Images of Mrs. O’s Student Voice Bookmark Used for Informal Observations ......... 82 

Figure 11. Image of Mrs. O’s Portrait Created During M.A.A.E. Space ...................................... 88 

Figure 12. Emma’s Portrait ........................................................................................................... 88 

Figure 13. Rose’s Portrait ............................................................................................................. 89 

Figure 14. “Before and After” from Unbuilt Residences, work of Katrín Sigurðardóttir ............ 90 

Figure 15. “Another After,” work of Katrín Sigurðardóttir .......................................................... 90 

Figure 16. Collective Poem on Change ...................................................................................... 110 

Figure 17. Niecey’s Illustrated Portrait ....................................................................................... 116 

Figure 18. Bulletin Board Commissioned by Mrs. O ................................................................. 117 

Figure 19. Black Lives Matter Sign Shown in Hallway of Sunflower Elementary .................... 118 

Figure 20. Snowballs and Airplanes Activity from Kitchen Table Curricular Toolkit .............. 132 

	

xii 

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 

Statement of the Problem  

 

In the wake of multiple stigmatization and the policing and silencing of youth of color in 

school spaces (Love, 2016), it remains imperative that schools consider the task of leadership 

and whose voices are included in that endeavor. While the field of educational leadership has 

increasingly taken up more socially just (Theoharis, 2009) and critical leadership paradigms 

(Dugan, 2017; Johnson, 2006; Khalifa et al., 2016; Shields, 2004) that inform leadership 

practice, more scholarship is needed that demonstrates the integration of youth voice in those 

leadership efforts to improve schools for all students. Current research has documented that 

youth of color have valuable insights on systemic racism in education, which encompasses 

rampant, institutionalized inequalities along various identity lines (Bertrand, 2014; Carter 

Andrews et al, 2019; Venzant Chambers, 2019). Simultaneously, the field of educational 

leadership has recently proposed critical questions around the ways we must must (re)imagine or 

(re)envision an educational leadership (Bertrand, 2014; Dantley & Tillman, 2009; DeMatthews, 

Edwards, & Rincones, 2016; DeMatthews & Mawhinney, 2014; Furman, 2012; Foster & 

Tillman, 2009; Green, 2017) that is socially just and inclusive of students and communities in 

ways that matter. This is not to say that school leaders need to do more but that that they need to 

do better (Jiménez & Yoon, 2019). As such, school leaders must problematize traditional 

approaches to leadership that have often placed historically marginalized groups further from the 

center of schooling. Khalifa (2018) labels these traditional approaches as colonizing models that 

originate from colonial schooling practices. He notes that because schools were meant to build 

good citizens that could contribute to the economic viability of the society, school leaders 

struggle to break free from these colonizing molds of leadership. In other words, the wielding of 

 

1 

power over others is very much embedded into contemporary leadership practices and thus 

reflected in the ways in which adults engage students in the school space. Considering the need 

for a paradigmatic shift in the practice of leadership, it is essential that stakeholders are 

redefined, that youth are a part of that definition. Most children are amazing critical thinkers 

before we silence them (hooks, 2015) and have critical insights into their schooling and lived 

experiences (Carter Andrews, 2012). Therefore, this study seeks to disrupt the historical practice 

of silencing that takes place in institutions like schools. Historically, U.S. schools have served as 

institutions that forwarded the largely assimilationist and often violent White imperial project, 

with students and families being asked to lose or deny their languages, literacies, cultures, and 

histories in order to achieve in schools (Paris & Alim, 2017). This history has demonstrated that 

schools continue to serve as breeding grounds for toxic power relations, displacement, and 

erasure of perspectives that matter. While school leaders are constantly at the mercy of various 

deadlines and issues of compliance, rethinking positioning and decision making structures may 

seem like a fruitless endeavor. Though little can be done to completely ignore the fact that these 

notions around voice heavily influence the ways that schools operate.  

Previous research has also documented that implementing student voice efforts can lead 

to concrete changes (Bertrand, 2014) that enrich the educational environment and offers a way to 

reengage students in the school community and increase youth attachment to schools (Mitra, 

2004). By shifting power in schools in equitable ways (Khalifa, 2018), which includes bringing 

in the voices of youth, school leaders are able to make decisions that better support the youth and 

community in which they lead. The notion of the engaged voice is informed by hooks’ (1994) 

call for a paradigm shift in education; one that recognizes that, “the engaged voice must never be 

fixed and absolute but always changing and evolving in a dialogue with a world beyond itself 

	

2 

(p.11).” Certainly, if the field is to move towards more critical, liberatory or emancipatory 

leadership frameworks that inform both theory and practice, then the voices that dominate 

educational leadership research “must never be fixed.” Instead, the dialogue needed to inform 

leadership as a discipline and practice must take into consideration marginalized voices, in 

particular those voices of elementary youth of color who are being served by schooling 

institutions. 

 

In its 100-year history, the educational leadership field has been engaged with traditional 

definitions of leadership and roles of school leaders (Lac & Mansfield, 2018). Further, emerging 

scholars have begun to foster a new conversation in the field. From urging educational leaders 

and researchers to develop ways of leading that are more humanizing and responsive to the 

demands of youth experiences in the 21st century (Jimenez & Yoon, 2019) to redefining who is 

allowed to be considered an educational leader and whose voice is made center (Bertrand, 2014; 

Mansfield, 2014, 2015; Mansfield et al, 2012; Mitra, 2006, 2008), the work of leadership is 

irrefutably connected to what happens in schools and classrooms. 

The reality that adults in schools often perpetuate hierarchal relationships or opt for 

extremes such as “getting out of the way” altogether (Mitra et.al, 2012) when it comes to the 

inclusion of student voice informs the need for school leaders to have practical models of how 

students can be positioned as leaders in schools. Therefore, this study adds to the emerging 

discourse on how we better situate youth voices and incorporate a repositioning (Bertrand, 2014) 

of youth as leaders now, rather than solely focusing on how they can lead in the future.  

 
 
 

	

3 

Explanation of the Study  

 

This study utilized an arts-based methodology to investigate the larger question of how 

elementary youth of color are positioned to affect change. My conceptualizations of affecting 

change are directly linked to the act of leadership. Recent studies on student leadership (Damini, 

2014; Mortensen et al., 2014) affirm that youth definitions of leadership are not reflective of 

adult informed theories that see leadership in more positional and authoritative ways. Rather, 

creating change through action informs (Mortensen et al., 2014) how the youth participants in 

this study engaged the topic of change. Moreover, I inquired about what issues youth identify in 

their school and community as well as examined how the school leader engaged the voices of 

youth of color in the elementary school context. To answer the proposed research questions, the 

youth in this project who named themselves the Voice Leaders, engaged in arts-based inquiry on 

the topics of change, voice, and leadership. Some examples of their constructed artifacts that 

speak to these questions include change hand plates, illustrated leader portraits, collage portraits, 

and collective poetry. The artifacts were compiled into a published playbook that the youth 

created to have their voices engaged in ways they intended as well as to leave a legacy for future 

students to follow their lead. While distinct from science based methods, arts-based inquiry 

involves disciplined, creative and systematic exploration of problems and natural phenomena 

which encourages uniqueness and variation in both methods and outcomes (McNiff, 2011). And 

so, I sought to design a study that would allow me to understand perspectives from key 

stakeholders at an elementary school site, Sunflower Elementary. By working alongside, the 

youth and principal at Sunflower employing arts-based methods, I was able to investigate how 

youth voice might be engaged in the elementary school context as well as understand the 

	

4 

positioning of elementary youth within the current leadership context. The research questions 

that informed this study were the following:  

1.  How are elementary-aged youth of color positioned to affect change? 

a.  What are the issues that students identify in their school and community? 

2.  How does a social justice oriented school leader engage the voices of elementary-aged 

youth of color?  

Overview of Dissertation Chapters  

 

This dissertation is organized into five chapters. Following the introduction, I share a 

review of the literature on youth voice broadly and the ways it has been taken up across fields. I 

examine the blossoming literature on youth voice in educational leadership, where youth of color 

voices are found in the literature as well as youth voice research conducted in the elementary 

context. I also offer a small section charting out my definition of youth of color as I use that term 

throughout this dissertation. Chapter 3 provides an overview of my research design which is an 

arts-based qualitative study and also includes a description of how I came to create the arts-based 

methodology used in this study, termed M.A.A.E. Chapter 4 details the findings from this project 

and introduces the “stories of the data.” Throughout the findings chapter, I constructed stories 

alongside the artifacts in this study to present the answers to my research questions as well as 

gesture towards new understandings of student voice work in educational leadership. In Chapter 

5, I re-examine the significance of student voice in educational leadership and discuss the themes 

and implications of my findings. I conclude this dissertation with a way forward as I think 

through the possibility of the inclusion of youth voice in educational leadership in meaningful 

and authentic ways.  

	

5 

CHAPTER 2: REVIEW OF LITERATURE 

As introduced in the previous chapter, the intention of my research was to explore the 

ways in which youth voices of color are engaged in the elementary school context. Concurrently, 

I was interested in how elementary-aged youth of color see themselves affecting change in order 

to better understand how and if they are positioned as leaders in the elementary school context. 

My research questions and methodological approach are informed by epistemological 

understandings that name lived experience as knowledge (Collins, 2009) and invite living 

inquiry (Irwin, LeBlanc, Ryu, Belliveau, 2018) into research. That is, to embrace performative 

practices like that of leadership as having the ability to construct a new reality. Therefore, this 

study with youth alongside their school principal denotes a necessary exploration of where we 

have seen youth voices privileged, with attention to elementary youth of color.  

With an emphasis on youth voice in this study, I conducted a broad review of the 

literature that examined youth voice, also termed as student voice in the field of educational 

research. Further, I thought it might be fruitful to take a critical eye towards the ways in which 

youth voice has been taken up in the field of educational leadership as well as the elementary 

context considering the contextual layers of my study.  

Youth/Student Voice in Educational Research 

In general, research on student voice has historically looked at two types of initiatives. 

There is the research involving youth organizing and/or (YPAR) where there is youth-driven 

research and advocacy involving working with adults (Bertrand, 2014) and there are also student 

voice initiatives that seek to create school structures that allow students to be “heard” (Mitra & 

Gross, 2009).	Because of its epistemological foundations, YPAR challenges who has the right to 

produce and disseminate knowledge by placing students at the center of knowledge production 

	

6 

(Caraballo, et. al, 2017). Additionally, YPAR utilizes various critical epistemologies, positioning 

it as a framework that acknowledges the value of cultural entry points. Caraballo et. al (2017) 

highlight this in their literature review where they illuminate the interconnection between 

cultural knowledge, critical epistemologies, and youth inquiry. They reference studies from 

Indigenous scholars like Tuck (2009) who reframe YPAR through Indigenous epistemologies 

(p.321) utilizing vantage points from Indigeneity to allow her to make alternative meaning of the 

complexities and limitations she saw in her work with youth who were researching the GED 

system in the state of New York. To add, Cammarota and Romero (2009) center ChicanX studies 

for the purpose of using critical cultural knowledge to inform how youth engage in political 

action as well as Ayala & Torre (2009) who extend their critical cultural epistemologies by 

building from Gloria Anzaldua’s feminist mestiza scholarship with youth. Ayla (2009) suggests 

that the focus on cultural knowledge fundamentally affects how YPAR is enacted (p.321). In 

Irizarry’s (2017) two-year study learning from Latinx youth at Project FUERTE, Latinx students 

were able to use their platform to problematize discriminatory language policies, acknowledge 

pervasive racism, and center barrio-based epistemologies, ways of being and knowing specific to 

Latinx communities (Irizarry & Raible, 2011). In short, YPAR cultivates youth voice and helps 

the field of educational research to recognize that youth are able to engage in inquiry-based 

efforts to make sense of contexts that they experience. It also acknowledges that they are able to 

do so with critical epistemological understandings. Moreover, YPAR has yielded actionable 

results with youth. For instance, Lee and Walsh (2017) implemented YPAR in their argument for 

a socially just, culturally sustaining pedagogy that focuses on youths’ linguistic and cultural 

flexibility but also stated the need for YPAR to be implemented into curriculum efforts that 

support immigrant youth.  

	

7 

In Kinloch’s (2012) work with youth in Harlem, students were able to construct poetry, 

prose, and other projects of resistance that supported their analyses of teaching, learning, and 

schooling. YPAR is a transformational pedagogical project at its core, it recognizes youth as 

intellectual beings capable of engaging in the practice of critical investigation of community 

issues and the production of viable, usable knowledge (Caraballo, et. al, 2017).  

Mitra (2008) posits that most schools lack the structure that can encourage students voice 

in these ways. As such, students end up navigating school as passive participants rather than 

leaders (Mitra & Gross, 2009). To illustrate how student voice might be incorporated into 

schooling structures, Mitra and Gross (2009) suggests a pyramid model that begins (from the 

bottom) with the most basic form of student voice, ‘being heard.’ Here, school staff listen to 

students to learn about their schooling experiences. The next level consists of ‘collaboration with 

adults’ where students are positioned to work with adults to make changes in the school. It is at 

this level where most student voice research has been conducted for the sake of academic and 

curricular improvement in schools (Mitra & Gross, 2009, p.524). The final and smallest level of 

the pyramid includes ‘building capacity for leadership’ which focuses on enabling youth to share 

in the leadership of the student voice initiative. This area of the pyramid often unearths obstacles 

in student voice work where educational decision makers respond negatively or trivialize the 

viewpoints of students (Bertrand, 2014). To add, Mansfield and colleagues (2015) reimagine the 

student voice pyramid as a continuum where there is room for issues of power, identity, and 

context to be explored considering that current student voice literature is limited in this arena. 

While student voice efforts have proven to lead to positive changes in schools, this change can 

be elusive without administrative support (Bertrand, 2014). Thus, it remains important to 

	

8 

consider where student voice and educational leadership might meaningfully merge in order to 

inform educational decision making.  

Youth Voice in Educational Leadership 

While much research has explored leading schools for social justice, it has rarely 

considered the student perspective as an integral component of leadership decision-making 

(Mansfield et al., 2015). Further, in educational settings, structures rarely invite students and 

families to participate in decision making that concerns them (Lac & Mansfiled, 2018). Even 

with the knowledge that African-American students who recognize social inequities based on 

race might disengage from school (Wasserberg, 2018), schools remain structured as sites that 

silence and reinforce domination (hooks, 1994).  Paying particular attention to whose voices 

have been historically silenced is purposeful here as there is variability amongst youth voice. In 

fact, Gonzales and colleagues (2017) posit that there is not one student voice. Especially, taking 

into account historically marginalized groups and educational inequities experienced by these 

groups; youth of color perspectives are supremely important in educational decision-making. 

This is documented in Khalifa’s (2018) case study work at UAHS (a pseudonym) where the 

principal’s actions of centering minoritized voices and valuing community epistemologies was a 

source of valuable knowledge that impacted content, policy, and practice within the school. 

Similarly, in his study with elementary school principals, Damini (2014) assert that principals 

must actively seek out student perspectives rather than relying on their own assumptions about 

what students think and believe about school.  

The field of educational leadership must critically rethink the ways that leadership 

practices and perspectives are informed. Scholars must continue to question who the field 

upholds as knowers and gatekeepers of knowledge. Most often, students of color are seen as 

	

9 

problems to be solved (Gutiérrez & Orellana, 2006) and framed as passive interlopers rather than 

viewed as leaders who are problem-solvers. Reframing these deficit notions necessitates a shift 

in educational research and the practice of school leaders. This is not limited to high school 

youth where the majority of youth voice research is conducted (Gonzalez et al., 2017). For 

elementary-aged youth, student voice efforts are often classroom focused where youth rarely 

have opportunities to participate in decision making on school wide issues (Mitra & Serriere, 

2012).  

 

For instance, Wasserburg’s (2018) work points to the few examples of student voice 

efforts at the elementary level. And even so, these studies reflect investigations of student voice 

at the upper-elementary level (Mitra & Serrierre, 2012; Serrierre, Mitra & Reed, 2011) and are 

especially limited in exploring student voice efforts outside of the classroom. In his study with 

African-American elementary-aged youth, Wasserburg (2018) found that the youth had various 

insights related to teacher quality. The students felt that the greatest teachers were those who 

were helpful, did not yell, and created exciting lessons. Additionally, students spoke to the 

overemphasis on test preparation within their school, highlighting the emphasis placed on test-

taking protocols and a tense climate within the school dominated by rules and regulations 

therefore limiting student engagement. Mitra & Serrierre’s (2012) case study research on the 

emergence of student voice at an elementary school determined that for 5th graders seeking to 

change school and district rules around lunch offerings at Dewey Elementary, enacting student 

voice for students strongly impacted positive youth development outcomes like agency, 

belonging, competency, discourse, and efficacy. In Serriere and colleagues (2011) examination 

of youth and adult partnerships in elementary service learning, their findings reveal that teacher-

leaders have a diverse way of implementing elementary student voice in service learning. 

	

10 

Ultimately, their findings demonstrate that even at the elementary level, the relationship between 

teachers and students must incorporate the sharing of expertise between children and adults. By 

doing so, student buy-in is increased for younger students leading to a more authentic student 

engagement.  

 While some educational leadership scholars have explored students of color and 

leadership, the educational leadership field in general has not fully embraced the concept of 

youth voice or student leadership (Bertrand, p.8, 2018).	In her study examining how youth 

participatory action research (YPAR) could serve as a path to include students of color in 

decision making, Bertrand notes that there are few or no chapters in the literature focused on 

student leadership specifically. Moreover, Bertrand reviewed Educational Administration 

Quarterly in the past 10 years using the search terms associated with “youth/student voice,” 

“youth activism”, “YPAR” and “youth organizing” finding that her search only yielded two 

articles (Bertrand, 2014; Mansfield, 2014). These results affirm that youth of color perspectives 

are likely an understudied area which in turn fail to place youth of color perspectives in the wider 

field of educational leadership.	 

To highlight the ways that high school women of color engage in leadership and 

activism, Welton, Brock, and Perry (2014) use a hybrid of Black feminist thought and hip-hop 

feminism to position the voices of young women of color to initiate bridges and restore 

relationships with teachers and administrators. The young women of V.O.I.C.E.S. saw 

themselves as cultural workers (Collins, 2006) with a political agenda to transform the school by 

first creating improved schooling conditions for young women of color, developing young 

women leaders, and challenging school adults’ stereotypical perceptions and interactions with 

students of color (p.96). In a similar fashion, Muhammad and Haddix (2016) highlight the 

	

11 

importance of valuing the epistemologies and voices of Black girls in a review of literature that 

centers Black girl knowledge within literacy research. They exclaim, “Black girls are generators 

and producers of knowledge, but this knowledge had been historically silenced by a dominant, 

White patriarchal discourse” (p. 304). Their findings affirm educational leadership scholars like 

Bertrand (2014) who note that youth of color are uniquely positioned in schools to reveal the 

multiple ways in which power structures like systemic racism are embedded in schools.  

Warren & Maricano (2018) observe that student voice can be activated through 

methodologies like YPAR in their work as well. In their study with Center City Youth Co-

Researchers, they saw YPAR as an invitation to ensure that high school youth voices were heard 

regularly by prominent stakeholders and moved from the periphery to the center of school 

improvement discourse (p.705). Similarly, in educational leadership, Bertrand (2014) utilized the 

concept of “third space” to explore how reciprocal dialogue between educational decision 

makers and students of color influenced shared decision making. She found that creating third 

space (an interactionally constituted site in which reciprocal dialogue occurs and hybrid ideas 

may arise) in isolation does not yield desired results for students of color. However, Bertrand’s 

study demonstrated potential pathways and obstacles to decision makers and students of color 

engaging in future reciprocal dialogue (p.835). Collectively, the presence of student voice in the 

literature signals that youth of color voices are emerging but even within that larger category, 

there are silences in the literature. Gonzalez, Hernandez-Saca & Artiles (2017) found in their 

review of 49 studies on student voice published in peer-refereed journals between 1990-2010 

that student voice research has centered attention on racial and ethnic historically marginalized 

youth with room to build efforts on other voices such as disability or LGBTQ identities.  

	

12 

Building on these efforts, Blackburn & McCready’s (2009) review of scholarship that 

represented voices of urban students who self-identify as LGBTQ+ demonstrate that queer urban 

youth have voice and seek to use it in environments where adults exacerbate homophobia leaving 

these youth feeling vulnerable and unsafe thus impacting their academic performance and, in 

some cases, sparking youth activism. This is poignant considering that GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian, & 

Straight Education Network) found that 59.7 % of LGBTQ+ youth reported hearing homophobic 

language and biased language towards gender expression from adult school staff. Blackburn & 

McCready note that the voices of queer urban youth have important implications for reimagining 

schooling. This work and other research remind us that transforming schools and specifically 

educational leadership practice requires engagement of all voices of youth of color in multi-

modal ways. 

As I investigated the manner in which the field of educational research and the field of 

educational leadership has taken up youth of color perspectives, student voice is woven 

throughout the literature as a catalyst for positive change (Mitra, 2012) and provides opportunity 

to engage students as active partners in school change (Bertrand, 2014, 2018; Mitra et al., 2012).  

For instance, while the term, “language” is used and not “student voice” explicitly in Buscholtz, 

Casilla & Lee’s (2017) work, they expand on the importance of language as sustenance, where 

“language brokering” serves a catalyst for student voice to be heard. Youth researcher, Elisa 

challenged her school’s hegemonic monolinguism by having them change their “English only” 

policy as she persuasively argued for the right to read her commencement speech in Spanish so 

that her family could understand and celebrate with her on her graduation day. Elisa amplifying 

her voice to school administration paved the way for future bilingual commencement speakers to 

use their home language to celebrate their academic accomplishments with their family (p.54).  

	

13 

Contemporary fields like critical youth studies have also emerged with the belief that 

youth need new kinds of spaces where processes, pedagogical structures, and youth cultural 

practices are valued and create a movement towards social justice and equity (Akom et.al, 2008). 

Thus, these spaces can emerge outside of the traditional schooling space where student voice 

research has historically taken place. Given this direction, methodological approaches that center 

participatory action research with youth have begun to blend studies on youth activism 

(Ginwright, 2010) and youth civic participation (Irizarry & Welton, 2014) as a part of youth 

voice work. In Girl Time (2011), Maisha Winn chronicles the transformative ways in which 

young women utilize their voices within the juvenile detention system by way of literary 

practices in order to seek restoration. Recognizing that youth of color voices are intricately 

linked to their knowledge base, their ways of knowing must be especially centered in the school 

space and taken seriously by school administration.  

Who are Youth of Color?  

Throughout this project, I have had to reflect on the commonly used term, youth of color.  

I thought it important to define youth of color as a way to disentangle youth voice work writ 

large from that of the youth voice work done with youth who navigate schooling in ways 

different from their white peers. The term, youth of color has been taken up to describe non-

white youth who occupy the space of the black-white binary but also have multiple histories 

(Santiago, in press) that involve differential treatment based on issues related to race, ethnicity, 

nationality, immigration, and language. In order to fully understand the nuances of what it means 

to be a youth of color, I apply Molina’s (2013) work which uncovers the reality of how 

constructs like race were made in America utilizing racial scripts that have been present since the 

immigration regime that remade racial categories and currently shape how we think about race, 

	

14 

and racialized groups. By examining the evolution of racial identities from 1924-1965, Molina 

provides the policies and laws that ultimately shape how groups (specifically Mexican and 

Mexican American) were racialized at any given time. Most poignant is her introduction to how 

these racial scripts enact themselves in the forms of policy and law thus perpetuating racial 

projects that are built into institutional structures. When considering the roles of schools as 

institutions that reflect practices and policies that perpetuate the same harm, it is necessary to 

draw upon present day histories where these same racial scripts have been used against various 

groups of color to limit or deny quality educational access by way of language, racialization, 

citizenship and the intersections of these. Molina’s contribution of racial scripts helps uncover 

the ways in which youth of color are categorized and re-categorized in schools to serve the needs 

of intended racial scripts at any given time. For students of color existing in the interstices, a 

space where school serves as a manufacturing site of racism, sexism, capitalism, and inequality, 

these “scripts” are felt, yet students of color are asked to achieve and engage in ways that don’t 

concern them. Love (2013) calls this “spirit murder” where there is a denial of inclusion, safety, 

nurturance, and acceptance because of fixed, yet fluid, and moldable, structures of racism. By 

highlighting youth voice studies with attention to youth of color voices as well, my research is 

better situated to speak to why schools must fold in youth voices in meaningful and impactful 

ways.  

	

15 

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 

Methodological Perspectives and Research Design  

In this dissertation, I set out with the overarching purpose to explore how youth of color 

voices might be engaged in the elementary school context. This inquiry required me to examine 

the perspectives of youth, which are at the heart of this study as well as those of the school 

leader. While I went into this project with that purpose in mind, I had no idea what would 

emerge, how things might shift from literacy to art or move from a proposed school showcase to 

the development of a playbook that would inform the school leaders’ reflexive approach to 

centering the voices of youth at Sunflower Elementary. When I set out to do this work, I thought 

I might engage a YPAR approach (Duncan-Andrade & Morrell, 2008) that would see students as 

co-researchers who would take action on a specific issue.  While change-oriented action did 

ultimately emerge in this project, it was a co-creation that did not stem from research with 

students but instead from them speaking to their lived experiences through arts-based inquiry, 

discourse, and reflection. Taken together, these components informed the construction of an arts-

based methodology that I termed as M.A.A.E., an acronym that encompasses makerspace, 

a/r/tography, and arts-elicitation. I utilize M.A.A.E. as a methodology that weaves together the 

aforementioned visual methods which allowed me to name the communal space and engagement 

between myself, the Voice Leaders and Mrs. O. In addition, I use M.A.A.E. as a descriptor of 

space throughout the dissertation because it distinguishes between the separate dialogue group 

conversations with students and the times in which we were creating artifacts that stimulated 

further discourse about the various topics discussed.  

Driven by the notion that we can reimagine an educational leadership that prioritizes 

student voice, in particular the voices of youth of color, I constructed research questions that 

	

16 

reflect my philosophical orientations to Black Feminist Epistemology (Collins, 2009) with an 

emphasis on the tenets that value (a) lived experience as knowledge, (b) the use of dialogue in 

assessing knowledge claims in one’s own community and (c) the ethics of care. As such, the 

research questions that guide this study are the following:  

Research Questions 

1.  How are elementary-aged youth of color positioned to affect change? 

a. What are the issues that students identify in their school and community? 

2.  How does a social justice oriented school leader engage the voices of elementary-aged 

youth of color?  

Approaching this project with Black feminist epistemologies in tow also required an 

important shift in how I broached educational research. Recognizing that research in itself has 

historically been concerned with documenting damage (Tuck, 2009; 2010), I made the choice to 

refuse engaging in research in ways that furthered damage-centered stories where “harm must be 

recorded or proven in order to convince an outside adjudicator that reparations are deserved” 

(Tuck & Yang, 2014). Instead, I wanted to take an approach that valued the lived experiences of 

the youth in this study as it informed their perspectives and the possibilities raised during our 

time together. From these stances, I want to underscore that my writing of this chapter can not be 

fully realized if I were to approach it as a series of linear steps that I followed to excavate 

particular outcomes – these methodological traditions subtract from what I found to be beautiful 

and telling in constructing this study. So instead, I write this chapter detailing the process of how 

I arrived at my use of methods, the construction of the arts-based (M.A.A.E.) methodology, data 

collection, and data analysis.  

	

17 

I begin by first describing my research positionality and subjectivities because as 

Vellanki and Fendler (2018) note in qualitative research, there is an inseparability from knowing 

and being, just as the ingredients are not separate from the preparation. Thus, I find it important 

to share my story as a Black woman researcher which informs how I come to knowledge and my 

applications of a Black feminist lens alongside the leadership framework used in this study. 

Because anchoring voice in educational settings matters in several ways (Lac & Mansfield, 

2018), I deploy the method of Black Feminist-Womanist Storytelling (Baker-Bell, 2017) as a 

way to further anchor the importance of voice and its relationship to story in this study. Further, 

if education is the practice of freedom (hooks, 1994), then we must begin to validate evidence 

being seen as story, as poetry and literature when offering provocations about our ethical 

obligations as researchers (Asher, 2019). In sharing this vignette, I revisit a moment of my K-12 

racial and gendered schooling experiences as a source of legitimate knowledge (Haddix, 2015) 

that had the power to influence the leadership practice in my high school. 

Positionality and Subjectivity  

It was my junior year of high school. By this point I had found my place in the school. I 

was involved in at least seven school organizations, some based off of merit like the honor 

society and student council, while others were more tailored to extroverted and outgoing 

students. I was also working part-time to save for college and this was my year to have all of my 

service hours complete as well as a portfolio of articles that I could share during my college 

application process. The year prior, I had interviewed the Mayor of New Orleans about his 

response during Hurricane Katrina. This was a big deal, as he was in town visiting the city of 

Memphis and made time to be interviewed by a high school student who wanted to know more 

about his delay in relief efforts to the people of New Orleans. My school loved this. It was yet 

	

18 

another accolade of a student that could be boasted about as the school worked to meet its 

average yearly progress (AYP). We were all (students included) made privy to the concern about 

not making AYP and landing on the list of failing schools. This was the priority for my high 

school during my years of attendance. As my principal saw it, it was not an option for our school 

to land on the failing list. As a school comprised of what appeared to be middle class Black 

students and families, I was already an outsider. I got into the school via the “optional schools” 

route which was a merit based program for students who were zoned to schools in their district 

but wanted access to a school outside of that district for a “higher quality education.”  Further, I 

was no middle class black student, my bus route was a fifteen minute ride down Elvis Presley 

Blvd where I would craftily get off before the school stop so that other students wouldn’t know I 

lived outside of the nice neighborhoods that surrounded the school during that time. I share this 

for a reason. Being an outsider and knowing it while finally feeling the safety of having found 

my “fit” in the school was pivotal for me. So, when I decided to write an article that would “out” 

my principal’s practices that directly affected Black girls in the school space, I was taking a huge 

risk. While I didn’t have the language to describe what I considered “injustice” at the time, it was 

clear to me that when I saw an issue or practice that needed to change, I had to speak up.  

 

Rumors began to surface that smoking and class skipping were taking place in the 

bathrooms for all students. For some reason, this led to the bathrooms being locked to all of the 

girls’ restrooms with the exception of one. The boys’ bathrooms remained open without 

explanation. The one bathroom that remained open for us had no door and it was located directly 

next to the cafeteria. Girls from all grades were in an uproar because we did not prefer that 

bathroom due to the fact that everyone entering the cafeteria could hear what you were doing and 

could easily walk in. There was no door for privacy. However, we revered our principal and saw 

	

19 

him as this “cool” and level-headed guy, kind of like an uncle who listened to what you had to 

say because you were making good grades and had a “respectable” reputation. However, none of 

our complaints were truly heard and even in our school council and societies, there was no room 

for us to “change” any operation or practice of an adult in the school. With this in mind, I sought 

an alternative avenue where I could call attention to the issue. As a writer for The Teen Appeal, I 

was supported by the university that sponsored students interested in journalism. After pitching 

and writing the article, the paper made it to all schools in the district with my story landing on 

the front page. By mid-day, possibly after lunch period, I was called to the office and placed in a 

conference room with the principal and teachers that I’d never interacted with (looking back they 

may have been a part of the teacher leadership team). I was told that I had misrepresented our 

school and our principal, that I did not embody what we called “Tiger Pride” if I would write an 

article of that fashion and have it published. I was threatened with suspension and told that, 

 “You were supposed to be a good girl – one of the good ones.”  This experience never left me. 

In fact, I was only left to feel confused and repositioned as the outsider that I was when I initially 

joined the school community three years prior. After member checking this story with a high 

school English teacher, one who advocated on my behalf, she shared with me that she told the 

principal, “She has a right to tell this story, if you don’t want people to know what is happening 

here, it needs to stop.”  I am not sure if it was her advocacy or a combination of the coordinators 

of the newspaper also coming to the school to combat my suspension, but I was never suspended. 

The doors were also unlocked after a few weeks. My relationship with the principal however, 

was never the same and any other issues that arose in our school, I dared not speak on.  

 

 

	

 

20 

Significance of Study  

I share the above story recognizing that storytelling is a pedagogical practice but Black 

Feminist-Womanist Storytelling is one that places Black feminist/womanist theories and 

storytelling together to create an approach that provides Black women with a method for 

collecting, writing, and analyzing our stories (Baker-Bell, 2017). Reentering this story makes 

room for analysis through both a racial and gendered lens as I consider the ways that school 

leaders can either silence or make space for youth voice to be actualized. While this study 

focused on youth voices of color and leadership, Black feminists works and epistemologies 

(Butler, 2018; Collins, 2009; Dotson, 2017; Holland, 2009; McKittrick, 2006) help me to 

understand that school space is entangled with heteronormative, racist, sexist and ableist 

ideologies that provoke resistance from youth. Further, Black feminist epistemologies have 

historically pointed to a liberation for all, where all marginalized voices are moved from the 

margins to the center, recognizing that our liberations are uniquely bound together (Aboriginal 

Activist Sisters, 1970).  With this in mind, I recognize that Black feminist knowledges and Black 

feminist practice, which is the application of these knowledges were enacted throughout this 

project. These knowledges and practices were particularly salient to my development of the unit 

plan, the prompts in which I engaged student discourse, and my role as a conduit between the 

youth and principal in efforts to relay the perspectives of the students. Appreciating that Black 

Feminist Thought demonstrates that knowledge has no proper subject (Dotson, 2015), it was 

sensible to me that the youth at Sunflower should be regarded as leaders in their own right with 

valuable ways of knowing that were crucial to the outcomes of this study. Therefore, I took a 

definitive stance or Black feminist standpoint (Collins, 2000) which names the unique yet critical 

stance that Black women who have particular ways of knowing engage because we are able to 

	

21 

see reality from multiple locations (Muhammad & Haddix, 2016). To underscore this point, the 

practices and knowledge making that the Voice Leaders (youth) and Mrs. O (principal) engaged 

with me (researcher) were a direct reflection of these dimensions of Black feminist knowledge in 

practice. As a cultural broker or mediator between both the youth and principal, I was able to 

center the lived experiences of the youth with Mrs. O because I was privy to how relevant their 

experiences were as young people but also recognized how easily they might be dismissed or 

silenced. Holding fast to my commitments and stance, I pursued a project design that would 

allow for the youth to be introduced to contemporary Black artists, artisans, writers, and young 

adult leaders of color (Appendix A). This intentionality informed the dialogue amongst the Voice 

Leaders as well as their creative practices and critical insights offered when sharing sacred space 

at Sunflower. For Mrs. O, the enactment of Black feminist practice manifested by way of 

challenging the status-quo and learning how to better center youth of color voices in her own 

leadership practices. These practices embodied an ethics of care, a tenet of Black Feminist 

Epistemology (Collins, 2000) on Mrs. O’s part as well as operating with a critical reflexivity in 

our sessions that allowed for her to reflect on her role in advancing student voice efforts at 

Sunflower Elementary.  

For congruency efforts in my research, I align my study with that of an interpretive 

approach recognizing that it was necessary to gain an in-depth knowledge about participants’ 

experiences, beliefs, values, and behaviors (Creswell, 2007). To that end, my methods are 

tailored for elements of story or narrative to emerge for both the youth and the school leader. 

Without this knowledge, the field of research bends towards generalizations and bounded 

understandings of youth of color and static definitions of leadership.  

	

22 

I see stories as an avenue for which youth of color have the utility of voice. In the case of 

M.A.A.E., these stories were amplified through their constructed artifacts using this particular 

methodology. By placing Black feminist epistemologies, which inform the ways that I layer and 

order experiences as a means to identify the stories that emerge in this project, alongside the 

conceptual framework of POYCEL (Principal Orientations for Critical Youth Educational 

Leadership) I am able see how a) youths’ lived experiences inform their knowledge claims and 

how school leaders honor that knowledge (Key Lever 1). Additionally, I examine how the b) 

dialogue between myself and the school leader helps assess the knowledge claims brought forth 

from the youth and what this might mean for how they are positioned (Key Lever 2) in the 

school. And finally, I analyze the ethics of care from the school leader in affording opportunities 

to support youth in exercising their voice (Key Lever 3).   

Toward a Leadership Framework for Youth Voice  

Arriving at a framework that neatly mapped onto both the youth and the school leader in 

this project proved challenging for a few reasons. First, it is important to note that I landed on the 

conceptual framework of POYCEL after dancing around scholarly convention (Shange, 2019) 

that might suggest the researcher should approach the work with a framework in mind, one that 

helps specify a set of questions that you then examine with a particular methodology (Denzin & 

Lincoln, 2003) at the forefront. While this linkage is important, the order in which I arrived at a 

more fitting framework did not emerge in these ways. In fact, there were various frameworks 

that did not seem to fully frame the phenomena of what was taking place at Sunflower 

Elementary. The reality was that I began with a set of research questions that morphed and 

shifted as I began to construct a methodology to capture my approach to this study. Considering 

that my methodological choices were arts-based, it became even more challenging to find a 

	

23 

framework that might account for this additional element. It seemed that each time that I found a 

framework that I thought might provide new lenses, I would realize that it did not stimulate new 

understandings of how to make sense of the data that emerged for both units of analysis nor did it 

help me to clarify the relationship among the various elements at work. Similar to Decoteau 

Irby’s racial discipline work (2018) where he applied a layered leadership approach to engage 

sensemaking of racial discipline disparities in a large suburban high school, I questioned if 

layering various leadership frameworks like culturally responsive school leadership (Johnson, 

2006; Khalifa et al., 2016) or social justice leadership (Shields, 2004; Theoharis, 2007; 2011) 

alongside YPAR or dialogue centered frames would be advantageous. In toiling with this idea, I 

wrestled with what existing frameworks helped me to see and what might be missing when 

putting the data from the youth and principal in conversation. From here, I came to Mitra’s 

ABCDE framework (2012) that incorporated youth development concepts for younger children 

when considering the outcomes of student voice efforts. However, my questions were less 

concerned with the development of the students at Sunflower and more focused on how they 

might actuate change and be positioned as leaders in their schools. Current leadership 

frameworks failed to guide my questions as the frameworks were hyper focused on the adult as 

leader and framed students as recipients of strong leadership. Adult leadership theories often 

emphasize adults wielding power and authority over youth or neglect youth conceptions of 

leadership altogether (Mortensen et al, 2014). Finally, I came across the work of Van Lac and 

Mansfield (2018) who constructed a contemporary leadership framework that supported student 

voice but also focused on principal orientations towards actualizing voice. Below, I provide more 

detail of why I chose POYCEL as a “fit” for this study and the ways in which I bridge Black 

	

24 

feminist epistemologies alongside this leadership framework to account for the leadership 

practices and knowledge making exhibited throughout the project.  

Principal Orientations for Critical Youth Educational Leadership (POYCEL) 

Lac & Mansfield (2018) introduce POYCEL as a conceptual model that centers student 

voice by way of educational leaders embodying three key levers that prioritize the voices of 

young people. These key levers include school leaders committing to youth voice, positioning 

students as leaders in their schools, and affording opportunities to support young people to 

exercise their voice (p.43). While the POYCEL framework offers guiding principles for school 

leaders who seek to work collaboratively and equitably with students towards social justice (p. 

44), it is also worthy of putting in conversation alongside my findings as I argue the significance 

of the Voice Leader’s perspectives and what this means for educational leadership. Research on 

youth leadership (Mortensen et. al, 2014) suggests that youth are aware of the issues in their 

community often three years ahead of adults and have important insights about how society 

should be different (London, Zimmerman, & Erbstein, 2003; Stoneman, 2010).  With this in 

mind, I use the POYCEL framework to situate how youth of color perspectives, especially those 

of elementary youth hold value in educational decision making. While POYCEL is an adult 

centered leadership framework as the majority of leadership frameworks are, I use POYCEL 

because of its commitments to student voice and as a way to speak back to my findings. 

Naturally, there are parts of this framework that do not map on neatly to the leadership practices 

of youth. No single adult theory aligns with youth perspectives entirely, and some adult theories 

directly contradict youth perspectives (Mortensen et. al, 2014). POYCEL however, helps me 

make room for both the youth and the school leader as units of analysis in an effort to show how 

youth voice must play an integral role in school leadership.   

	

25 

Black Feminist Epistemologies  

We cannot examine injustice, inequity or disenfranchisement of urban youth in any 

context without centering the Black woman and her epistemology, especially when the very 

practices employed in classrooms and schools either liberate or further oppress.  As long as 

Black women's subordination within intersecting oppressions of race, class, gender, sexuality, 

and nation persists, Black feminism as an activist response will remain needed (Collins, 2000).  

Black feminist knowledge then, provides a lens to understand how youth of color, 

especially Black youth have been historically silenced, erased or made invisible in the schooling 

context. Informed by Black Feminist Thought (Collins, 2000), Black feminist epistemologies 

(BFE) offer a liberatory way of both being and knowing. From Collins work, I place a specific 

emphasis on the tenets that value (a) lived experience as knowledge, (b) the use of dialogue in 

assessing knowledge claims in one’s own community and (c) the ethics of care.  

Black feminist knowledge also necessitates a different relationship between the 

researcher and the researched, between knowing and the production of knowledge (Dillard, 

2000). Thus, my inquiry is understood from these epistemological perspectives, recognizing that 

what constitutes knowledge depends profoundly on the consensus and ethos of the community in 

which it is grounded (Dillard, 2000). I also draw on the Combahee River Collective statement 

which asserts that black women are inherently valuable (Combahee River Collective, 1977) in 

their Black Feminist Manifesto, while also declaring that Black womens’ liberation would 

necessitate the eradication of all forms of oppression, they confirmed then, as our ancestors 

confirmed centuries ago, as we confirm now, that liberation praxis, theoretical, or otherwise, is 

predicated on our Being made free. Therefore, I look at Black Feminist Thought’s contributions 

of Black feminist epistemology as useful for understanding historical silencing and erasure as 

	

26 

well as the power and utility of voice amongst young people. Finally, Because BFE makes the 

claim that knowledge is informed by lived experience, I felt that bridging a leadership 

framework like POYCEL alongside BFE affirms the notion that youth have experiences too, and 

are particularly experts of their own school and lived experiences. While this approach was 

necessary for this particular study, it remains necessary to have an offering of frameworks that 

draw on critical paradigms and push against status-quo conceptions of leadership by developing 

frameworks that center and regard youth as leaders in their schools and communities. Current 

progressive leadership frameworks provide a lens of where we begin. Yet, it would be a 

disservice to the field of educational leadership if we are not to have more in-depth 

understandings of how youth lead presently and the way these practices are supported or stifled 

in K-12 schools.  

Constructing an Arts-Based Methodology  

You are your own stories and therefore free to imagine and experience what it means to be 
human…And although you don’t have complete control over the narrative – no author does, I 

can tell you – you could nevertheless create it.  

–  Toni Morrison  

 

 

 
 

 

 

Working alongside the youth at Sunflower Elementary provided the opportunity to listen 

to the desires of the students and to be responsive to those expressions, especially if my work 

was to honor the intentions and possible outcomes of student voice. With the knowledge that arts 

and music teaching staff had been cut from district schools like Sunflower Elementary, I knew 

there were numerous possibilities for how we could engage the absence of these disciplines in 

our shared time together. Referenced throughout this dissertation, I acknowledge that the youth 

in this study whom affectionately named themselves the Voice Leaders, led me to a participatory 

design. At the onset of this study, I designed a unit plan where students would engage in 

	

27 

constructing short stories, poetry, and some collage work with a literacy focus. After meeting 

with students and hearing their desires for creating art, I chose to abandon previously planned 

creative forms in the unit plan and instead left this area open for the Voice Leaders to decide how 

they wanted to pin down topics of change, leadership, and voice when creating in our weekly 

sessions. In an effort to stitch together the desires of the students and the topics that spoke to my 

research questions, I began to reflect on how I might bring in art as a reflective tool. Initially, I 

thought we might take up arts-elicitation which incorporates drawing, mapping, portraits and 

other arts techniques that serve as reflection tools (Bagnoli, 2009). However, arts-elicitation did 

not fully grasp how the Voice Leaders and I spent our time. There was reflection but also inquiry 

operating that resembled elements of critical narrative inquiry (Rivera Maulucci, 2010a) which 

places an intentional focus on centering the stories of youth and marginalized communities. I 

found that weaving in a/r/tography (Irwin, LeBlanc, Ryu, Belliveau, 2018) was a way to engage 

living inquiry and to make room for constructing new realities through art processes. It was 

equally important for me to name the space in which we would enlist these approaches. Familiar 

with makerspaces from my personal creative outlets, I came to see how I engaged with the Voice 

Leaders as very similar to this – from our corner in the reading room to the more spacious 

wooden tables in the library, we cultivated our own makerspace where community is often 

formed and collaborative design is encouraged. Taken together, I was able to materialize the 

bricolage of Makerspace, Artography, and Arts-Elicitation as M.A.A.E., an acronym that 

supported the “how” of this study and informed the methods applied to gather insight into my 

proposed research questions.  

 
 
 
 

	

28 

Conducting a Critical Narrative Arts-Based Qualitative Study    

 

Given the few studies that have engaged elementary-aged youth perspectives on schools, 

leadership or even their thoughts on instruction, I found it necessary to engage a research design 

that would explore a phenomenon of “how” something was done in the elementary school 

context but also how this might be done in intricate ways that linked my research questions, 

methods, and epistemological stances. In this particular case, I was interested in how elementary-

aged youth of color see themselves positioned to affect change in their school, as well as how the 

school principal engaged the voices of youth of color at Sunflower Elementary. While case study 

research (Baxter & Jack, 2008) is typically reserved for investigating “how,” the arts-based 

methodology interwoven throughout this study accompanied with the fluidity of what was 

happening in the context of Sunflower Elementary led me to frame this study as arts-based. I also 

view this study as one informed by critical narrative inquiry research (Rivera-Maulucci, 2009) 

with and for youth of color. In their review of arts-based dissertations, Sinner and colleagues 

(2006) note that tensions currently exist in the academy on what constitutes arts-based inquiry 

and how efforts to define what merits as creative scholarship continue to evolve. Similarly, in his 

paradigm analysis of the characteristics that define arts-based research, Rolling (2010) exclaims 

that educational researchers are still trying to define what determines arts-based research (ABR). 

In his work explicating the nuances of arts-based research, Rolling simultaneously offers new 

insights that affirm the rigor of ABR and distinguishes between arts-informed research versus 

research that is arts-based. Describing arts-informed research as research derived from “dabbling 

in the arts for a brief period (p.110),” I repeatedly assessed whether this project reflected that of 

an arts-based approach or research that was simply art-informed and would serve better as a case 

study. However, relying on my methodological approach of M.A.A.E., which goes beyond the 

	

29 

use of arts-based methods, I was able to forge a tailored relationship to the ways that art was 

used to disrupt traditional notions of schooling, voice, and leadership.  Naming this study as arts-

based felt akin to what Rolling describes as a proliferative practice, one that erodes pre-

determinations, un-names categories, and swamps the pretense of objectivity (p.108) – all aims 

and outcomes of this work. Pursuing inquiry through arts and education allowed me to bring 

forth a practice-based methodology in conjunction with a critical narrative approach that also 

disrupted objectivity and centered story.   

Fook & Gardner (2007) recommend that researchers who engage critical narrative 

approaches must also engage in their own reflexivity where they recognize the influences of their 

background, assumptions and expectations and outcomes of the research. Therefore, I name the 

application of a Black feminist lens that I utilize in my interpretation of the data. I see this study 

as informed by critical narrative inquiry because I do not hide this particular lens but instead I 

acknowledge that I am not a passive observer or unbiased researcher (Rivera-Maulucci, 2009) as 

I consider the layers of power and context in this study.  In order to address my research question 

concerning how school leaders engage the voices of youth of color in the elementary schooling 

context, I was able to illuminate the context of the school, the ways in which student voice is 

engaged and the practice of leadership within the larger school context.  

 For congruency efforts in my research, I align this study with that of an interpretive 

approach recognizing that it is necessary to gain an in-depth knowledge about participants’ 

experiences, beliefs, values, and behaviors (Creswell, 2007) so as to not rely on my own 

assumptions. To that end, my methods are tailored for elements of story or narrative to emerge 

for both the youth and the school leader. Without this knowledge, the field of research bends 

towards generalizations and bounded understandings of youth of color and static definitions of 

	

30 

leadership. The analytic focus of this study is not simply that of school leaders, but instead an 

intentional focus on the relationship between both the school leader and the youth. By shifting 

the unit of analysis from centrally focused on the school leader to including youth, I am able to 

make room for new knowledge that is informed by lived experience (Collins, 2009) and affirm 

the importance of dialogue in making knowledge claims.  

 While critical narrative inquiry is informed by narrative inquiry, it differs in its 

application because of the intentional focus on centering the stories of youth and marginalized 

communities (Rivera Maulucci, 2010a) which I deeply appreciated in my conceptualization of 

how this study might take form. More specifically, critical narrative inquiry prioritizes 

conducting research in a way that elicits first person narratives from participants who represent 

traditionally marginalized groups as well as utilizing those narratives to highlight issues of 

injustice, power and privilege (Rivera Maulucci, 2011). In writing about a critical narrativist 

perspective, Hickson (2016) states that critical reflection can be used as a two-stage method of 

deconstructing and reconstructing assumptions which can ultimately influence research design. 

In this study, I was continuously reflexive in the ways that I approached the design of the study 

especially considering the priority of youth voice in this work. With this in mind, I released my 

own expectations and outcomes of the study into the hands of the youth who had their own 

relevant agenda and voices worthy of being valued in this project.  

By employing my chosen methods of semi-structured interviews, observation, and a form 

of document analysis of both the youth and school leader, I found that a more interactive and 

dialogical process was possible in the context of this research. Narrative researchers use various 

techniques to analyze an account (Hickson, 2016) such as categorical approaches to coding the 

data. Recognizing that an arts-based methodology informed how the youth and school leader 

	

31 

shared their stories, I coded their artifacts in search of identified themes and utilized those 

themes in my deconstruction of their artifacts to construct the stories that follow in the findings 

chapter.  

Student Recruitment and Participation 

Criteria for Participants 

 

In order to thoughtfully address my research questions, I consulted with the school 

leader, Mrs. O in my recruitment of students. She assisted me in identifying 8-10 youth who 

were in 2nd grade and interested in aspects of storytelling and learning more about leadership. 

Further, I shared with Mrs. O that I was also interested in students who were non-white and 

culturally or linguistically diverse (i.e., speaks English as a second language, identifies with a 

culture other than American) because of my commitments to learning from and working with 

youth of color.  

 

During this first phase of recruitment, Mrs. O along with her school improvement 

coordinator Mrs. Knot, selected 10 students who I began to pilot dialogue groups (May 2019) 

with and receive feedback on the unit plan I developed. I planned for these same 10 students, 

composed of mostly 2nd graders to participate in the official launch of the project in August when 

they became 3rd graders.  

It was not until I returned to Sunflower Elementary in August that I became aware that 

many student transfers had taken place and more than half of our group were no longer students 

at Sunflower Elementary. This then resulted in a second phase of recruitment where Mrs. Knot 

took the lead on identifying students who might be interested in joining the group. Only three 

students from the original group returned, Rose, Niecey and Emma. Mrs. Knot chose an 

additional 7 students but only 5 of the 7 students returned their consent forms. I think it is 

	

32 

important to note here that during this phase of recruitment, Jewel, the only white student in the 

project was added to our group. While she did not identify as a person of color, I did not feel it 

was appropriate to remove her. In the spirit of honoring youth of color voices, I did consult with 

the other students to ask if they would be comfortable with our group representing a variety of 

backgrounds and they all agreed that Jewel should be welcomed into the group. From here, I 

brought together the students who returned from the previous pilot as well as newcomers like 

Drake, Ella, Jewel, Kelsey, and Sienna from August 2019 to January 2020. This provided a total 

of 8 students in the project. At this stage, my research questions had evolved to be more 

inclusive of centering the voices of the students. Therefore, I presented the unit plan to the group, 

received further feedback and made the necessary changes (inclusion of more art) to fit their 

interests. In total, I met with the Voice Leaders twice a week for 12 weeks conducting repetitive 

dialogue groups and eight (8) M.A.A.E. spaces where dialogue between myself and the Voice 

Leaders also naturally occurred and informed the findings in this project.  Below I provide a 

more in-depth description of each of the youth in this project. By sharing a snapshot of their 

personalities, preferences, and contributions to the space, my hope is that they are humanized in 

the study and seen as the leaders they are.   

Drake. Drake, 8-years-old and an environmentalist who will update you on the latest 

forest fire, water crisis and pollution issues. On occasion, Drake tells long stories about his 

family, friends, and extracurricular activities if given the time. Always with a smile, and always 

inquisitive, Drake believes change has to happen now, especially when it comes to saving the 

planet. Drake identifies as a Black male when presented with celebrity photos of children that 

reflect various genders and racial identities. He is a staunch advocate for Flint, Michigan and 

loves to share stories about his family.  

	

33 

Ella. Ella is a proud black girl who enters every room with a seriousness and a smile all 

at once. Ella is graceful and thoughtful with her words. She believes in helping people and loves 

learning a new skill like crochet. Ella is highly reflective about who she is as a person and how 

we could all be better. She gives us inspiration and reminds us that if we care about something, 

“speak loud about it!”  

Emma. Although Emma is only 8-years-old, she approaches life with a playfulness and 

curiosity about all things, especially cosmetics, culture and language. She takes her time with her 

artwork, down to every unique detail and makes sure that others are cared for. Emma is 

passionate about the arts and believes that doing change work is hard but possible. Emma 

identifies as mixed with Asian, Black, and White. She expresses concern about her family in 

Thailand at times and the environmental impact that pollution has on her grandfather who lives 

there.  

Jewel. Jewel transferred to Sunflower Elementary from the state of New York and cares 

a lot about the happiness and wellness of others. She is a thinker and learner who takes new 

information and applies it almost immediately. Jewel loves rainbows and speaks in a light voice 

but always with resolve.  She is one who observes and pays close attention to the actions of 

others. Although Jewel presents as White, she shared with the group that she is a quarter Chinese 

after Emma opened up on our bus ride about her family living in Thailand.  

Kelsey. Kelsey is the comedian of the group; she always has a joke prepared whenever 

she can insert it into the conversation. She enjoys working with her hands and is not afraid to 

counter the popular opinion. To Kelsey, kindness is not forgotten and helping others is equally 

important to her. Kelsey’s honey brown eyes easily pull you in with the ways her eyes smirk 

before her mouth contours to deliver a comeback to other students. Kelsey is knowledgeable that 

	

34 

she is a Black girl and sees the differential treatment with her teacher Mr. Chuck when she 

performs Black girlhood in ways that are “too much” and deemed punishable in his classroom.  

Rose. Rose is proud to call herself an artist and will readily share her viewpoints on how 

people should be treated. She is the quite the observer and believes in following the Golden Rule 

– treating others the way you would like to be treated. Rose is a perfectionist when it comes to 

her art, she finds it relaxing and is always thinking about the world around her. Rose identifies as 

Asian American but has never specifically stated the name of her home country although she 

references being from another country. She is very vocal about how hard her parents work and 

the character of adults and children around her.  

Niecey. When you meet Niecey in the stories offered, you’ll know. She is no-nonsense 

and will “tell it like it is.” She is a passionate Black girl who is steadfast about being a leader and 

reflective on how she has changed over her elementary years. Niecey is thoughtful and never 

hesitates to pose questions back to you that you’ve asked of her – she cares about others’ stories 

too. Niecey is outspoken about the experiences of Black people and will not hesitate to let people 

know when they need to do better, no matter if they are an adult or peer.  

Sienna.  The quietest of the group, Sienna is a thinker who is a master at learning with 

her hands. She is not afraid to ask questions and likes to poll the room before sharing her 

perspective. Sienna is gentle with others and believes in helping people, she is always thinking 

about her community and the people in it. Sienna presents as a Black girl who is deeply curious 

about the world but hesitates to share her thoughts and opinions unless we engage one on one 

where she feels more comfortable and relaxed.  

My interactions with the Voice Leaders were both powerful and challenging at times. I 

name them powerful because of how much critical insider knowledge they had about schools and 

	

35 

society. Although elementary students, their insights reminded me of how much they are not 

listened to but should be. There is often a misnomer that younger children simply reflect the 

ideas of the adults around them. Yet, I witnessed the complete opposite. These youth were sure 

of themselves and unwavering on their perspectives about various hot topics that they brought to 

the forefront. It seemed that the “power over” culture that operationalizes in schools is what had 

been silencing them. I believe our space, which we created beyond place, felt like a reprieve for 

many of them. I imagine this is likely because I did not occupy the role of teacher, to them I was 

just there to “hang out with kids” as Niecey would say. Naturally, challenges presented 

themselves in the form of constrained time and resources. This aspect of the project was really 

hard for me. Particularly as it related to hearing students talk about absence. This was not only 

demonstrated in a conversation that Emma initiated about “good teachers leaving” but also the 

reality that as a graduate student during this study, I had very limited resources myself to support 

the work we were doing. Creating art under these constraints was frustrating and it did not feel 

fair to them, as I felt they deserved more.  

Principal Participation  

 

I approached Mrs. O, a white woman who was enrolled in the local university’s 

Educational Leadership program after speaking with other students in her cohort who found her 

to be a strong elementary school leader that was social justice oriented. When we met for our 

first interview, I realized that I had met Mrs. O before. Early on, while taking coursework, I 

recall hearing someone with a blonde-haired bob offer critical perspectives on culturally 

responsive schooling and its importance behind me in a course one Saturday. To my surprise it 

was the same Mrs. O.  These perspectives were typically limited to being shared by the people of 

color in our course, I remember developing a new respect for her that day.  At the time I had no 

	

36 

idea what Mrs. O’s background was nor that we would eventually partner together in the future. 

One of the most important factors that I considered in choosing Mrs. O was her orientation 

towards social justice which I felt might inform her approaches to student voice at her school. 

During the time of this project, Mrs. O was in her third-year as principal at Sunflower 

Elementary, the first school in which she had taken on a primary leadership role. Prior to 

becoming principal at Sunflower, she had taught for 9 years with some of that time being in a 

large urban district out of state as well as in a suburban district in the state of Michigan. Mrs. O’s 

prior leadership experience was as a Title I Interventionist where she focused in literacy 

improvement in the suburban district. With Mrs. O, I conducted three 1:1 sessions that also 

incorporated semi-structured interviews. I termed our engagement as sessions because of the 

developmental aspect of these interviews. For Mrs. O and I, reciprocal dialogue (Bertrand, 2014) 

where collaboration and responsiveness are central to engagement, informed how we spent our 

time as well as incorporating M.A.A.E. to gain further insight on how Mrs. O conceptualized her 

role in engaging student voice in the school.  

Research Timeline and Data Generation  

To more fully detail how I spent my time with the Voice Leaders and Mrs. O, I present 

my multiple methods below used to generate the qualitative data in this project. Recognizing that 

I had two units of analysis in this study, I incorporated the use of M.A.A.E. for both Mrs. O and 

the Voice Leaders although it was more consistently embedded in my time with the students. To 

effectively explore how youth of color saw themselves as affecting change in the school space, I 

chose to conduct dialogue groups alongside our M.A.A.E. space to inquire more about students’ 

notions around change, leadership and voice enactment at Sunflower. I also incorporated a field 

experience at a local art museum for two reasons. First, it had been brought to my attention from 

	

37 

Mrs. O in our first interview that students had no anticipated field trips on her books for the 

upcoming school year. This was not only disappointing for her because teachers did not submit 

field trip proposals in time but it was also disheartening for me to know that I was limited in the 

arts expertise I could provide. I felt the Voice Leaders deserved to learn from arts educators and I 

was aware that the local museum could sponsor payment so that students could attend.  In terms 

of research, I knew that comparing my observations at Sunflower to how the youth interacted at 

the museum could help me reach a “thick description” in my meaning making and analysis of 

how they responded to the world around them. In addition to our M.A.A.E space, I arranged our 

dialogue groups with intention. Again, this project was an iterative process that allowed me to 

incorporate reflection and responsiveness to the needs of the students. For instance, I would meet 

with the Voice Leaders twice a week where dialogue groups would take place the first day of the 

week and M.A.A.E. space occurring the second part of the week. Naturally, with any artistic 

mode of inquiry, the construction of student artifacts would take more time than what we had 

allotted which would impede on this more structured approach I had implemented. I began to 

notice that during our M.A.A.E. space, students were already engaging in dialogue and reflection 

about what they were creating and why, they were collaborating with materials and ideas. So in 

this case, I recognized that the “dialogue group” method of this study transcended into our 

M.A.A.E. space as well. During this time, I took field notes in a small notebook jotting down my 

thoughts and any key observations that arose (Saldaña, 2016). Additionally, I would brain dump 

any key observations into my recorder immediately after my time at Sunflower that I would later 

transcribe to inform my analytic memos. Before adopting this approach, I attempted to take note 

from Auerbach and Silverstein (2003) who recommend maintaining a copy of the research 

concern, research questions, and goals of the study (p.44). While this approach is suggested to 

	

38 

help alleviate anxieties to support later coding decisions, I found that returning to these questions 

and pre-coding practices (Boyatiz, 1998) influenced how I interacted with the Voice Leaders. 

For example, I would often feel pressed for time, reinforcing parameters of what was “supposed 

to be” in the study and this necessity to push in ways that might get at deeper reflection for the 

students. Ultimately, this did not feel humanizing and felt parallel to what Yoon & Templeton 

(2019) identify as constrained spaces, where adults overlook the complex ways that children are 

navigating and interpreting their social words because of their own agendas and assumptions. In 

moving away from this practice, I was better able to engage in reflexivity, an inherently Black 

feminist practice of critiquing power and my relationality (Ohito & Nyache, 2018) to the 

students, the research and school context in which we were operating. Working with Mrs. O in 

what I termed as interview sessions in this project allowed for critical discourse and storytelling 

to surface in ways that provided more insight into her beliefs and values which informed her 

everyday leadership practices. In our first interview session, my questions were tailored to 

understand the background of Mrs. O and how she came to teaching and leadership (Appendix 

A). It was during this interview that I learned she was partnered in an interracial marriage which 

she felt gave her a front seat to injustice and discrimination. She shared various stories that raised 

her consciousness and reflected her own growth as a White woman with biracial children and a 

Black husband. While sharing these stories, Mrs. O would simultaneously name her privilege, 

her social justice commitments and the learning she was vigilant about doing. In the interview 

sessions that followed, Mrs. O reproduced the same transparency and vulnerability which 

allowed me to push deeper at her responses. This also gave her the space to share the resistance 

she faced from teachers and the heaviness she felt as she continued to navigate her school 

context with competing narratives at play about her. When I consider the relationality between 

	

39 

Mrs. O and I, it mattered that she was able to critique power structures and to name the ways that 

she was implicated within these structures as a white woman but also as the authority figure in 

her school. These actions were essential to encouraging how I, a Black woman was able to 

engage in asking the hard questions of Mrs. O and naming contradictions for her to wrestle with 

in her own leadership practice. Returning to the notion of Black feminist practice as present 

throughout this study, my awareness of the silences and erasure often placed upon students of 

color served as a catalyst for me to craft my methods and methodological choices to honor the 

voices of the youth at Sunflower and to critique power in all its forms, even with Mrs. O.  

Below I discuss in more detail how I engaged multiple methods that supported my data 

collection.  

Interviews. According to Tracy (2010), demonstrations of rigor include the number and 

length of interviews, with an attention to the breadth of the interview given the goals of your 

study. Thus, I conducted three semi-structured interviews with the school leader Mrs. O with the 

final two interviews being more exploratory in nature because of my curiosity around how she 

began to see her role as an actor of engaging student voice. All interviews were recorded with the 

final interview incorporating M.A.A.E. as a means of engagement for Mrs. O to critically reflect 

on change. Reflecting on the artifacts and dialogue transcripts of the Voice Leaders informed my 

follow-up and open-ended questions to Mrs. O in interviews 2 and 3. This allowed me to 

examine how her understandings of engaging student voice might have developed over time 

when presented with the artifacts of students throughout the project.   

 

Observations. By conducting observations in the school setting, I was able to construct 

meaning and aid my analysis by witnessing the day-to-day activities and interactions that take 

place in the school setting. Because I introduced a field experience component in this study, I 

	

40 

was also able to take down important field notes during my observations of the Voice Leaders at 

the local museum. I paid specific attention to how and what they dialogued about with one 

another when exploring the exhibit. Recognizing that arts-based researchers spend more time 

with artistic ways of working rather than just describing their observations of others (McNiff, 

2011), I thoughtfully participated in experiencing the exhibits with the Voice Leaders as well as 

engaging in creating and constructing artifacts during our M.A.A.E. space. That said, taking on 

the role of a mentor and observer was difficult as I valued being “in the moment” with students 

and wanted to mitigate a teacher-student power dynamic as much as possible. Taking note of 

how Blackburn (2003a) positioned herself in her study exploring the ways LGBTQ youth used 

literacy to advocate for themselves and others, she named that balancing simultaneous roles can 

be challenging. However, every decision she made at the site, she made first as a volunteer or 

employee and second as a researcher. Similarly, I sought to make decisions that would value 

students first even if this meant placing my research agenda as secondary. While most of my 

observation consisted of observing the Voice Leaders, I did compose analytic memos informed 

by my field notes that documented my interactions with Mrs. O and commentary made within 

the school about the students as well as the principal. Further, my observations allowed for me to 

realize the fluidity of what was taking place in the school and to more closely examine how Mrs. 

O’s actions were in alignment with the POYCEL framework.  

Document analysis. I examined the various artworks which I call artifacts in this study 

that were created by the youth in this study as well as their principal, Mrs. O. In order to 

effectively comprehend the story behind the picture, I relied on the commentary made by 

students about their artifacts which was recorded and transcribed to support my “coding” 

process. It was pertinent that I did not allow my voice and viewpoints to dominate my analysis of 

	

41 

the students’ artifacts. Therefore, I closely examined and analyzed the artifacts utilizing 

Mulcahey’s (2009) approach to inquiry and analysis of artmaking with young children. This 

approach applies in the moment with artmaking by encouraging children to create without labels 

and boundaries (p.13). By first orienting students to think like an artist who a) looks at things 

closely, b) looks at things in different ways, c) takes risks and keeps and open mind, and d) 

dreams and imagines, I was able to capture extensive details around how the Voice Leaders 

made sense of their own art.  Looking at artworks, helps children learn how to tell stories as they 

relate their own experiences to what they are seeing (p.8). I would add that creating these 

artworks also aids in telling the story behind the picture.  

I was able to “code” for repetitive themes that told a story constructed by the students. 

These areas of focus I categorized into school concerns, community concerns and sociopolitical 

issues. Below I include two tables that document my non-traditional approach to “coding” the 

artifacts of the Voice Leaders. Saldaña (2016) contends that the best approach to analyzing 

visual data is a holistic, interpretive lens guided by intuitive inquiry and strategic questions. 

Therefore, my documented field notes, transcriptions of M.A.A.E. space, and analytic memos 

assisted in how I came to identifying themes informed by the language used from students. 

Blending this alongside Mulcahey’s (2009) call for the adult engaged in interpretation to ask 

themselves “what they see” in literal form and not what they “think they see” moved me towards 

taking in the fine details of the artifacts and away from my own assumptions about what the 

students were communicating through their work.  

 

 

 

	

42 

Figure 1. Research Timeline and Data Collection 

 

 

Data Analysis  

Given that this study involved the creation of visual artifacts, interviews (principal) and 

observations, I opted to “code” the artifacts in ways that supported my sensemaking of the data. 

By creating the charts (Figure 2 and Figure 3) below, I was better able to look for the specific 

themes that were recurring in the students’ dialogue transcripts within their artifacts as well. For 

Mrs. O’s interviews, I also looked for the stories that were emerging which required the use of an 

analytic method informed by a critical narrative approach. The analytic process followed emic 

approaches where coding her actual words gave insight into her worldviews (Saldaña, 2016). 

This process looked like underlining, highlighting and identifying the actual stories told in Mrs. 

O’s interviews but also a look at what “stood out” and was reoccurring for Mrs. O. This was not 

a grounded theory process because of my preconceived notions about Mrs. O’s ideas about 

student voice per the voices and insights from the students. To arrive at my findings, I did also 

engage in a cross comparative method of examining Mrs. O’s codes alongside those of the Voice 

	

43 

Leaders to strengthen my understandings of the differences and similarities as it related to the 

engagement of youth voice at Sunflower Elementary. Ultimately, interpretation include 

retrieving coded data, exploring relationships between combinations of codes, and examining 

patterns, contrasts, paradoxes, and irregularities in the data (Durdella, 2019; Glesne, 2006). By 

doing so, I was able to “move from parts of the information to the ‘whole’” during the 

interpretation (Durdella, 2019, p. 272) which illustrated the story of my data.  

Figure 2. Coding and Analysis Snapshot of Voice Leader Artifacts 

 

 

44 

	

 

(Figure 2 cont’d) 

           

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

	

45 

 

 

Figure 3. Thematic Coding and Analysis of Voice Leader Artifacts 

 

 

	

46 

 

CHAPTER 4: EXPLORING POSSIBILITY IN EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP 

	
All paradises, all utopias are designed by who is not there, by the people who are not allowed in.   
 

 

 

 

 

  —Toni Morrison, Interview with Elizabeth Farnsworth, PBS NewsHour 

 

 

 

  American novelist and literary mother, Toni Morrison expressed the above sentiment 

in her 1998 interview surrounding the release of her bestselling novel, Paradise. When asked 

about the all-black town called Ruby in the novel, Morrison shares that the town participates in 

its own destruction by operating with an exclusivity and a separateness – a practice of keeping 

others out in order to maintain safety and a hierarchy of power.  Her interrogation of this notion 

of paradise and utopias—as being inherently exclusionary, and as a result constructing their own 

downfall—prompts my initial questions around absence of voice and possibility in educational 

leadership. Morrison offers us a meditation on the dangers of exclusivity while also offering a 

metaphorical understanding of how this practice came to be. Moreover, she states, 

 
“[I]solation, you know, carries the seeds of its own destruction because as times change, 

other things seep in, as it did with Ruby. The 50's, that was one thing; the 70's, that was another, 
and they refused to deal with the changing times, and simply threw up their gates, like any gated 
community, to keep everything away. And, in fact, that was the necessary requirement for the 
destruction of their paradise.”1  
 

 
 
Here, I find that Morrison’s description of Ruby holds a mirror that reflects the ways in 

(T. Morrison, personal communication, March 9, 1998) 

 

 

 

 

 

which I view status quo leadership practice and its embrace of exclusion and hierarchal power. 

This chapter seeks to trouble the notion of status quo leadership and calls the field to question 

whose voices are historically “not allowed in” and what might be possible when they are. 

																																																								
1 Toni Morrison. (1998, March 9). Retrieved from https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/toni-
morrison. 

	

47 

Therefore, I center youth voices of color in educational leadership (individual practice and the 

discipline) as a means to to illustrate what happens when school leaders resist exclusivity and 

hierarchies of power by choosing to embrace the changing times in education and to make room 

for possibility. When engaging the voices of youth of color, particularly younger students, I find 

that this must be at the center if we are to improve the schooling experiences for youth in K-12 

urban schools.  

 

I begin with Morrison’s sentiments as a way of seeing this historic absence of voice, 

specifically the absence of youth voice in schools and embracing its actual possibilities in 

educational leadership. By refusing to acknowledge the current climate of volatile, challenging 

times and further pushing youth voices and perspectives to the margins, schools continue to 

participate in their own destruction. In the stories that follow, I sought to capture what might be 

possible if educational leaders took notes from youth on topics that concern them in their school 

and community. Here, I invite the reader to see with possibility – one where you are able to look 

at something without blinking, to see what it is like, or could have been like, and how that 

something has to do with the way we live now (T. Morrison, personal communication, February 

3, 1998). I organize this chapter with the stories and artifacts that guide my answers to the 

research questions posed in this study. The point of this chapter is not to necessarily translate 

what the students said in our time together. Instead, it is to present the ways in which they see 

themselves as agents of change as well as their consciousness of larger systemic issues taking 

place in their school and community. Specifically, they identified school and community 

concerns as well as sociopolitical issues. Further, I explore student artifacts, dialogue group 

discussion, and a field experience component in greater depth to constellate the ways that the 

youth came to understand the influence of their voices in creating change. For the following 

	

48 

chapter, I paid particular attention to how this differed in ways than that of how the school leader 

engaged the voices of the youth in the elementary school setting. In sharing these moments, I 

introduce the data by way of artifacts and story to explore how youth of color in elementary 

schools see themselves affecting change and how school leaders engage youth voice in the 

elementary school context.  

 

Finally, I think through the lens of possibility for each of the proposed research questions 

and what this might reveal based off of the findings that emerged. I approach the writing of these 

findings as stories with reason. Considering that this study is guided by a critical narrative 

approach — where I am able to explore the stories of participants by interrogating language and 

understanding the how and why behind the stories they tell (Fook & Gardner, 2007; Riessman & 

Quinney, 2005), I place the stories throughout this chapter as a way for the reader to also see 

with possibility and to expand the ways we think about youth of color as leaders and gatekeepers 

of knowledge in the school space.  

Storying Moments of Possibility & Data 

 

 

In this chapter and the following, I construct stories that not only illumine possibility 

through the eyes of the Voice Leaders and principal, Mrs. O but I also draw attention to the 

emerging themes laced throughout the stories that reflect the concerns of the Voice Leaders. My 

intention was to explore how youth of color see themselves affecting change which resulted in 

further investigation of what issues they identify in their school and community. It was my 

pursuit of this question that led me to the major themes that supported the construction of these 

stories. Relying on dialogue recordings from our M.A.A.E. space sessions, transcripts of those 

recordings as well as field notes, I was able to create coding charts that allowed me to design 

stories with detail that might allow the reader to enter the moment in the ways I experienced 

	

49 

them with the Voice Leaders. Applying a critical narrative approach allows for reporting the 

research as stories as a way to contextualize and convey the urgency of issues of injustice and 

also allows us to hear the participant voices with greater authenticity (Maulucci, 2011). As such, 

I compose these stories textured with the details and focal moments that were integral to the 

findings from the research conducted.  

Towards an Arts-Based Inquiry  

  During the initial phase of creating the voice leader group, it was my intention to have 

students who would explore various creative forms as they articulated their ideas around change, 

leadership, and identity. In our first semester, I spent much of my time wanting to stick to the 

student voice unit plan I had developed. After all, I thought through every mini-lesson and 

artifact that students would create and present at their school assembly by the end of the study. 

While there was rich interaction and meaningful teaching in the moments that I did stick to the 

plan, there was much more to be found in the conversations that took place during and after our 

activities. There were also new ideas that emerged from students when working on a planned 

activity that would often inform our following dialogue time. Initially, I thought that students 

would want to write lots of poetry and short stories about change, this was reflected in my unit 

plan. However, by semester two, I recognized that they wanted to put their hands on something 

— they wanted to create, paint, and illustrate in ways that they were not able to in their 

classrooms.  

 

This request wasn’t incredibly surprising considering that in the Spring of 2013, the 

school district in which Sunflower Elementary resides made the decision to eliminate the entire 

art and music teaching staff in elementary schools. Coded as a redesign that would bring in 

community expertise, this cut left students like those at Sunflower Elementary without the 

	

50 

traditional art and music classes that take place with art and music teachers. Instead, monthly 

consultants would come in to supplement this loss and content area teachers would be expected 

to integrate the arts into the classroom. Needless to say, the Voice Leaders were aware of this 

absence and would not budge about this being an issue or area of change that they cared about. 

Sitting with how I wanted to structure the study and what the students voiced as their desire 

required me to revamp my approach. By creating a makerspace, what I call M.A.A.E. for 

students, we engaged in collaborative design of their artifacts and were able to engage in deeper 

inquiry and reflection around topics of change, leadership, and voice.  

Framing Student Voice at Sunflower Elementary  

 

 

The principal of the school, Mrs. O, considered herself to be a social justice leader but 

was careful to note herself as a more of a culturally responsive school leader because of staff 

resistance to the term, social justice. She was very open to supporting student voice initiatives in 

the school and it was central to her school improvement plan. In fact, the majority of her 

initiatives that could be considered as social justice oriented, like having artwork on the walls 

that were reflective of students’ identities and a “Black Lives Matter” sign on the wall, came by 

way of student voice. For Mrs. O, she began the study communicating a few ideas about student 

voice. One of those ideas was that she wanted more student voice around developing activists 

and leaders. For me, it was essential that I did not go into the space with an agenda, as there is 

often a misnomer that students are simply reflecting that of what the adults around them think. 

That said, I don’t think that Mrs. O could have anticipated how much the students would have to 

say about the absence and presence of things in their school and community. They were keenly 

aware that there was room for possibility.  Morrison’s language around possibility – 

	

51 

“to look at something without blinking” or “to see what it is like, or could have been like, and 

how that something has to do with the way we live now” points to the thinking and 

consciousness of the students in the Voice Leader group. Their choice words and artifacts 

undoubtedly reflect this.  During most of the activities where students shared what they wanted 

to change, their vocabulary was laced with language like “more of” or “less of” such as Emma 

and Rose’s sentiments concerning “more art” in schools or Ella’s desire for “less glass and trash 

on the playground” when creating artifacts during one of our M.A.A.E. spaces. Over the course 

of the two semesters with the Voice Leaders, I was able to gather a substantial amount of what I 

call artifacts — art created from our M.A.A.E. space that reflected students’ consciousness about 

leadership, change, and voice. In addition, the voice leaders and I engaged in multiple dialogues 

throughout the various stages of implementing the student voice initiative in the school. In this 

chapter, I capture the stories that come from many of these dialogues alongside the artifacts that 

were created from them as a way to illuminate the concerns and priorities of the Voice Leaders at 

Sunflower Elementary. The stories that follow then, showcase moments of possibility with the 

youth at Sunflower but also illumine the issues that they identify within their school, community 

and larger society.  

 

 

Story 1. Change in Our Hands?  

Drake sat in a small blue chair next to the seven other students, staring off into the distance. 
His fingertips tapped loudly on the table as he contemplated the environmental issues of the 
world.  
 
“You know what I want? For people to stop cutting down trees. Because in the rainforest, they 
keep on getting wealthy and cutting down trees. Yeah, animals are dying because the rainforest 
is burning down.” Drake would voice his knowledge on these issues during our frequent 
conversations, sprinkling in topics like the Flint Water Crisis or rainforest fires. Voice Leaders, 
Rose and Ella were also passionate about the environment. The two would often share their 
concerns about a lack of clean water and pollution. I thought it might be a good idea to 
introduce the group to Mari Copeny who is well known as Little Miss Flint for our first M.A.A.E. 

	

52 

session. I sat up in my chair, turned to the group and asked if they had heard of Mari. I asked if 
they also knew what she advocated for as a kid, considering that she too, was their age.  
 
“She changed the water because it was bad for people and got them sick,” Rose mumbled. 
Drake, who was still staring off in the distance suddenly sat up in excitement.   
 
“My granny always told me about her and what she actually did was put up a fundraiser to make 
people from all over the world add money and send buckets of purified water to Flint cuz’ they 
had no water. They kinda could bathe in it, but they couldn’t drink it, that would have make them 
sick.”  
 
The group seemed to get excited from Drake’s response. They turned to one another laughing 
and asking a series of questions about Little Miss Flint. I pull out my laptop and go to Mari’s 
YouTube page. After affirming Drake and Rose’s responses, I press play on her Future Women 
of America video that I had watched a few days before. The Voice Leaders watch in awe, taking 
in various details that I hadn’t initially picked up.  
 
For instance, Emma curiously asks about Mari’s age to compare their ages while Niecey rocks 
back and forth in her blue chair affirming that “she said she wishes she could just snap and food 
would appear!”  
 
I check my phone and notice that our time is running short. Sliding the phone into my bag while 
pulling out chart paper, we begin to brainstorm what the group defines as change.  
 
Topics of homelessness, pollution control and the running theme of helping others seems to 
season their conversation.  
          

Figure 4. Brainstorming Map on Change  

 

 

     

 
 
I pan our little corner noticing that I still have their attention but also notice that their eyes are 
checking out my bag of materials. I pull out my overstretched bag loaded with paper plates, 

 

	

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markers, crayons and gemstones watching their faces light up. This was good, I had just a little 
more of their attention to give instructions on what we would do next. I go on to introduce the 
“change hands” activity eager to see how this will turn out in the short time we have remaining.  
 
“So I traced my hand for a reason because when I think about change, I think about how change 
is in all of our hands, so take your hands out. Both of them. Okay, look at them. So you can 
actually change things with these same hands that you’re looking at right? Like look at them 
closely, they have some power in them right? So what we’re going to do today is have you trace 
your hand in the middle of the plate.”  
 
 As I model thinking aloud about change and how they should plan to list one issue on each of 
their five fingers, I quickly mention that, “I would like to see more art in schools” while writing 
that alongside my other topics on my hand.  
 
Drake, who was staring off again interjects in a disappointed tone saying that, “we don’t get 
much art here either.” Rose firmly adds, “I always feel like my mind is screaming because I’m 
like not relaxed. But when I’m doing art, my mind is relaxed.”  
 
I affirm their feelings with a nod, letting them know that art relaxes me too.   
 
I hear the horns of Miles Davis’ tune, Blue In Green fade into the background from my phone 
and I realize we’re really pressing time. Drake asks me, “is that Beethoven?”  
 
Before I can answer, I’m distracted by Kelsey’s change hand. She’s included “crime” on one of 
her fingers, a topic that didn’t emerge in our whole group brainstorm.   
 
“No, this is Miles Davis, he does jazz,” I say.  
 
It looks as if Niecey has included crime on her hand too – although they’re sitting pretty far 
apart. I feel like Kelsey knows I am taking this moment in because she locks her honey brown 
eyes with mine and says, “Don’t read mine out loud. Please don’t.” I squat down whispering, 
“Do you want to talk about it?”  She shakes her head “no” but slowly moves her small hand 
from covering what she wrote on the back for me to see. I give her a look that asks for 
permission to read. Her sentence references a domestic crime that she saw take place at her 
home. I pat her back and allow her to keep working as I can sense she doesn’t want to be pushed 
on the topic. Kelsey continues working, now covering the back of the plate with her reasons for 
caring about other topics she’s listed on her change hand. It’s as if she’s surrounding the 
vulnerable moment she just shared with other words as a way to cover it up.   
 
I go on to take pictures of their final products and I see Niecey’s rationale for choosing “crime” 
as a topic of change (Figure 5). 
 
 I pause in my footsteps, realizing this work is more urgent than I thought.  
 
 

 

	

54 

Figure 5. Front and Back of Niecey’s Change Hand Artifact 

 

 

                                
 
 
Listening to Elementary Youth 
 

                      

 

 

 In the previous semester, I structured the activity detailed in the story above with a more 

literacy centered focus. It was designed to introduce students to different literary genres like 

poetry where they would write poems about change using various miscellaneous materials. 

However, after the students made it clear that they wanted to engage with art during our time 

together, I felt it was important to honor their request and to find a way to revamp our unit 

plan (Figure 6) or at least merge the two areas. With this in mind, I encouraged the Voice 

Leaders to have full say in how the remainder of our sessions would be structured. While I 

may have come in with an intended focus, they would give feedback at the end of most 

sessions about how we could make the upcoming sessions more arts-based and hands on. 

Ultimately after five weeks of meeting, they began to take the lead on our sessions 

completely and would transform our pre-planned activities altogether. I begin with the story 

above as a way to highlight the recurring themes of sociopolitical, school, and community 

concerns that emerged across both the youth artifacts and dialogue space conversations. 

	

55 

These themes grew out of frequently recurring topics illustrated in the Voice Leader artifacts 

during our M.A.A.E. space where dialogue also took place. In the story above, I sought to 

position the students as knowers who are privy to the issues in larger society, their school and 

surrounding community. After watching the YouTube video of Mari Copeny, it was clear that 

the Voice Leaders were captivated by her passion and commitment to issues of injustice, 

particularly those affecting Flint, Michigan. However, it wasn’t just Mari’s social justice 

commitments that grabbed their attention. For leaders like Drake and Rose, Mari’s passions 

were reflective of their own environmental and community concerns. This was especially 

salient for Drake who had intimate ties to Flint, Michigan because of his upbringing there 

and family that remains in the area. Drake’s environmentalist passions are evident in the 

beginning of the story where he conveys his frustration with trees being cut down in the 

rainforest. Similarly, Rose and Ella articulate consciousness of these larger sociopolitical 

issues that are concerned with the environment and surrounding community. Instead of 

engaging in what Yoon & Templeton (2019) note as educational researchers creating 

conditions that curate children’s words to align with our existing frameworks and viewpoints, 

I sought to create a space where the Voice Leaders felt supported and encouraged to 

communicate their ideas without my views on what was possible. This was of importance in 

our space so that I wasn’t positioned as having all of the answers but rather they saw 

themselves as problem solvers and leaders. Additionally, I think that what was abundantly 

clear for me during this M.A.A.E. space and others was that their rationale behind why things 

needed to change was simple. It was because, as they saw it — people needed it.  In the 

moment where I recognize that both Kelsey and Niecey are writing about crime being a topic 

of change they care about, I wondered what gave them the comfort to write this on their 

	

56 

change hands but it wasn’t something that came up in our whole group brainstorm. 

Simultaneously, I wrestled with what my role might be in affirming their concerns, especially 

as an outsider of the community. This was troubling because in many ways I could relate to 

being in their position as a child of color who attended urban schools throughout my K-12 

experience navigating the label of low SES (socioeconomic status) or free/reduced lunch that 

was code for living in poverty and experiencing all of the well researched traumas that can 

come with that. This was a careful negotiation for me because I recognized that even in my 

ability to relate to the Voice Leaders, I still occupied the space of outsider in some ways. Yet, 

I also knew that in offering these vulnerable parts of myself, a safer yet relatable space was 

created for them to share what Bertrand (2018) calls intimate knowledge. She notes that 

youth of color have crucial insights about their educational experiences especially as it 

relates to institutional racism and white supremacy in schools. While the Voice Leaders may 

not have used these terms explicitly, what was clear was their awareness that change was 

needed in more ways than one – socio-politically, school wide and in their community. 

Topics of crime, homelessness, poverty and pollution that they identified were issues directly 

tied to the influence of white supremacy and institutional racism as it relates to decision 

making about and in K-12 urban schools. A pretty glaring example of this was the reality that 

their school was one of many urban elementary schools that suffered from the district cuts of 

arts and music teaching staff while students in a more affluent neighborhood five to ten miles 

away did not have this problem.    

 

To zoom in on Kelsey and Niecey’s experiences with crime in this first session, I want to 

note its significance for various reasons. First, this wouldn’t be the first time this concern 

about crime or safety arose. During our field experience that took place towards the end of 

	

57 

the project, there was a significant moment where we were riding the bus to the university 

campus museum and in the middle of me telling a story, one where I was learning to crochet 

a scarf, Niecey along with the other Voice Leaders freeze almost immediately. To our right, 

there is a police patrol car with blinking red and blue lights that alarm them in the same way 

it has startled me and so many other people of color who have had less than pleasant 

encounters with police. Bettina Love gives language to this moment that we all experience on 

that bus. She states that the vulnerability of being young and dark (black) alongside the 

multiple intersections of being human intensifies what we know to be an unfair justice 

system (Love, 2019, p.62). So for me, in that moment where their young faces that were 

previously taking in my longwinded story with full curiosity shifted to one that I can only 

name as fear, I knew that what Niecey and Kelsey named as “crime” and Ella, Drake, Jewel, 

and Sienna named as “safety” by our seventh session was all too real. I comforted the group 

by saying, “It’s fine, it’s just a traffic stop,” but there was something there that lingered for 

the remainder of our ride – something familiar that disrupted the joy they previously had. 

Their songs stopped, the questions became fewer and Emma and I begin to talk one on one 

about makeup. When we arrive at the museum, I feel like I can finally release the breath I’d 

been holding. 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

58 

	

Figure 6. Snapshot of Initial Student Voice Unit Plan with Literacy Focus 

                                             

Story 2. Does Your Voice Matter?  

 

The secretary at Sunflower worked with me to ensure that we’re able to use the library at 

 
least once a week now. This is a bit of a relief because the Voice Leaders had a hard time 
squeezing into the tight corner of the reading room to create their art last week. It has been a 
little hectic to say the least. Now, I’m able to better structure our time. I’m thinking we will 
dialogue on Wednesdays and have art-making on Fridays if this room situation continues to pan 
out.  
 
Once I pick up the students from their classrooms, we form a circle chaotically on the cerulean 
colored carpet. “Quietly, please,” I say. They’re all looking at me with furrowed brows, curious 
about what we’re doing in the library and why we’re in a circle. Rose asks excitedly, “Are we 
going to talk about predictions?”  
 
I share with Rose and the group that what we’re actually going to do is something called a 
dialogue group where we will talk to eachother and Ms. Mauldin about different change topics 
and then we will create art related to our conversations the second time we meet during the 
week. I pause and mention, “We can also have Mrs. O join us so she can hear what you all think 
about things.”  
 
Kelsey’s eyes grow large and she shakes her head while the other students grumble “nooooo” 
dramatically. When I ask why not, they don’t give me any real answers. Niecey alludes to 
something about getting in trouble but doesn’t offer much more explanation beyond her 
statement. I ease their nerves and affirm that she doesn’t have to join our group. When I ask if 
they would be okay with me sharing their artifacts and important topics that come up, they shrug 

	

59 

their shoulders in agreement. Jewel and Sienna don’t seem to be bothered either way but in an 
effort to honor the rest of the group, I decide we’ll move forward differently – without Mrs. O.  
 
To open the dialogue, I sit back in the wooden chair that marks the start of our human circle and 
asks the only question we seem to have time for. “How do you know your voice matters?”  
 
I start to my left where Niecey is sitting swinging her legs back and forth in her chair. She 
responds, “One time she told me to come talk to her in private so the whole class wouldn’t hear. 
That’s how I knew my voice mattered because sometimes she will tell people we can talk in 
private.”  I realize Niecey is referring to Mrs. Knot, her teacher. When I shift my eyes to Rose to 
indicate that she can go next, she begins to tell a story about how she had to transfer to 
Sunflower because there were lots of mean teachers at her last school that yelled a lot.  
 
When I ask her to tell me about her voice mattering at Sunflower, she shrugs as if she doesn’t 
know. Ella and Kelsey enter the conversation and share about teachers as well. For Ella, she 
recalled someone falling outside on the sidewalk and when she asked a teacher for help, they 
listened. Similarly, Kelsey references a student getting into a fight on the playground, telling the 
teacher and then the students getting suspended. This swerved our dialogue into a new direction.  
 
I ask the group in a pretty diplomatic tone, “Do you think that suspending kids is a good idea or 
a bad idea?”  
 
The whole group mumbles, “Nooo, bad!” as Drake interjects with, “it just makes them be more 
badder.” Niecey is almost flipping out of her chair when she shouts at Drake, “they’re not bad, 
they’re not bad!”  
 
As Drake tries to keep the peace and rephrase, he says passionately, “They won’t learn, you’re 
just sending them home!” Rose counters with her thoughts that kids should go home and do 
work.  As I take in each opinion, I try to repeat what I heard them all say to make sure I’m 
understanding them. Ella then lightly adds, “Well, our teacher doesn’t suspend that much. He 
just makes us write.” When Kelsey hears this, she says under her breath, “and suspends.” I ask 
for Kelsey to share more and she goes on to describe how the students in their class get 
suspended for not doing their work, they have to write a lot and they don’t get recess. When I ask 
them what does the principal say about all of this, Ella sighs and says, “Well, the principal has 
to do her job.”  
 
“What’s her job?” I ask.  Niecey exclaims that the principal is supposed to stay in the office and 
break up fights while Rose interjects that, “The principal’s job is to make sure every single kid is 
on time and make sure every kid is learning everything they should know until they grow, and 
every kid is not hurt.”  
 

	

60 

I smile at Rose’s response careful to make sure everyone has been heard. When I ask Jewel what 
she thinks about suspension or the principal’s job, she leans towards the group and says,  
 
“I think the principal’s job is to… to make sure that the teachers she hires are doing a good job.”  
 
Trying to stick to my protocol, I return to my planned questions while eyeing the school clock on 
the wall. I ask them to rub their hands together as we get ready for our last big question.  
 
“If you could change ONE thing at this school, what would it be?”  
 
The responses ranged. Drake preferred that kids get more recess time where he added, “A break 
from all the learning and stuff and actually having fun if you’re learning something too.” 
 
Ella speaks more to the school environment as she describes the playground needing to change 
because of the broken slide and the “junk on the ground outside.” Niecey then offers a response 
that builds from our earlier conversation on suspensions. “I want a change for the kids. Instead 
of getting school detention and getting more work and getting suspensions, just tell them to get it 
together and if they don’t, just ignore em!”  
 
Kelsey smirks as she offers that the school should change by letting all the teachers leave. While 
the other students respond in shock making faces and looking at eachother, she clarifies that the 
teachers should leave to “listen and get more knowledge.” Ella nods in agreement and adds that 
“some teachers don’t listen to kids.”  
 
As Jewel closes out our dialogue sharing that she would have more art so that kids could have a 
little break from their work, Rose grabs my attention when she announces, “I want to change the 
children’s legacy.”  
 
Caught a bit off guard, I ask Rose to share what she means by legacy.  
 
Rose explains, “change the children’s legacy by helping the children that are sad to happy 
because some children don’t know if their teacher is gonna be mean to the kids. And like how 
they are gonna grow up, into being smart or not.”  
 
Drake challenges Rose which has become a habit, telling her that she’s not talking about 
changing the school. She ignores Drake and goes on to explain compassionately.  
 
“Some kids don’t know if their teacher is going to be mean or not. Soooo… sometimes teachers 
can be mean because when they’re (students) aren’t doing the work and they don’t understand, 
they need some help. The teacher doesn’t help.”  
 

	

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I restate what Rose says to make sure I’ve captured her thoughts on legacy and teachers 
correctly.  
 
As the students return to their tables, Rose taps me and asks if I know Mr. Hill. He’s one of the 
two black teachers in the school. When I confirm that I do, she tells me, “He helps children.”  
 

Naming Change and Seeing with Possibility 

  Choosing to engage in dialogue groups alongside the M.A.A.E space presented unique 

opportunities. On the one hand, it gave the students a space to verbally share their ideas around 

change, leadership, and voice. While on the other hand, it presented me with the task of 

restructuring how I initially conceptualized the design of the project with Mrs. O in mind. 

Initially, our agreed upon structure was to have her come into the dialogue group and aim for the 

dialogic spiral approach where the dialogic process of listening and speaking co-creates 

relational trust between speakers (Kinloch & San Pedro, 2014). For Mrs. O and the Voice 

Leaders, this seemed like a viable option since Mrs. O was committed to student voice and 

additionally, I envisioned that her leadership priorities might be informed by what emerged from 

the dialogue space with the students. After being greeted with the grumblings of the Voice 

Leaders however, I shifted into somewhat of a mediator or cultural broker between both Mrs. O 

and the Voice Leaders. I recognized that it was possible that having an authority figure in the 

room might shift what they expressed and if they felt comfortable doing so. This led to designing 

my interviews with Mrs. O to also serve as sessions where I would present her with the youth 

artifacts and their talking points as reflective tools for her own leadership practice. In Story 1, the 

change hand activity was about students defining change and identifying issues that they 

associated with the notion of change based off of their lived experiences. In Story 2, we are able 

to hear explicitly what school concerns the Voice Leaders have with detailed rationale of why 

their proposed changes are essential to an improved school experience at Sunflower Elementary.  

	

62 

 

In my efforts to explore how the students knew their voices mattered, our conversation 

was swept into a different yet important direction. First, it’s important to note that their 

understandings of their voice mattering at school were directly linked to their interactions with 

their teachers. For Niecey, it was important to her that if she had something personal going on, 

she knew that she could trust Mrs. Knot to honor that. This was reflected in Mrs. Knot’s choice 

of language to offer talking in private rather than practices that might be dismissive or punishing 

to students. A seemingly simple response such as, “let’s talk in private” communicated that Mrs. 

Knot was a safe place for Niecey. Similarly, Ella and Kelsey saw teachers as the primary factor 

in determining if what they had to say mattered. Depicted in the story above, Kelsey’s response 

about suspensions led me to a follow up question to the whole group regarding suspensions as 

being “good” or “bad.” The overwhelming response from the group demonstrated that they 

viewed suspensions in a negative light. Within this interaction, Drake’s statement about 

suspensions making students “more badder” seemingly frustrated Niecey who disagreed with the 

label that Drake was applying to the students. This was not a surprise considering that Niecey 

herself had gotten into trouble a few times for fighting in the previous year. She didn’t see herself 

as a “bad kid.” It was also clear that in our very first session, Jewel highlighted on her change 

hand that she wanted to have less bad kids in the school and to her comment, I carefully asked if 

it were possible that there were no such thing as bad kids but “sometimes situations where we all 

mess up and make bad choices.” At the time, I failed to realize how many of the students latched 

on to my commentary. This was evidenced in how they corrected others in our future sessions, 

making sure to remind the students that, “there is no such thing as bad kids, just bad choices.”  

Drake somewhat recognized that he’d labeled the students who get suspended as “bad” and 

returned to the conversation making the point that students who get suspended aren’t learning. 

	

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This back and forth amongst the group resembles many of the conversations that adults in 

schools and communities have about suspension and specifically how suspension affects youth in 

urban schools. Although the Voice Leaders are in 3rd grade, their age and grade level have little to 

no bearing on their ability to articulate and debate hot topic school issues like suspension and 

teacher quality. These ideas were reflected in their dialogue even as it related to how Rose 

conceived the meaning of legacy. Her understanding that legacy had much to do with students’ 

future trajectories as it related to their ability to learn and to demonstrate that learning in their 

academic performance is not only critical but also affirms the research that youth of color voices 

should be included in leadership towards social justice (Bertrand, 2018). Rose’s concern about 

students in an urban school like Sunflower – “how they are gonna grow up, to be smart or not” is 

a powerful imperative that challenges status-quo leadership practices. In fact, it is a call for 

educational leaders to recognize that elementary youth of color have unique insight into their 

own schooling experiences and the schooling, teaching, and leadership practices in which they 

observe.  

Finally, for the Voice Leaders in this project, topics of discussion that centered 

community, school and sociopolitical issues served as a vehicle for improving current conditions 

and to do so by seeing with a lens of possibility. When taking up these topics, the students often 

spoke and created artifacts in terms of what could be. As referenced in Yoon & Templeton’s 

work, Custodero (2005) suggests that children’s creative worlds are “characterized by a sense of 

wonder and ability to imagine and invent,” providing “a source of artistic genesis cited by 

composers, performers, psychologists, and educators” (p. 36). The Voice Leaders frequently 

demonstrated these abilities whether in our dialogue group or M.A.A.E. space, there was always 

a sense of what could be possible even if they were not fully aware of the practical steps to 

	

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achieve the change they desired. What the Voice Leaders were able to do however, was to name 

the things that they saw as needing to change with clear reasoning for why these areas they 

illuminated weren’t working for kids. Because adults can often overlook the critical insights that 

youth have to offer, a repositioning is needed. Bertrand (2018) conceives of this as a third space 

where students are positioned as leaders and decision makers alongside adults in the school 

space. Further, hooks (1994) challenges us to move beyond the traditional boundaries of teacher 

and student in her work, Teaching to Transgress. In this case, we must move beyond the 

traditional boundaries of leader and student, engaging the intimate knowledge that youth of color 

possess thus engaging their voices in authentic and meaningful ways. 

Story 3. If I were Principal for a Day… 

It is an energetic afternoon even with Rose and Ella absent today. When I arrive in the 

building, Mrs. O has already run a marathon from helping the new Kindergarten teacher set up 
her classroom to making student absentee calls in her office. The Voice Leaders are sharing what 
feels like three stories at a time from each student as we walk towards our shared reading room 
space for the day. I’m beginning to rethink our activity as I forecast their high levels of energy 
and the tight space we’re sharing. And if I’m honest, I’ve also been feeling frustrated with the 
limited arts materials that consist of paper, markers, glue and crayons that I have for our group. 
They deserve more and I just don’t have it. The school doesn’t have it either. I’m hoping to hear 
back from a small grant to get more materials soon. Last week, I read The Honey Bunch Kids, a 
chapter book written and illustrated by an 8th grader from New Jersey. They were all brimming 
with laughter and it was entertaining to see them imitate the characters to say the least. As I 
asked their predications and opinions throughout the story, it reminded me of when I used to read 
this book to my 2nd grade class in Tennessee during our closeout of the day.  

 
I lean back into my swivel chair trying to think on my feet about if we should stick to creating 

today. As Drake recounts his memory of the story from earlier this week and the other students 
chime in about what they would have done if they were the main character Dizzy, who was 
chosen to be principal for the day. Their discussion makes the choice for me. I ask if anyone 
knows what a portrait is and Jewel, who has on new earrings and tucks her hair behind her ear 
while answering emphatically says, “it’s a picture.” Niecey and Emma chime in sharing that a 
portrait is also art. As I affirm all of the girls, I go on to explain what we’re working on for the 
day.  

  Ms. Mauldin: So, you’re going to draw a line down the middle of your paper, it can be a 
zig-zag or a dashed line. However, you want it.  One one side, I want you to create a portrait 
of yourself as principal and on this side (pointing to the opposite side), you’re going to write 

	

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what you’re going to do. Let’s aim for 3-5 sentences. Who can repeat back to me what we’re 
gonna do? 
 
The group works mostly in low voices at my request until the end of our time together. I share 
the date of our upcoming field trip with them as I take up their portrait illustrations. They 
have so many questions but they want to mostly ensure that our field trip doesn’t interrupt 
their Veteran’s Day dinner that Mrs. Knot puts on every year.  
 

 

         
Figure 8. Kelsey’s Illustrated Portrait 

   

Figure 7. Emma’s Illustrated Portrait                         

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

Emma’s Portrait:  

If I were principal for a day, I would 
make sure that kids would not get 
kicked out of school. I would make 
sure that more music would be in 
more grades and also schools. I 
would keep people from getting in 
trouble. 
 

 

 

 

 
 
 

 

 

 

Kelsey’s Portrait:  

If I were principal for a day, I would 
keep people from get [sic] in trouble. 
I would love to help people in class. I 
would make sure that there [sic] the 
teachers are all kind.  
 

To shed light and what emerged from storying the activity above, I offer both Emma and 

Kelsey’s illustrated portraits. At first glance, I pondered on whether they were just saying the 

same thing but after further coding and analysis, it became clearer that they were speaking to the 

theme of school concerns that consistently arose throughout the research project. The major 

themes of school concerns alongside community and sociopolitical issues were easily charted 

throughout the Voice Leaders’ discourse and artifacts. I pulled in both Emma’s and Kelsey’s 

	

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portraits however because I find that they carve out these school concerns in ways that speak 

back to prior dialogue conversations but also presents new knowledge from our dialogue space. 

For instance, Emma’s perspective on having more music at the various grade levels and in more 

schools is a familiar issue that she returns to in various artifacts from her change hand to her 

collage portrait and poetry throughout. She is clear about the lack of music and art at Sunflower 

Elementary and in some ways she also assumes that this must be the case at other schools. 

Emma’s awareness of this lack is pertinent to leadership. What youth voice research shows us is 

that traditionally, elementary school students rarely have opportunities to participate in decision 

making and the student voice efforts that do take place are typically classroom focused (Mitra & 

Serriere, 2012). However, the focus on the lack of arts and music at Sunflower that Emma 

focuses on throughout is not an issue that should be contained in the classroom. Calling attention 

to this absence is to call attention to a school-wide and district issue. Equally, Emma 

demonstrates commitments to ensuring that kids are not kicked out of school or consistently 

getting into trouble. I call this new knowledge because prior to our group dialogue about their 

perspectives on suspension, this was not a sub-theme or area that was reflected in the artifacts 

that the Voice Leaders created.  Emma’s critiques are clear but within those critiques there are 

also solutions to be found and critical insights that might inform how school leaders like Mrs. O 

can begin to prioritize efforts around students’ articulated needs and desires.  

 

Kelsey’s portrait heavily focused on preventing students from getting into trouble. She 

was interested in helping the students in the classroom and calls out the need for students to have 

pleasant encounters and to experience learning from teachers who are kind. Recall, during our 

dialogue in Story 2, Ella felt that their (her and Kelsey’s) teacher Mr. Chuck did not suspend 

“that much” according to Ella. Although Jewel, Emma and Sienna are also in his class, they 

	

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don’t confirm or deny. In that dialogue, Kelsey interjected as Ella defensively went on and on 

about what Mr. Chuck does warrant as punishment while Kelsey adds her viewpoint, which is 

that he also suspends. There is no doubt that Kelsey has different feelings about Mr. Chuck as 

compared Ella. I recognize that this may be due to Kelsey’s own discipline experiences with Mr. 

Chuck. In my field notes, I document how typically when I go to pick up the students from their 

classrooms, Ella is often corrected more gently than Kelsey when she is taking too long to wrap 

up her materials to join our group. With Kelsey, Mr. Chuck seems to have less patience.  Now, it 

may be important to note here that of the students in Mr. Chuck’s class, Kelsey is pretty talkative 

but I am not convinced that her chatty nature should render her as deserving of colder tones from 

Mr. Chuck. While examining Kelsey’s illustrated portrait alongside her contributions in our 

dialogue groups, it becomes clearer that she has strong opinions about the teachers at Sunflower. 

While in this particular artifact (Figure 8), she names that she would make sure all teachers are 

kind, Kelsey has also been explicit about needing new teachers. In our dialogue evidenced in 

Story 2, she shocks many of the Voice Leaders when she says that all the teachers need to leave. 

What is also captured in that moment is how Kelsey expands on this idea. She explicates that 

teachers need to, “…actually like listen and get more knowledge.” During this dialogue, Ella 

nods and agrees sharing that, “Some teachers don’t listen to kids.” Returning to Kelsey’s portrait, 

I want to hone in on how her sentiments towards teachers are also made visible in her sentence 

stating that, “I would love to help people in class.” To me, Kelsey is no stranger to what Rose 

exclaimed previously when she talked about legacy where she critically questioned if teachers 

really are helping students to learn or simply getting frustrated with them. My take is that for 

Kelsey, this interest in helping students was a means of intervention for the type of teachers 

some students may have experienced – teachers that were more committed to discipline and 

	

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structured classrooms rather than student learning. Situating these findings in the context of the 

question that guided this activity, “What would you do if you were principal for a day?” 

concretizes that youth are equipped to not only identify issues within their schools and 

communities but when positioned as leaders, they might be able to partner alongside school 

leaders to help shape school decision making that offers a more whole and humanizing 

experience for students. Centering youth voices in these ways can serve as a catalyst for positive 

change in schools such as improvement in instruction, curriculum, and teacher-student 

relationships (Mitra, et. al, 2012).  Further, even when they are not positioned in these ways – it 

befits us to pay attention to the ways in which they are already leading and seeing what is 

possible. As Mortensen and colleagues (2014) found in their study of leadership through a youth 

lens, youth see leadership as working in collaboration and mentoring and modeling how to create 

change and work towards the common good.  In Emma’s case, she would address the absence of 

arts and music in her school. For Kelsey, findings ways to help others in the classroom – what 

she saw as a “kind teacher” is also a leadership approach that might shift the schooling 

experience for youth of color. In Riley’s (2018) reform work with youth, she posits that not only 

do principals’ or school leaders have to be open to new learning but also that if young people are 

to find their way in a troubled world, schools need to be places of possibility and agency (p.460). 

I am of the belief that a first step to reimagining schools as sites of possibility and agency for 

youth of color especially is to begin to make the choice to listen and to authentically engage their 

voices so that we know what they might think about schools and their personal experiences in 

them.  

 

 

	

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70 

Story 4.  Because We’re a Person and Not a Thing 

I wonder what the Voice Leaders will remember about Mrs. O when they leave next year? 

       I wonder if they will remember this experience?  

 
When I asked them to describe Mrs. O in our dialogue group, they share what I fear are 
surface qualities – things that might not really “speak” in the research. I’m frustrated with 
myself for even having this concern. Jewel describes Mrs. O as loving and caring while Ella sees 
her as nice, beautiful, caring and helpful. In a similar fashion, Emma details Mrs. O as someone 
who smells good, someone who is nice, beautiful, kind and helpful. By the third “nice and 
beautiful,” I push them to provide evidence of why they describe the principal in the ways that 
they do. Many of them share stories of Mrs. O helping them if they were hurt at school or sick. 
Niecey shares a story about a student having a seizure once and how Mrs. O made sure they 
were safe and takes care of them when things like this happen. Ella adds that, “she actually 
listens to us and she’s trying to do her best to help us too.” I follow up to Ella’s question by 
asking the group how they are able to speak to the principal when she has such a big job?  
Rose gestures her hand at me and offers the response that sometimes there isn’t much time to talk 
to Mrs. O.  
 
“Sometimes you don't have time to talk to her because sometimes they're either calling someone 
or trying to get someone's phone number or trying to help someone if they're sick and your head 
hurts and your stomach hurts, or something like that. Or they’re somewhere in one of the rooms 
unboxing something with a teacher.”  
 
Thanking Rose for her comments, I quickly turn to Jewel so as to not leave her out. She can 
sometimes camouflage into the group and I’m sensitive to that. I ask Jewel how she knows her 
voice matters to Mrs. O and she leaves me with something that I’m still processing after I drop 
the students off to their classrooms. To Jewel, it’s simple yet clear to her why her voice matters.  
 
She says, just above a whisper, “because we’re a person and not a thing.” Her tone was 
peppered with resolve as if it only made sense for their principal to care for them because well, 
they’re people too. 
 
 

Listening to Elementary-Aged Youth 

  When I initially posed my inquiry to the group, which focused on how the Voice Leaders 

knew their voices mattered to Mrs. O, I struggle to name what it is that I expected. At this point 

of the research project we had been making a lot of headway with their thoughts and perspectives 

on change. However, transitioning to weaving the principal’s role back into our space proved to 

be difficult for me as I had always conceptualized Mrs. O as a critical piece of the study but not 

	

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the heart of the study. In tucking those tensions away, the purpose of this dialogue space was to 

really center in on the relationship between the Voice Leaders and Mrs. O as well as how they 

might perceive their voices to be engaged at Sunflower. As evidenced in the story above, the 

students had all positive reviews of Mrs. O. While they used descriptive language to describe her 

appearance and character initially, they were also able to provide stark examples of why they saw 

her as caring and helpful. When Ella insisted that Mrs. O actually listens to them and does her 

best to help them, I did not think to ask if this was because of the focus groups that Mrs. O said 

she ran with students at Sunflower in her personal interview or the placement of the affirming art 

on the walls that was of supreme importance to her. Instead, I inquired about their access to the 

principal and how they made sense of her job. Rose’s commentary where she named the many 

things that she’s seen Mrs. O do in a day’s time did not seem to color her perceptions of Mrs. O’s 

ability to support them and care for them. While the principal had a big job, they also saw 

themselves as a part of her job. For some of the students like Niecey and Kelsey, they were able 

to compare Mrs. O to previous principals’ they had encountered at other schools. When Niecey 

discussed the seizure incident that I story above, she also ended that commentary saying, 

“instead of just letting them sit there like my other principal did” with disdain.  For Kelsey, 

although this isn’t captured in the story above, she felt that Mrs. O protects people and supported 

that idea by explaining how she had seen Mrs. O separate people during fights. Despite Mrs. O’s 

schedule, the Voice Leaders seemed to feel that Mrs. O was in fact caring, helpful, and nice 

because they had witnessed how she cared for students when they were ill, hurt or in trouble. It is 

clear that the students were attentive to the actions of adults in the building. From their teachers 

where the Voice Leaders had critique about what they were not doing for students to the actions 

of Mrs. O, they were always watching and observing. While others drew upon their observations 

	

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of Mrs. O, Jewel’s response was equally powerful based off of her own sense making. For Jewel, 

it just made sense to her that her voice mattered to the principal. I think that Jewel’s sentiment is 

worth paying attention to because although she is the only white student in the project, she 

demonstrates a growing consciousness throughout.  Her commentary reflects what I  would hope 

all of the students could feel at Sunflower, but I can not argue that is the case. What I do feel 

confident interpreting here is that Jewel is keenly aware that just because they are students does 

not mean they are not also people who are worthy of being listened to or having their 

perspectives valued.  

 

In order to thoughtfully make meaning of the Voice Leaders contributions in our dialogue 

space, it is a reality that I have to work against what Yoon & Templeton (2019) note as a 

neoliberal agenda that can constrain our abilities as researchers and teachers to thoughtfully 

interpret children’s declarations about the world, themselves, and others (p.59). That said, I want 

to move away from the initial adjectives that the students used to describe Mrs. O and move 

towards sitting with the material ways that they were able to determine that their voices mattered 

to their principal.  If schools are to be reimagined as sites of possibility, student voice might be a 

fundamental approach to foster a school culture and leadership practice that engages what 

matters to youth by listening to what they say is working in their schools and where there might 

be room for improvement. This is particularly essential in the elementary school context as 

student voice creates a focus on youth as assets in the school space rather than problems to be 

solved (Mitra, 2012). Positioning students in these ways further supports their development as 

problem-solvers and decision-makers in the school space. As evidenced in our dialogue group, 

young people like the Voice Leaders are acutely aware of what it looks and feels like to be 

valued in the classroom and beyond. However, as confident as Jewel and the other Voice Leaders 

	

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are about the worthiness of their voice at school, this is not the case for many youth of color who 

occupy school spaces and navigate school territory differently than their white or affluent peers. 

Thus, listening to elementary-aged youth because it fosters positive developmental assets (Mitra, 

2012) is essential but it is also moot if we are to not also take those perspectives, especially those 

historically silenced, like youth of color into account with how we lead and transform schools. 

Story 5. Are We Doing a Leadership Role Here? 

 

As I walk into the building, I see that my friend, Libby who was a former 3rd grade 

teacher has beaten me to the office to check-in on the visitor log. We embrace and I share with 
her how I relieved I am to have her introducing crochet to the students. I share with her that 
they’ve been waiting to learn new art techniques and modalities that I don’t possess at all 
because I’m not an arts educator. Libby taught 3rd grade in New Orleans and is an artist and 
craftswoman.  

 
 
She laughs because she’s seen me struggle with crochet before in one of her workshops. I 
walk her to our shared space for that day – the room with the tight corner. The teacher who 
normally shares the room is out today and I’m a bit relieved because I know that the kids can get 
a little loud when they’re excited. I show Libby where to set up with her materials so that I can 
go and grab the group. When I arrive to Mr. Chuck’s room, the kids line up and share with me 
that Ella is in the library for a safety patrol meeting with Dr. Crystal. This is news to me because 
as often as I’ve mentioned the work I’m doing with the students to Dr. Crystal and the principal 
— they didn’t seem to connect student voice and leadership. I’m a little frustrated because I’ve 
been here two semesters and knew nothing about this group. This had also happened before 
when some of the initial students in the group had recycling club to attend. I suppose it would 
have been nice to have some context for how students are engaged in more formal leadership 
roles in the school. I get over myself and knock on the door of the library. I see Ella and about 
five other students in what looks like a formal training for teachers. They have papers in front of 
them and Dr. Crystal is in the front of the room reading from her own sheet. I knock gently, 
apologize for interrupting and ask if Ella can come and meet me when they are done. Ella 
always lights up when it’s time for us to meet, I’m not surprised that she was chosen for this 
group. Hopefully, Dr. Crystal would be open to talking to me about the group. I think to myself 
that I should ask the kids about it first.  
 
When I ask the group about the safety patrol group that is meeting in the library, Niecey begins 
to name various students who are a part of the group. She shares that,  

 
“If somebody is being bad on their bus, like jumping on the seats, or cussing or using 
inappropriate words or other things like that, they write their name down and they write what 

	

74 

they’re doing. They put a check next to it or they can put “other” and write what they’re 
doing (wrong) and then they put Dr. Crystal down at the bottom and then they put their 
name.”  

 
 
I ask her and the others if safety patrol is considered a leadership role and they all agree it 
is. Drake asks, “Are we doing a leadership role here?” and before I can answer, Niecey, Kelsey 
and Emma begin to share how they are, “going to become leaders too when they become peer 
mediators.”  Niecey brags, “I’m gonna write people up when they fight,” her description of the 
job of a peer mediator.   
 
Drake repeats, “Are we doing a leadership role here?”  
 

Positioning Youth as Educational Leaders  

  While the voice leaders and I discussed change, leadership, and where their voices fit into 

this larger picture of affecting change, there seemed to be a disconnect that existed for not only 

the students but Mrs. O as well. When I used the term leader versus when adults in the school 

like Dr. Crystal used the word leader, the students seemed to come to two very different 

understandings of how this term might be actualized. Story 5 captures this instance and while it 

does not detail the interview sessions I had with Mrs. O, I found it surprising that these “leader 

groups” had not come up before. In the moment where Drake asked if we were “doing a 

leadership role” in our group, I took note that students seemed to have these ideas that being a 

leader in the school took on a more authoritative role than the definition of one who affects 

change in the broader sense.  I recall in one of our previous M.A.A.E. sessions that I introduced 

the term, leader as someone who changes things (whatever they choose) by “doing.” This 

definition also indicated that there was a necessary action needed to lead. By this point in the 

project, we had created various artifacts that spoke to issues they identified in the school, 

community, and society at large. The ways that I perceived our “action” was by creating various 

artifacts that would ultimately go into our playbook (Figure 10) that would be published and 

distributed to the Voice Leaders, Mrs. O, and some of the lead teachers in the school. While I 

	

75 

communicated this to the group on a few occasions, I am not positive that by this point in the 

project it landed as a product of our work towards change. It was possible that identifying the 

issues in our M.A.A.E space took on a different meaning than taking action on those issues in 

tangible ways that the students could readily see. For instance, while Drake and others spent a lot 

of energy and talk time on environmental issues during our sessions, collecting recyclables at 

school likely felt more action-oriented than discussing and creating art about it. For students like 

Drake, this became increasingly clear.  For Drake, his observations of the school and community 

directed him to an action-oriented space where he wanted to affect change in the moment. From 

sharing with the group his knowledge of the Flint Water Crisis to donating $1 to plant trees over 

a holiday break, Drake’s attitudes towards social change efforts mostly took place outside of 

school but was also his chosen topic of conversation when in school. Drake’s desire to affect 

change was animated in the school space when he inquired about becoming a peer mediator after 

hearing Dr. Crystal describe peer mediators as “responsible” and “role models” in the school. 

When expressing his interest, he is quickly told by Dr. Crystal that his mom never filled out the 

paper work or returned it. This response doesn’t seem to bother Drake past the moment as he 

returns the following week with more ideas about how to save the planet. When I take into 

account how the Voice Leaders had varying ideas about leadership and voice, I recognize that 

the explicit ties of change, leadership and voice may not have connected in the ways I intended. 

This was delicate work because at no point did I want to “tell” the students what to think. I was 

more interested in the “how” of things. However, I did find myself reminding students of what 

we were doing to explore how we could affect change each time we created an artifact. At this 

point in the project, it became clearer to me that although I was working to show students how 

they were already leaders, I was up against three years of their own K-3 socializations of 

	

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leadership. In two semesters, I could not completely undo their frame of reference for what a 

leader was.  

 

  Mortensen, et.al (2014) highlight that if communities hope to attract and engage youth in 

leadership roles, it is necessary to understand what leadership means to them. In examining the 

Voice Leaders’ conceptions of leadership, it was necessary to think about where their models of 

leadership came from within the school setting. Drawing on the language used by Dr. Crystal 

who was in charge of the recycling club, peer mediator group and safety patrol, I observed how 

she described students who were eligible to become peer mediators. Her language used was akin 

to that of “good citizenship” curriculum that is often first introduced in elementary schooling 

curriculum by way of school attendance, rule following, and static definitions of character.  

 

I found that at times, the students’ beliefs about leadership within the school context reflected 

that of positional authority — a traditional adult approach to leadership likely demonstrated in 

the language and positioning of the youth in the school. Positional authority as a leadership 

practice suggests power or influence held by one over a group (Komives & Dugan, 2010). This 

positional authority was reflected in Niecey’s perceptions of leadership. She expressed various 

sentiments throughout the project about “writing people up” or “stopping people from fighting” 

being what made her a leader when she served as a peer mediator. In the previous semester, she 

shared about her own growth in this area stating that normally she would jump into a fight but 

now she stops them. Niecey, who also wasn’t as excited when we began the group in 2nd grade 

because it interrupted her free time, was now the student who offered creative ideas about how 

we could advance our design of artifacts and thinking about change. On many occasions, Niecey 

would serve me the same questions I would ask of them to hear more about who inspired me or 

	

77 

what I wanted to change when I was their age. To me, she was an exemplar of a leader because 

of these reasons.  

 

  By our next session, I had come to find out that many of the students (Niecey, Ella, 

Jewel) who were in the Voice Leader group were also selected to be in Dr. Crystal’s groups. 

Research on formal group approaches like that of the peer mediator club, safety and recycling 

club found at Sunflower affirms that typically these formal approaches only ever cover a small 

minority of students (Lizzio, Dempster & Neuman, 2011) and often repositions the same students 

into leadership positions (Mortensen et al., 2012). With this in mind prior to the research project, 

I purposely sought out students who would be interested in art, storytelling and learning about 

change for the Voice Leader group. This was my attempt at trying to avoid the reproduction of 

outcomes that formal leadership approaches can engender.  

 

 

Figure 9. Voice Leader Playbook 

               
 
 
 
 
 

	

 

 

 

 

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Story 6. Social Justice Warrior 

 

 
So far, Mrs. O and I have had two sessions/interviews together as I work with the Voice 
Leaders. Her commitments are strong to the students and community at Sunflower – it’s pretty 
evident when you walk into the building. From the affirming art on the walls that reflects a 
variety of people of color to how she so easily seems to engage in conversations about her 
whiteness and is seemingly fearless when calling out her teachers on suspending Black students 
at high rates, she’s what some would call a social justice leader. In fact, she does call herself a 
“social justice warrior” but only outside of the building. When I ask her why she moves in 
between the terms social justice and culturally responsive, Mrs. O exclaims:  
 
“So it’s weird you know? I have like a pseudo personality. So in this building, I use the term 
culturally responsive. It seems to be a softer term. If you’re my friend outside of this building, 
then you know I’m a social justice warrior.”  
 

 

In this first snippet of an interview with Mrs. O, I story what initially stood out in our 

conversation. She positions herself as a white woman with a variety of experiences that have 

shaped why she errs on the side of a social justice leadership agenda. In her building however, 

she notes that the term “social justice” makes her staff feel threatened. At the start of the year, 

she attempted to make the theme of the building one that was focused on social justice but was 

told that she should lean towards “culturally responsive” instead because it was all 

encompassing. As Mrs. O fleshed out her school improvement plan, student voice was one of the 

key areas that she wanted to improve. By her initial definition, student voice was data. She 

categorized student voice as behavioral referrals, social emotional data from student surveys 

given at the end of the year and focus groups she ran with 1st-3rd grade to “squeak by” major 

initiatives like the culturally affirming art on the wall.  When I ask Mrs. O what she would like to 

see more student voice around, she talks at length about developing activists and leaders within 

students at Sunflower. I tuck this information away as I think about how her agenda aligns well 

with the unit plan on change that they will engage with. I also find myself comforted knowing 

that she has already begun to prioritize student voice in meaningful ways that I can build upon.  

	

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Checking for Student Voice 

  When I arrive at the school a few months later for Mrs. O’s second interview, I notice that 

she has created a set of bookmarks that line her desk for teacher observations. When I ask about 

them, she beams proudly to tell me that she has been “checking for student voice” in classrooms. 

While I am interested in hearing more about what she means, I am also confused. I notice that 

the student voice bookmarks (Figure 11) define student voice differently than how she talked 

about student voice in our first interview. Student voice is woven throughout the literature as a 

catalyst for positive change (Mitra, 2012) and provides opportunity to engage students as active 

partners in school change (Betrand, 2014; 2017; 2018, Mitra et al., 2012;). The bookmark reads 

that student voice is “having a say and getting to say it.”  Further, there are a series of questions 

that focus on peer-peer and peer-teacher dialogue. I find this odd for a few reasons. In addition to 

the shift in how Mrs. O initially defined and talked about student voice with me, it also seems 

that in our second interview she is focusing on oral language and metacognition when she talks 

about student voice being “too low,” with a narrowed focus on her teachers as the actors of this 

initiative. She begins to talk to me about teachers viewing silence as compliance and in an effort 

to remind her of what we first discussed around student voice, I share with Mrs. O some of the 

early themes that have begun to emerge with the Voice Leaders as it relates to change and issues 

happening in their community. She reminds me that she’s very “malleable to student voice” and 

that to her, it is important to have students get their voice heard with their teachers. In this 

interview and others, Mrs. O often returns to the responsibility of the teachers. It also becomes 

increasingly clear that Mrs. O and the Voice Leaders have different ideas about what it means for 

their voices to be engaged at Sunflower. According to Mitra & Serriere (2012), student voice 

efforts in elementary school tend to be classroom-focused where elementary students rarely have 

	

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opportunities to participate in decision-making on school-wide issues. Ironically, Mrs. O who 

was committed to student voice and wanted to see students positioned as activist and leaders was 

conflating her understandings of student voice with student speech. This bookmark approach did 

not position students as decision makers on school issues like those that Mrs. identified in her 

first interview. While she was going into classrooms looking for think-pair-share and other 

discussion strategies, the true definition of student voice that she initially articulated was 

seemingly lost. It is well researched in the field of educational leadership that school leaders 

have a variety of leadership priorities with instructional leadership being one of them. School 

principals are exposed to multiple demands from the environment, often in the form of tacit 

understandings of and beliefs about what it means to be an instructional leader (Rigby, 2014). 

For Mrs. O, I observed that her conflation of student speech and student voice was less informed 

by social justice and seemed to be more concerned with her instructional priorities. Theoharis 

(2011) insists that social justice leaders advocate, lead, and keep at the center of their practice 

and vision issues of race, class, gender, disability, sexual orientation, and other historically 

marginalized conditions in the United States. Implementing student voice in authentic and 

meaningful ways that allows youth to see themselves as leaders in the school space is obstructed 

when instructional priorities overshadow the range of benefits that come with centering youth 

voice.  I offer this first story of Mrs. O not as a personal critique but rather, as an exemplar of 

what happens in schools for principals who have the desire to do the “right” and socially just 

thing. This shift from Mrs. O echoed that of obstacles found in other student voice research 

(Mitra, 2009; Lac & Mansfield, 2018) where educational leaders seek to direct the course of an 

initiative rather than support youth in their leadership endeavors. I want to be clear that this re-

route from Mrs. O was not one that I perceived to be done with ill intent. Perhaps, this classroom 

	

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focused approach to student voice to her was a way to mediate her instructional and school 

improvement priorities. In the story that follows, I chart Mrs. O’s stages of growth as she came 

to define and redefine student voice through a social justice lens as we engaged in the dialogic 

process in her second and third interview.  

 

 
 

Figure 10. Images of Mrs. O’s Student Voice Bookmark Used for Informal Observations 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Story 7. Mrs. O’s “Agenda” 

When I walk into Mrs. O’s office, she’s already seated and wrapping up a review of school 

curriculum. She seems excited to see the playbook that we’ve been working on. This is her 
chance to see many of the artifacts that I’ve referenced in our previous interview sessions as well 
as new ones from the students. She flips slowly through the virtual draft of the book, smiling and 
commenting that the playbook is coming at a perfect time. She shares how she’s taken some time 
to look at previous research done in the school on teacher mindset and she now knows, “how bad 
it is” with some of her teachers that “don’t believe in white privilege.” 

 
After a long and exasperated sigh, Mrs. O details how she’s learned that there are two things 
that seem to shift her teachers. She states that first it’s her vulnerability and secondly, when the 
teachers and staff see student work. She looks at me as if this book might be the ticket that opens 
their eyes.  

 

	

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I stare back at her smiling but also thinking about our last interview. Mrs. O had begun to 

 
 
conflate what was student talk or student speech with student voice, expressing various 
instructional priorities. I knew that the vision she had for student voice differed from that of the 
Voice Leaders and to be candid, it differed from the research supported definitions on student 
voice.  She felt that student voice needed to happen more in the classroom and trusted that her 
“bright star” teachers would be the ones to implement it. At the end of that second session, I 
began to present her with the realities of what students were actually talking about in our 
dialogue group. Seeing the artifacts in the book seemed to solidify what I had mentioned in our 
previous session about the student concerns with the lack of arts and music in the school as well 
as compounding community and sociopolitical issues related to the environment and safety in 
their communities. 
 
I ask Mrs. O how she feels now that she’s seeing what the Voice Leaders have been working on. 
She pauses but enthusiastically says, “empowered” and goes on to convey how cultural 
responsiveness and trauma informed practices are finally starting to take effect in the district. To 
her, this book communicates that what she has been trying to do at Sunflower is not just a “Mrs. 
O social justice agenda” but instead the students are also thinking about and processing these 
issues. 
 
Mrs. O: “These books are going to help me show what they’re thinking and how they’re feeling 
when I had no hand in it. And so, yeah. I’m empowered by that.” 
 
 

 

 

Essential to Mrs. O’s leadership philosophy was social justice practice. While she was 

faced with a myriad of leadership responsibilities, she maintained her commitments to student 

voice, even if her attempts at doing so were at one time, stifled by instructional priorities. In our 

second and third session where I story snapshots of those sessions above, I could see her begin to 

think about her own thinking. This metacognitive work was reflected in what seemed like a 

stream of consciousness at times during our interview sessions, specifically session three. Mrs. O 

would jump from the topics of student voice to teachers, to the district priorities and ultimately 

back to the flaws of her teachers. This flow of consciousness may have very well been reflective 

of the multiple priorities she was balancing as principal at Sunflower.  

	

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I see Mrs. O return to conceptualizing student voice through a social justice lens after 

being presented with more artifacts from the Voice Leaders in their playbook. To provide an 

honest disclaimer, I had no real concern that she would not return to more critical understandings 

of how youth voices needed to be centered at Sunflower because of her social justice 

orientations.  

 

 

It was evident that Mrs. O’s blueprint was that of a social justice agenda. In fact, her 

leadership reflected social justice logic where the school principal sets out to not only facilitate 

action but to change beliefs (Rigby, 2014).  Certainly, some of her teachers saw this as negative. 

Mrs. O was frustrated by this and it showed. This is reflected in her interview where she 

describes that the students’ work will reflect what she has been saying all along and it could not 

be argued that it was her influence over them. 

 

  While checking for student voice via a bookmark checklist was not the most critical 

move for Mrs. O, what it did show was that her commitments to student voice were there. In 

some ways, I believe that Mrs. O saw the development of her teachers’ mindsets and 

instructional competence as being tied to the student voice priorities. Her approach was one that 

appeared to be integrative — where she sought to target multiple improvement areas through one 

vehicle. In this case, it was as if she saw student voice being that essential vehicle that would 

move her teachers along instructionally and also critically. This effort did not seem to flourish at 

Sunflower but what did occur was a bend towards a more socially just practice and critical 

reflection for Mrs. O — reflection that led her to not only think through how student voice could 

be centered in the classroom but also recognizing that her “bright star” teachers were not the sole 

actors who would need to engage the voices of youth at Sunflower. In the story that follows, I 

compose a story that places the Voice Leaders student voice priorities in conversation with Mrs. 

	

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O’s ideas around student voice. This story and analysis further details how Mrs. O developed 

over the course of the project to come to richer understandings and implementation of student 

voice at Sunflower.  

Story 8. Engaging Youth Voices at Sunflower Elementary 

With art materials in hand, I arrive to Mrs. O’s office for what is our final interview 

 
session. Because I have been using M.A.A.E. with the Voice Leaders, I wanted to also see what 
might come out of having Mrs. O engage with creating a leadership portrait in the same ways 
that the Voice Leaders did. This arts-based approach appears to be right on time. It seems like a 
somber day for her but she doesn’t allude too much to why in our interview.  
 
 I see how the art making is therapeutic and healing for the students so I’m relieved that this is 
how I’m ending with Mrs. O. As I take notes on her final interview question, she pauses, lowers 
her head almost to her desk and says, “It’s just a process of failing. I fail all the time. And then 
[I]am pulling on my supports to tell me that I can’t quit because the work is important.”  
 
I empathize with her and remind her that she’s doing good work. When I hand her the materials 
to create her portrait, she jokes about my lack of multicultural crayons and perks up some.  
 
 

Here, I want to put Mrs. O’s leadership portrait in conversation with Voice Leader portraits 

like Emma and Rose who highlighted their concerns of school, community, and sociopolitical 

issues. During my final session with Mrs. O storied above, I was able to prompt her with the 

same prompt the Voice Leaders co-created. I instructed Mrs. O to create a portrait that portrayed 

her as a leader in her school and community with a focus on the things she wanted to see change. 

As depicted in Story 8, Mrs. O seemed to be carrying a lot of stress in our final interview and I 

wondered if that had any bearings on what emerged in her portrait (Figure 12). During my 

analysis of the areas she wanted to change, her concerns were split between school and 

community. Specifically, when she addressed changes she wanted to see in the school, she only 

addressed teachers. For instance, Mrs. O questioned whether her teachers would ever trust her, if 

teachers were ready to address their own biases and questioned how she could help teachers 

reflect on their own cultural lens. As it related to community concerns, Mrs. O did include the 

	

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importance of community voice and acknowledged that the students can handle social justice 

issues. Here, she also returned to her initial conceptualizations of student voice when writing on 

her portrait, “The toll is deep and intense and voice is key to raising activists!”  

 

For Voice Leaders like Emma and Rose, their portraits reflected many of the concerns of 

their peers. In Emma’s leadership portrait, she focused on art and music in schools, poverty as 

well as clean water and safety in the community. Rose’s portrait communicated an explicit focus 

on what she described as “forces and war all around us” during our M.A.A.E. space. Further, 

Rose was equally concerned with poverty, school and community issues. Her school focus in our 

dialogue space mostly centered on having more art in school, stopping bullying and keeping the 

community clean. When I place Mrs. O’s leadership portrait alongside those of Voice Leaders 

like Emma and Rose, my goal is not to speak to the ways in which they differ as much as it is my 

imperative to highlight how Mrs. O came to recognize that students could handle social justice 

issues because they were already talking about them.  

  Mrs. O’s portrait toggles between her teacher-focused concerns and a recognition of 

students and the community. She notes that the students can handle social justice issues as she 

begins to realize in our final session that they are already talking about these issues. This moment 

in particular is where Mrs. O has her epiphany during our final session. When she sees the topics 

of the lack of art and music in the school and community and environmental concerns as the 

larger issues that the Voice Leaders have consistently taken up in our space, she realizes that 

student voice has to take on a school wide approach which starts with her as the principal. 

Specifically, she states that, 

“The next step is taking that data (the playbooks) and I need to start running leadership 
groups with students. To choose an issue and let's work on it.  And then that way, that way I 
can support the collaborative process instructionally as well. But show them a) You are 
leaders and, b) Let's pick something. What are we gonna do?” 

	

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  Here Mrs. O’s understandings of student voice shift from a classroom focus that is placed 

 

  

on the responsibility of teachers to also seeing what her role as the principal might be in 

engaging voice alongside developing her teachers to engage student voice in the classroom. Her 

recognition that students already know about these issues demonstrated that there was no need to 

shy away from the topics that they were concerned about but to instead center them in school 

wide dialogue. In this final session, Mrs. O also decided that she wanted to use these playbooks 

as data for her teachers, to show them that it was not just a personal agenda of hers, which was 

often the response when she mentioned anything that was social justice centered. This transition 

to an action oriented space is exactly what I believe the Voice Leaders were calling for. To 

identify the issues was one thing, but to take action on them was another. This is not to say that 

youth are unable to take action without adults but in this case, the students at Sunflower were 

concerned with hefty topics that required adult action. By positioning youth as leaders and 

herself as a listener to what the youth of Sunflower had to say, Mrs. O shifted her leadership 

practices in ways that prioritized the needs and desires of the students.  

                        

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 

	

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Figure 11. Image of Mrs. O’s Portrait Created During M.A.A.E. Space 

 
 

 
 
 

 

 
 

	

 

   

                           

Figure 12. Emma’s Portrait 

 

                           

 
 
 
 
 
 

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Figure 13. Rose’s Portrait 

                                               
 
 

 

Story 9. “There’s Always Another After” 

The day is finally here! We’re heading to our field trip at the local art museum. When I got to 

Sunflower, I noticed that Sienna and Kelsey hadn’t made it to school yet and I was immediately 
bothered when one of the school staff members commented that some parents “just don’t care” 
and suggested that we go ahead and board the bus. I stalled for about five more minutes 
realizing we might be late if we didn’t board soon.  
 
Although Sienna and Kelsey were missing, the remainder of the group seemed to be in good 
spirits and really happy that the trip is finally here. The bus ride over to the museum was full of 
singing, laughs, and random get to know you conversations.  
 
As we exit the bus, the students’ light up when they take in the outside architecture of the 
museum. I tell them it was featured in one of the Batman movies and their excitement peaks even 
more. When we enter the museum, we’re paired off with two docents per pair of students and 
begin to learn about the work of Katrín Sigurðardóttir, an artist from Iceland who explores 
memory, distance, and time through her work. Her exhibit on ‘Unbuilt residences’ was what 
captured the Voice Leaders attention the most. She recreated models of 1920s homes that were 
intended to be built in Iceland but never were. Oddly enough, she created the models of the 
homes, broke them apart in different ways, then chose to rebuild them. In this particular exhibit, 
the students were able to experience it in somewhat of a reverse order to really spark their 
imaginations and  ideas around the artist’ purpose. They were first introduced to the models that 
the artist rebuilt without knowing the order in which they were seeing her work. From there, the 
docents lead them to the next room where the images of the original models as well as the 

	

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destroyed versions of the homes were.  As new connections began to sync for them, Emma calls 
my name to point out her realization.  
 
“Ms. Mauldin, this is before, this is after and there’s another after.”  
 

Figure 14. “Before and After” from Unbuilt Residences, work of Katrín Sigurðardóttir    

 

	

 

Figure 15. “Another After,” work of Katrín Sigurðardóttir 

	

	

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After hearing Emma’s take on the exhibit, I paused for a second, in awe of her choice 

words. They were reflective of exactly what the students began to realize during one of our 

M.A.A.E. spaces with the crochet activity — that there was another after. When I followed up 

with the different pairs at the end of the field trip to ask what they liked the most about the 

museum experience, Emma restated that she enjoyed looking at the houses and what they were 

like before, after and then in another after. For Emma, she said this connected to what we’ve 

been talking about with change in a community. Similarly, Ella shared that she enjoyed seeing 

what the artist created with her hands, how she “broke it and built it again and didn’t give up.” 

Ella felt that this connected to our portrait collage activity where we created a first draft and a 

final draft because, “we knew that we could make what we had better.” Niecey also expressed 

that she felt the rebuilding of the homes represented not giving up. Weaving these ideas about 

change and persevering through difficulty showcases the ways that the Voice Leaders think with 

this notion of critical hope. Throughout the exhibit, they were seeing with possibility even when 

they might not have understood the “why” behind the issue. In the case of the exhibit, they did 

not understand why the artist would destroy what she created but they recognized that it did not 

stop her from rebuilding again. When it came to these larger social issues that the students would 

voice, they also did not spend their time caught up in the reasoning behind why things were the 

way they were but recognized that there was a reality to the situations they spoke about and 

sought to think about how they might fix them. I mentioned earlier that I saw similar patterns 

with Mrs. O. Of course, she could spend time assessing the reasons behind some of the issues in 

her school but she worked to be more proactive on the issues she identified in the school because 

she believed that there remained possibility for things to change for the better.  

	

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I find that examining these interactions through a lens of possibility assists in 

revealing the absence that educational leadership scholars have identified as pressing in the field. 

This absence has often been labeled as a need, a need for youth as active partners (Mitra, 2012), 

for youth inquiry (Caraballo et al., 2017), a need for reciprocal dialogue (Bertrand, 2014), critical 

youth educational leadership (Van Lac & Mansfield, 2018) and research that centers youth of 

color perspectives (Bertrand, 2018) among other researched areas that relate to youth and 

decision making in schools. By applying a lens of possibility, I’m able to illuminate what fails to 

be captured and ask the hard question of, “what’s missing here?” as well as “what might be 

possible if it were not?” I share this to round out the purpose of the stories and dialogue included 

here as a way for educational leaders to better see with possibility— to understand how youth are 

traditionally positioned in schools and where their voices might be found. 

 
 

 
 

 
 

 
 

 

  

 

 

 

	

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Story 10. What’s New? 

It’s been two months since we’ve wrapped our project and as I work on the final edits of the 

student voice playbook, I visit the Voice Leaders and Mrs. O at Sunflower to get the students 
feedback on the playbook before it goes to print. We gather in the library and exchange hugs and 
high-fives. I can’t believe it has been two months. They are gregarious and bursting with energy 
as usual, pointing out the smallest details of my travel mug having tea instead of coffee to 
discussing how my hair is pulled back this day.  

 
Reeling them in, I ask “what’s new?” before diving into the draft of the playbook. All talking 

at once, they stumble over eachothers words to let me know that they now have more art and 
music in their school since we last met. When I asked them to explain what they meant, they 
began to talk about arts and music teachers coming into their classrooms every week and even a 
theatre company that they are able to run skits with. I am floored with excitement. I pause for a 
second and have my own aha! moment. As the Voice Leaders see my smile spread across my face, 
they look intrigued. I point out to them that they had everything to do with this and the light 
bulbs begin to go off for some of them. Emma says, “Yeah, the teachers are starting to be way 
more nice [sic]” while Rose adds that she and Drake are in charge of their own student groups 
now.   

 
 As we close with them giving me their intensive feedback on the book, sharing where I need 
to add more environmental badges like “save the planet” and their collective poetry – I tell them 
how happy I am that we were able to work together to make some changes happen in their 
school. After walking them back to class, I literally sprint into Mrs. O’s office to confirm what the 
Voice Leaders were saying. She shares with me that it was true! For her, after hearing and seeing 
the students’ perspectives in the project, she felt she had to bring in more community partners. I 
hug her and thank her for doing this.  

 
Mrs. O says, “I had to, it’s what makes them happy.”  
 

 
 

 
 

 
Throughout this project, Mrs. O demonstrated that she was quite the reflexive 

leader. When presented with new information, she eagerly worked to implement new knowledge 

into her leadership practice. While she did not always hit the mark perfectly in the case of her 

efforts of “checking for student voice,” it became clearer that by the end of the project, Mrs. O 

had been ruminating on our sessions and what the Voice Leaders presented in the playbook. In 

her final interview, she recognizes that students are already thinking about and discussing what 

she terms as “social justice issues.” With this realization, I am led to believe that Mrs. O thought 

about the issues students surfaced in the school context and how she might address them. By 

	

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bringing in community partners and positioning students to run their own student groups, the 

perspectives of the Voice Leaders were being honored and adult action followed those 

considerations.   

Returning to Change  

 

Thinking through what might be possible when we engage the voices of youth of 

color in K-12 schools led me to investigate how the voice leaders in this study perceive 

themselves as agents of change but to also investigate how the school leader engaged the voices 

of youth of color in the school. Their depictions of change through the practice of artmaking 

began with possibility and captured how the voice leaders operate with a critical hope (Duncan-

Andrade, 2009) in their reflections on change and their roles in affecting it. Ironically, Mrs. O 

operated with a critical hope as well, one that was blossoming when we first began the project. 

Perhaps this is what led to the final outcomes of the project where students were able to see the 

impact of their voices at Sunflower. To operate from a place of critical hope is to reject despair 

and hopelessness when looking at what is and to instead temper that reality by seeing with 

possibility. I believe that is what both the Voice Leaders and Mrs. O brought to this project and 

their school. That is, to see the cracks of something — a system, school, classroom, or 

community in this case and to persists with action and belief that change remains possible. For 

the Voice Leaders, this was evident in not only their depictions of issues that needed to change 

captured in their artwork but also their solutions-oriented mindset. Naturally, some adults could 

call youth perspectives into question, characterizing their solutions as being seen through 

childlike rose-colored glasses.  

However, I would argue that their solutions based mindset is exactly the mindset needed 

for leadership. Across activities in our M.A.A.E. Space, the Voice Leaders sought solutions but 

	

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recognized that change in any capacity is hard. As I previously noted, Mrs. O shared similarities 

with the Voice Leaders in her thinking. While operating with critical hope and solutions, she too 

felt the weight of trying to affect change, particularly at Sunflower with her teachers and limited 

resources. To better synchronize these points, I composed these stories and supporting artifacts to 

illumine these “aha!” moments for both the Voice Leaders and Mrs. O throughout. The final 

story, Story 10 demonstrates what is possible when school leaders not only engage voices in the 

school context but also illustrates what happens when school leaders listen to those voices and 

leverage resources to support student desires. In sharing these stories alongside one another, I 

hope that I was able to better center possibility by teasing apart the ways that critical hope was 

present at Sunflower but also uncover the ways in which school leaders and youth can partner 

together in schools to affect change.  

Exploring Possibility  

 

 

Throughout this chapter, I have relied on possibility as a means to understand leadership, 

the leadership of the Voice Leaders but also that of Mrs. O. It is my hope that this chapter invites 

us all to see with possibility in the ways that the Voice Leaders and Mrs. O demonstrated — a 

way for educators to look at something without blinking, to see what it is like, or could have 

been like, and how that has immense bearings on what we do next.  

 In this particular chapter, I centered the stories and artifacts that emerged from my time 

at Sunflower Elementary with the hopes that this would highlight the ways in which youth of 

color see themselves as leaders who can affect change and that school leaders would see how a 

principal like Mrs. O learned what it meant to engage the voices of youth in her school. For Mrs. 

O, she did not begin this project as a student voice expert and neither did I. Yet, I knew what was 

possible and I believe the Voice Leaders did too. Mrs. O’s demonstration of a reflexive 

	

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leadership practice was one step towards improving the schooling experiences of youth of color 

in her school and also a means of modeling what a social just leader looks like. As I return to this 

notion of paradise, the findings that emerged from working with Mrs. O and the Voice Leaders 

did more than reveal competing narratives about how they understood the engagement of voice.  

Ultimately, Mrs. O transformed her leadership with the inclusion of student voice rather 

than perpetuating silencing and exclusionary practice. As Morrison notes in her interview 

referenced at the beginning of this chapter, the people “not allowed in” certainly shape what 

happens in “paradise.” While schooling has never been a paradise or utopia for youth who have 

been historically marginalized, who is to say that it can’t be? By design, schools were created to 

serve young people but have fallen short in doing so, especially for youth of color. To fold in the 

voices of youth engenders a leadership that is not only shared and socially just, but it fosters a 

“power with” relationship rather than a “power over” (Van Lac & Mansfield, 2018) which 

propagates the silencing and erasure of the voices that matter the most – the youth. If schools are 

to move away from operations of exclusivity and towards inclusivity, where the voices of key 

stakeholders like youth are invited in, education might become emancipatory (hooks, 1994) and 

in turn, develop youth who are empowered by the critical insights that they have to offer.  

 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 

	

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CHAPTER 5: DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS 

        Taking these findings into consideration would mean that a school climate that supports 

student voice can not seek to only uplift the voices of the students who reflect back adult-

centered approaches to leadership nor place value on authoritative practices that communicate 

back complicated power dynamics that young people experience in the school environment. 

Instead, school leaders must be compelled enough by what youth insights are already being 

brought to the table. A socially just educational leader must challenge the power structures that 

silence the voices of students, especially those who are marginalized in a particular educational 

context (Mansfield, Welton & Halx, 2012).   

 

In this concluding chapter, I return to the purpose and significance of my project with the 

youth and principal at Sunflower Elementary. I begin with an overview of my dissertation and its 

purpose as well as why I gesture towards possibilities in centering youth of color voices in 

educational leadership. From here, I return to my research questions and respond to them 

reiterating my findings alongside the POYCEL framework while outlining implications for the 

field.  My research questions were as follows:  

1.  How are elementary-aged youth of color positioned to affect change? 

a.  What are the issues that students identify in their school and community? 

2.  How does a social justice oriented school leader engage the voices of elementary-aged 

youth of color? 

Finally, I offer more in-depth conclusions which inform my recommendations for the 

research field of educational leadership, school leaders, and youth of color who who seek to 

pursue a collaborative approach to youth voice work in K-12 schools. Specifically, I address 

recommendations for how the field of educational leadership can move forward with youth voice 

	

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at the center when considering how school leaders are prepared in leadership preparation 

programs as well as how practicing principals might adopt successful practices from Mrs. O 

illustrated in this study. For youth who desire to have their voices made center in their schools 

but also recognize the need for adult action, I draw on current young leaders who are making 

their mark in speaking out on sociopolitical issues that affect marginalized communities the 

most. It is my hope that this dissertation highlights what might be possible when we listen to 

youth voices, value those perspectives, and center them in schools and the practice of leadership.  

Overview of Dissertation  

Student voice can consist of young people sharing their opinions of school problems with 

administrators and faculty. More extensively, it also takes on the form of collaboration between 

young people and adults to address problems in the school (Cook-Sather, 2006; Fielding, 2001; 

Mitra, 2005). While student voice efforts have increased in K-12 schools and there is a growing 

body of literature in the field of educational leadership as it relates to the role of school leaders 

increasing these efforts, many student voice initiatives remain classroom focused in the 

elementary school context (Mitra & Serriere, 2012). Equally, the voices of African-American 

youth are especially limited (Wasserburg, 2018) in these initiatives. Given this and the visibility 

of youth of color voices from activists like Mari Copeny (Little Miss Flint), Vanessa Nakate, 

climate change activist and Naomi Wadler, advocate against gun violence— there is no question 

about the severity of this time and the importance of listening to what youth have to say about 

the world around us. Depicted in the stories constructed in my findings, I illuminate the primary 

themes that emerged for the Voice Leaders in their dialogue and artifacts. These themes were 

school and community concerns as well as sociopolitical issues. I map these themed stories 

alongside the three key levers of the POYCEL framework.  

	

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As I write about the voices of youth of color, I bear witness to how troubling times have 

unraveled over the years. I recall youth like those during The Children’s Crusade of the 1960s – 

a time where young black children were being jailed and injured by the thousands during civil 

rights demonstrations (Levine, 1993). For many of these children standing on the frontlines 

during an era that shaped and continues to inform the liberties we now have, I am reminded of 

their bravery, their awareness, and tenacity to fight for freedoms that were denied to them.  

It would be thoughtless if I did not name the time in which I am completing this 

dissertation. Currently, a global pandemic that has been referred to as COVID-192 is increasingly 

affecting how we do things globally. It has wreaked havoc in many ways, resulting in high 

numbers of fatality, job loss, interrupted schooling for the year, and mandated state lockdowns 

where myself and others are required to stay home unless considered an essential worker. If an 

essential worker, you are then placed on the frontlines and at higher exposure of contracting 

COVID-19. This is what some are calling an uncertain time but is also a time where youth like 

Mari Copeny advocate for rent relief and water filters for people to effectively live and wash 

their hands in Flint and nationwide to protect themselves from this virus. This dissertation study 

does not provide readily available solutions nor findings for how schools and families most 

affected by this global pandemic might move forward during this time. Obviously, that wasn’t 

the intention of this project. Yet, it remains a tension I find myself wrestling with when doing 

work that values youth and communities. I am thinking about how they are affected today and 

every day during this time when my life as a graduate student is minimally affected in 

																																																								
2	Novel coronavirus disease that has resulted in an outbreak of respiratory illness where there is 
currently no cure nor vaccine as of April 5, 2020.  
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/index.html 
	
	

	

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comparison. Too often, the most vulnerable communities experience the harshest impact when 

tragedy strikes. The recovery period is equally painful. 

What I find haunting and apparent from my work with youth like those at Sunflower are 

the signposts that were given. Granted, the youth at Sunflower did not foreshadow a global 

pandemic but the community and sociopolitical concerns that the Voice Leaders articulated 

during our time together are the same concerns our entire country is now wrestling with – what 

will happen to our environment? How will we remain safe in our communities? These are 

questions that were front of mind for the Voice Leaders and consistently emerged during our 

project. Mortensen and colleagues (2014) highlight in their work on youth leadership that youth 

are often aware of issues in their community three years ahead of adults and that youth have 

important insights on how society should be different. Thus, this study highlights what might be 

possible when we listen to youth voices, value those perspectives, and center them in schools and 

the practice of leadership.  

As the body of work on student voice in educational leadership continues to blossom, I 

am intrigued by what questions and possibilities the existing literature has nurtured to the 

surface. For instance, Mitra & Serrierre (2012) name that there is extensive research on enabling 

student voice in high school settings, yet more research is needed to understand student voice in 

the context of elementary schools. Further, Mansfield and colleagues (2012) note that in the 

development of their Student Voice Continuum theory which seeks to bridge student voice and 

leadership, there remains undiscovered territory of student voice possibilities confirming that 

further study towards an inclusive model of student voice for educational leadership is needed (p. 

32). Moreover, Bertrand (2018) contends that new pathways must be forged to include students 

or youth of color in leadership. Therefore, this discussion contributes to the task of carrying 

	

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student voice work forward in the field of educational leadership as it relates to capturing 

elementary youth voices of color, investigating how we better bridge leadership and student 

voice as well as offering new pathways like arts-based inquiry as a modality to explore how 

youth of color perspectives might be included in the practice of leadership in schools.  

 

For this dissertation, I pursued two research questions. First, I sought to investigate how 

youth leaders of color were positioned to affect change. I was also interested in what issues they 

identify in their school and community. The ancillary question of this project was to examine 

how a social justice oriented school leader might engage the voices of youth of color in the 

elementary school context. I found it essential that I first understand how youth see themselves 

affecting change in order to better understand the ways in which students might be positioned as 

leaders within the elementary school space. Approaching both research questions with an arts-

based methodology like M.A.A.E. served as a tool that captured student voice but also offered a 

space for collaborative inquiry. The use of art as a reflective tool that not only elicits response 

from participants but also allows for a shared inquiry proved to foster a therapeutic space for 

students as one of the Voice Leaders, Rose alluded.  This was also evidenced in Mrs. O’s final 

interview session.  

Employing Possibility Through Art 

An art-based methodology is particularly essential in facilitating projects in schools 

where there is limited access and exposure to create art or engage creatively in ways that speak 

to student interests and perspectives. Similar to many participatory engagements like that of 

YPAR (youth participatory action research) or PAR (participatory action research) concerned 

with democratizing knowledge and yielding power to ordinary people as they seek justice 

regarding social issues that affect their lives (Van Lac & Fine, 2018), M.A.A.E. offers the use of 

	

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visual methods to center critical issues that are front of mind for participants. As previously 

mentioned, the issues centered by the Voice Leaders were focused on school and community 

concerns as well as broader sociopolitical issues. Incorporating M.A.A.E. into my time with the 

Voice Leaders disrupted traditional notions of how student voices might be engaged. I introduce 

a lens of possibility early on in this dissertation.  In part, this was due to what the Voice Leaders 

and Mrs. O encapsulated throughout this project. Both parties demonstrated what Morrison 

(1998) regards as possibility – the ability to see what something is like or what it could have 

been like. They considered different ways of seeing and in a similar vein, taking an approach that 

allowed for stories to emerge and new realities to materialize – I felt that M.A.A.E. best 

supported this realm of possibility.  

 While I value what YPAR offers to educational research and its affordances to students, 

I did not approach this project seeing students as co-researchers (Fielding, 2001) as YPAR does. 

Instead, I wanted to engage them in the project in ways that they favored. As previously noted, 

the Voice Leaders were vocal about how they preferred to spend our time weekly. Although I 

maintained a specific focus on the topics of change, leadership and voice with our proposed unit 

plan, it was up to the students on how they wanted to engage or partner our approach to these 

topics. Mitra, Serrierre & Stoicovy (2012) posit that when developing student voice initiatives, 

one of the greatest struggles is the role of the adult in these interactions. Therefore, I felt it 

necessary for me to take more of a backseat and allow authentic student voice to emerge in their 

artifacts and in our dialogue space. In addition, the students’ resistance to having the principal, 

Mrs. O join our space was worthy of my attention – it illumines what Mitra and colleagues 

(2012) discuss as a struggle that occurs when balancing power dynamics between youth and 

adults in student voice efforts.  Thus, I became the cultural broker or mediator between both the 

	

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Voice Leaders and Mrs. O, sharing student artifacts and important moments that arose in our 

dialogue space with the principal to elicit further reflection about how she might engage the 

voices of students at Sunflower Elementary.  

While some educational leadership scholars have explored students of color and 

leadership, the educational leadership field in general has not fully embraced the concept of 

youth voice or student leadership (Bertrand, p.8, 2018). To that end, I consult a contemporary 

leadership framework, Principal Orientations for Critical Youth Educational Leadership 

(POYCEL) presented by Lac & Mansfield (2018) to understand both how youth leaders of color 

are positioned to affect change as well as how school leaders like Mrs. O engage the voices of 

youth of color in the elementary school context. By acting as a “frame” for this study, POYCEL 

shapes my analysis of the various data points drawn and assist in focusing the study’s results 

(Anfara & Mertz, 2015). This particular framework was designed with both youth and school 

leaders in mind, with the intent to illustrate how school leaders might include students in shaping 

the policies and practices that inform their schooling experiences. In order to understand how 

student voice efforts were actualized at Sunflower and where youth of color fit into this equation, 

I rely on the three key levers introduced in the POYCEL framework: 1) school leaders 

committing to youth voice, 2) positioning students as leaders in their schools, and 3) affording 

opportunities to support young people to exercise their voice. While POYCEL consists of both 

key levers and specific orientations for the principal, I lean on the levers particularly because 

they emphasize the support of students. While both are important, I find the key levers useful as 

they provide pedestrian ways of facilitating youth voice in schools which are essential if school 

leaders are to access and better understand how youth voice might be incorporated school-wide.  

	

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To be clear, the authors of POYCEL adopt a Frerian approach (Friere, 1970) to 

conceptualize a liberatory orientation to leadership. While I embrace a liberatory approach to 

schooling and certainly leadership, my stance towards liberation is one informed by Black 

feminist epistemologies. I think it is important to name that Black feminism has historically 

called us to consider voices that are excluded and how those voices might provide knowledge 

claims from experience (Collins, 2009; Dotson 2015). Therefore, I use POYCEL as an 

instrument to assist in making sense of my investigated research questions but I do so with Black 

feminist orientations applied to how I make sense of my findings. Black feminists works and 

epistemologies (Collins, 2009; Holland, 2009; Dotson, 2017; Butler, 2018; McKittrick, 2006;) 

help me to understand that school space is entangled with heteronormative, racist, sexist and 

ableist ideologies that contour youth of color schooling experiences. Therefore, having students 

create artifacts that cultivated space for them to articulate their lived experiences was essential to 

this project.   

 For a few reasons, I recognize that POYCEL as a framework does not map easily onto a 

study where both youth leaders and adult leaders are units of analysis. Like most leadership 

frameworks and theories, POYCEL is designed with the adult as the actor in mind. In this case, 

the school principal. Although POYCEL does prioritize youth voice, its roots are informed by 

the adult positioned as leader who then supports the efforts of students. As I see it, youth are 

already leaders in their schools whether positioned formally or informally. Recognizing that 

traditional adult theories of leadership do not align with youths’ perspectives on leadership 

(Mortensen, et.al, 2014), it remains a challenge to appropriately frame a “leadership” yet youth 

centered study. Because of this, I shift the analysis to center both the youth and the school leader 

in my applied analyses of the key levers as it relates to my data. Furthermore, I thought it 

	

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important to generate a research design that would center youth voices but also put their 

perspectives in conversation with adult leaders. I detail this design more in Chapter 3.   

Below, I move towards explicating my findings as it relates to my research questions. I 

begin by first discussing the critical insights that youth have to offer in relation to their schooling 

experiences, communities in which they reside and the larger world around them. From here, I 

explicate the importance of school leaders committing to youth voice (Lever 1) recognizing these 

critical insights as powerful to informing leadership practice. Next, I discuss how critically 

listening to youth can inform how school leaders afford opportunities to support youth voice 

initiatives in their school (Lever 3). Finally, I consider how the youth in this study see 

themselves as leaders and what this might mean for how youth are positioned as leaders in their 

schools (Lever 2). In my discussion of the findings that provide insight into my second research 

question, I share about the different priorities of the Voice Leaders and Mrs. O while also 

utilizing POYCEL’s key levers to consult how she engaged the voices of youth of color at 

Sunflower Elementary.  

Summary of Findings  

How are elementary youth of color positioned to affect change?  
What are the issues that students identify in their school and community? 
 

It is imperative that youth of color perspectives are made visible in the field of 

educational research. More specifically, the field of educational leadership must critically 

reimagine the ways that leadership practices and perspectives are informed. Relevant literature in 

the field of leadership points to the concern that adult-centric views on leadership seem to be the 

starting place from which we understand and define leadership. For this reason, scholars must 

continue to question who the field upholds as knowers and gatekeepers of knowledge. Most 

often, students of color are seen as problems to be solved (Gutiérrez & Orellana, 2006) and 

	

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framed as passive interlopers (hooks, 1994) in the school space. Reframing these deficit notions 

necessitates a shift in educational research and the practice of leading schools. Throughout the 

findings chapter, I provide data that is illustrated as story. Beginning with Story 1, I zoom in on 

the intimate knowledge that students portray as they share their insights about change and create 

“change hands” that amplify areas their concerns. Here, we see a focus on community issues like 

crime and homelessness as well as environmental concerns like pollution. In Story 2, the Voice 

Leaders share their insights on teacher quality and suspension during our dialogue that raises the 

question of if their voice matters at Sunflower. Key Lever 1 of POYCEL suggests that school 

leaders must first make the choice of committing to youth voice. In doing so, school leaders 

commitments must reflect the inclusion of youth voice as a natural part of school culture (Van 

Lac & Mansfield, 2018). By the end of the project, my data collection captured how Mrs. O 

demonstrated her commitments to student voice. It was crucial that Mrs. O had student voice as a 

part of her school improvement plan. However, student voice on the docket does not equal an 

authentic implementation. Drawing from Yoon & Templeton’s (2019) work on critical listening, 

they note that research and practice of education is adult dictated with younger students having 

very little agency over what happens to them at school. Classrooms are riddled with 

accountability measures, standardization, and expectations of students to be compliant (Love, 

2019) which further constrains the school space for youth. Listening is an active, engaged 

practice requiring adults to hear children’s intentions over their own agendas and ingrained 

presumptions (Yoon & Templeton, 2019, p.57) Therefore, to commit to youth voice would also 

require the school leader and other adults in the building to truly listen to student perspectives in 

all settings. Mrs. O demonstrated this practice in small but important ways in her leadership. For 

instance, instead of suspending students when teachers sent down their students for that purpose, 

	

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Mrs. O would sit and talk with students about their behaviors, frustrations and their home lives. 

She worked purposefully to reduce her suspension data while listening to student perspectives, 

which I would argue was also reflective of her social justice leadership lens. I mention these 

beginner stages of committing to youth voice because while they were somewhat reflective of 

committing to youth voice, the commitments do not actively seek out student perspectives in 

ways that uplift and center the voices of students who are often unheard. For the students who 

had never ended up in Mrs. O’s office due to threat of suspension or the high performing 

students typically tokenized because of their compliance in school, there were an array of voices 

that remained unheard. Mrs. O’s actions at the end of the project provide a more useful depiction 

of what it means to commit to youth voice. In Story 10, when the Voice Leaders began to share 

out how things have changed at their school such as having more art and music or their teachers 

being “more nice” as Emma put it, Mrs. O goes even further in her commitments to youth voice 

by introducing student-run clubs where all students are able to have a say in a club of their 

interest. Here, Mrs. O was able to acknowledge what the needs were of the youth at Sunflower 

and to see what her role might be in fostering voice as well as producing tangible outcomes that 

students could see materialize.  

I find that the key levers of the POYCEL framework naturally build onto one another. 

While I advise that critical listening is central to school leaders authentically committing to youth 

voice, it is also interspersed with key lever 3 where school leaders can employ critical listening 

to afford opportunities for youth to exercise their voice at school. When presented with the 

artifacts from the Voice Leaders in Story 8, Mrs. O comes to an awareness that the students at 

Sunflower are already talking about social justice issues. This realization informed her next steps 

of implementing the student-run clubs mentioned above as well as bringing in community 

	

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partners to provide more art and music outlets for students. In her final interview, Mrs. O sees 

where she might be implicated in actually carrying student voice forward, in ways that go 

beyond her teachers. By critically listening to what was presented from the student playbook, by 

taking in the artifacts, Mrs. O’s journey takes a meaningful turn wherein her leadership practices 

considered the desires and perspectives of her students and adult action followed.  

In environments like schools where dominant norms are at play (Dugan & Humbles, 

2018) it is no surprise that youth may see leadership in formal and positional ways that 

communicate an authority over rather than a sharing of leadership. Refocusing my research 

question concerned with how youth of color saw themselves affecting change, I first consider the 

relationship between change and leadership. To do so, it’s necessary to examine and understand 

how youth leaders might define leadership. Dempster & Lizzio (2007) acknowledge that of their 

analyses related to student leadership, there is an identifiable gap in our knowledge of student 

understandings of leadership. In this section, I analyze the data from the Voice Leaders to 

understand how they saw themselves affecting change and discuss what this might mean for how 

youth are positioned in schools.  

Given the historical trajectory of how youth of color have been and continue to be leaders 

that do affect change, I note a relevant link between affecting change and leadership. Taken 

together, change efforts and leadership inform one another based on previous youth research that 

gives insight to how youth might conceptualize the act of leadership. In their study focused on 

understanding leadership from a youth perspective, Mortensen and colleagues (2014) findings 

support this notion. Emphasized in their findings, youth seemed to have five prominent ideas 

about leadership. According to the youth (between the ages of 12 to 19) in the study, leadership 

was (a) available to anyone in any context, involved (b) creating change, (c) collective action, (d) 

	

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modeling and mentoring, and (e) strong character (p.453). Taking these youth conceptualizations 

of leadership into account, I return to my findings where in Story 3 both Emma and Kelsey are 

clear about their care for other students as well as the absence of art and music in their school. 

Their depiction of a leader, a principal in particular, is one who focuses on the well being of the 

students, their families and critically listens to student needs and desires within reason. In Story 

5, it is also evidenced that the ways in which the Voice Leaders define leader raises questions 

when adult theories of leadership are reflected from Dr. Crystal and her use of “leader” as a term 

associated with responsibility and other qualities that the Voice Leaders did not assign in their 

conceptions of leadership and change. Her sentiments leave Drake wondering if what we were 

doing as a Voice Leader group was “leadership.” If school leaders and adult staff in schools are 

to commit to youth voice and afford opportunities for youth to exercise their voices, these 

commitments must manifest in ways that are not majorly influenced by adult notions of 

leadership. When this is the case, formal approaches are introduced which ultimately remain 

adult-led and informed. Lizzio and colleagues (2011) posit that formal-position based student 

leadership only ever covers a small minority of students whereas informal leadership 

opportunities have a much wider engagement. Similarly, Bertrand (2014) argues that formal 

student leadership alone doesn’t go far enough in positioning students to reveal the multiple 

ways in which systemic racism (Bertrand, 2014) and other -isms are enacted in schools. As such, 

bridging formal leadership and other initiatives of student voice (Bertrand, 2014) could bring 

about more possibilities of activism and agency in schools for youth of color. 

 

The data captured in story form, as highlighted in Chapter 4 revealed salient themes that 

provide insider knowledge into how youth leaders of color define change but also the valid ways 

that they believe change can be affected or created. Here, change is identified in the ways that 

	

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the Voice Leaders conceive of it. Below, I include a snapshot of how the students in this study 

defined change. Collectively, the Voice Leaders constructed a poem to target their definition of 

change.  

 

 

 

Figure 16. Collective Poem on Change  

 

In the poem shared from the Voice Leader playbook, the students initially talked about 

change in what could be considered whimsical, literal, and playful ways. They thought of change 

as beautiful. Again, an opportunity to make something better. When constructing the poem, they 

also felt that change could and should be successful. From their explanation, Roblox was an 

online game that used “imagination to design your own worlds and own games.” For them, 

change allowed for the opportunity to design something new, your own world.  As the poem 

reads on to where students reflect on how they as individuals can change such as “trying to be 

smarter” (Line 4), this later echoed Ella’s sentiments that changing our own attitudes and being 

kind is also necessary to elicit change. Lines 5-9 of the poem demonstrate how the students built 

off of one another. For instance, Niecey felt that you did not have to only try to be smarter but 

	

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that you could also be the best in your class. Quite literally, students felt that you could change 

your mind, too. As constructing the poem came to an end, there was a thread of imagination that 

continued to weave through. The students described it as something that was like magic to them, 

that they could think of something new and reimagine their own world. Aside of this poem being 

creatively constructed by the Voice Leaders with very little input from me, I share it to provide 

how students initially broached the topic of change. From this poem construction to their 

brainstorming map of ideas on change (Figure 1), the Voice Leaders operated with a knowledge 

of the world around them and sought to reimagine it. Johnson (2017) terms this phenomenon as 

embracing the radical imagination. To do so, one reimagines themselves and the world in which 

they live. Similarly, Brown (2013) discusses the possibilities of imagination in her work with 

young black girls exploring Black girl creative performance and expression. Brown affirms that 

imagination is highly subjective and requires one to think through the role of imagination in the 

research process which requires the researcher to wholly deconstruct objectivity, methodology, 

and certainly, what is considered knowledge (p.27). Initially, I hesitated to share this poem as the 

way in which youth defined change. I was fearful that it may be interpreted as “cute” and not 

taken seriously as is often done with children’s words. However, I am reminded by Yoon & 

Templeton’s (2019) critical work with young children that listening is an active and engaged 

process for the adult which requires the adult to then hear children’s intentions over their own 

agendas and ingrained presumptions (p. 57). That said, the ways that the Voice Leaders defined 

change throughout this study are valid and informed by their own knowledges of the world 

which I find to be vital in my interpretations of this central research question.  

Throughout my findings, I document various stories that illumine how the Voice Leaders 

understood change. As illustrated, their reflections on change are less about how it is defined and 

	

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more about what they saw as needing to change with respect to their school, community and 

larger society. In the initial start of this project, it was not immediately visible to me if the Voice 

Leaders saw themselves affecting change or as agents of change. During our dialogue captured 

in Story 1, they watched the video of Mari Copeny (Little Miss Flint) and transitioned into their 

change hands activity where they were able to communicate their own thoughts around this 

notion of change. It was not exceptionally clear of how they saw themselves affecting change in 

the same ways Mari was able to. I recall Emma probing, “how old is she again?” when I asked 

the group if they thought they could affect change as a young person like Little Miss Flint.  I 

received a resounding “yes” from the remainder of the group but their initial solutions around the 

topics of change proposed were focused on distributing resources for issues they identified like 

homelessness, clean water, and dilapidated housing in the community. To distribute these 

resources, they were aware that this task was not something they could do alone. They saw this 

type of change requiring a collective effort, similar to how the youth in Mortensen’s study saw 

leadership requiring collective action.  

 

To really pin down how the youth at Sunflower defined change, I chart how their 

definition evolved over time in my findings. While I thought that the Voice Leaders might begin 

to change their focal points over time, they remained consistent with the areas they identified as 

requiring change. The focus on more arts and music in their school seemed to be set as well as 

community concerns like safety and poverty alongside sociopolitical issues like that of 

environmental crises such as clean water and pollution.  

In Story 2, I attempted to gauge how the Voice Leaders saw themselves positioned as 

leaders in the school because of the integral links that I felt were present between affecting 

change by having a voice and thus being placed in a position to lead change efforts. I sought to 

	

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examine if this was happening for the Voice Leaders. While the students first responses in the 

dialogue reflect that their voices matter because the adults in the building listened to them, there 

is more that begins to emerge when the topic of suspension arises. The students go on to 

explicitly share their perspectives about suspension where the majority of them disagree with the 

practice and don’t find it helpful. Further, Rose’s compassion is shown as she talks about the 

legacy of the students and her concerns about if their experiences at school are positive. While 

my findings here revealed that the students’ perceptions of if their voice mattered was mostly 

based off of their interactions and observations with teachers, what cemented my understanding 

was examining their debate on suspension and the recurring concerns about teacher quality at 

Sunflower. These engagements support my argument for a repositioning of the youth in the 

school. Bertrand (2018) introduces this concept in her YPAR study that examined how students 

of color position themselves as well as how school adults position youth. She found that the 

students themselves engaged in their own repositioning as leaders due to how school adults 

positioned them in contradictory ways. For instance, while school adults would communicate 

that they valued student input, they would also contradict themselves by being dismissive of the 

students’ insights as well as undermining them. In the case of Sunflower, Mrs. O did not 

undermine students but there were contradictory elements present. This is evidenced in Story 7 

where Mrs. O states that she would like to see student voice around youth activism but engages 

in actions that position students to increase their voices in the classroom instructionally. In line 

with POYCEL’s key levers, school leaders must commit to youth voice but do so in ways that 

position students as knowers and values their lived and schooling experiences. This builds on 

lever two of POYCEL where Lac & Mansfield assert that students must be positioned as leaders 

in their school. At Sunflower, as presented in Story 5, many of the Voice Leaders served in other 

	

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leadership roles that were positional like recycling club, peer mediator and safety patrol. 

Although these clubs were important and meaningful to the students, their roles within them did 

not seemingly allow for them to affect change on issues they cared about. Recycling club was 

great for students who cared about the environment but even students like Drake who was an 

environmentalist at his core was not considered for this club. Similarly, Niecey was very 

passionate about students not being suspended, yet she made sense of her role as a peer mediator 

as one that allowed her to “write up” kids which ultimately landed them in trouble – the opposite 

of what she and others communicated they wanted to see change at their school.  If students at 

Sunflower were to have their voices heard authentically, it would require for Mrs. O’s 

orientations towards understanding student voice to shift in more critical ways. While the design 

of my study allowed for Mrs. O to develop these understandings along the way, this is not the 

structure typically taken up in student voice work.  

Khalifa (2018) suggests that fostering space for student voice not only gives students a 

sense of fairness and belonging but it also elicits critical self-reflection for the school leader. By 

conducting this study in ways that allowed for Mrs. O to engage in critical self-reflection, she 

was able to think on what her role might be in centering student voice as well as recognize that 

students were already aware of social justice issues in the school. As the project with the Voice 

Leaders progressed over the weeks, they continued to define change by way of laying out the 

issues. In their illustrated and collage portraits included in Chapter 4, they take on the role of 

imagining what they would do if they were a principal. As depicted in Emma’s illustrated 

portrait (Figure 7), she targets the areas that she has talked about the entirety of the study. For 

Emma, she wanted to ensure that students were not being kicked out of school (suspended), 

getting in trouble, and that they had access to more art and music in the school. Similar ideas are 

	

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reflected in her collage portrait (Figure 13) where she places art, music, school, water, poverty, 

community, and safety above her head as issues that she would think about as a leader. As I 

coalesce these various stories and artifacts alongside one another to chart how the Voice Leaders 

saw themselves affecting change, I find that they were confident in identifying what Mrs. O 

called social justice issues. In addition, they did not “see” themselves affecting change until they 

saw the results of our time together demonstrated in Story 10. When the Voice Leaders began to 

share out that they now had art and music and their teachers were “more nice” as Emma put it, 

my epiphany in this moment seemed to inform theirs. While I know they felt proud of 

themselves and they were able to see a material product from our work such as the Voice Leader 

playbook (Figure 10), I can not confidently state that without them “seeing” the changes they 

articulated materialize, that they felt as if they were affecting change in our M.A.A.E. space or 

dialogue groups. In fact, I recall Niecey’s response during one of our M.A.A.E. spaces when she 

found herself frustrated with her artwork. As I encouraged her to be creative and to add some 

color to her map design, she responded with,  

 “I want it to look stupid because ain’t nobody gonna see it but the teachers.”  

At the time, I was not sure why Niecey was less than enthused by the teachers seeing the 

work they had accomplished. Yet after my coding and analysis, I realized that Niecey’s feelings 

towards teachers were complicated and in one of her artifacts (Figure 18), she had previously 

expressed that a majority of them needed to leave. I share this detail to make the point that 

without the playbook and resulting changes that followed from the design of it, I do not think 

that the Voice Leaders saw themselves as affecting change by simply being able to have the 

space to identify the issues but not necessarily positioned to act on them. By seeing some of the 

	

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issues they identified within the school space be addressed, it was affirmed that their voices did 

matter and that they were able to affect change by using them.  

 

 

 

         Figure 17. Niecey’s Illustrated Portrait 

 

 If I were principal for a day, I would let 
kids get recess every hour. I would make 
it no homework. I would kick every 
teacher out of the school.  
  

 

How does a social justice oriented school leader engage the voices of elementary-aged youth of 

color? 

To investigate this inquiry, I applied a POYCEL lens to examine the ways in which Mrs. 

O engaged the voices of youth of color at Sunflower Elementary, a K-3 school. As mentioned in 

Chapter 4, Mrs. O identified as a social justice leader with a social justice agenda. A part of her 

school improvement plan was to increase the voices of students and parents. She had historically 

done this by capturing survey data from parents in the car-rider line and holding some focus 

groups with students as well as end of year surveys. Mrs. O was comfortable addressing 

whiteness within herself and her teachers, demonstrative of her social justice priorities which 

made issues of marginalization within the school and called attention to it. That said, she was not 

	

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surprised when she faced resistance from teachers. She had previously called them out on “snap 

suspensions” where Black boys were overwhelmingly represented and dealt with teacher 

frustration when she placed affirming art that made people of color visible along the walls (see 

Figure 19 and Figure 20) inside the school. According to Mrs. O, it had been rumored that the art 

would come down if she were to leave the school. Interestingly enough, Mrs. O had brokered 

relationships with the community in ways that we also see benefit her response to the students of 

Sunflower later. While her relationship with parents and community members developed faster 

than those she shared with her teachers and staff, it was to her benefit. Each month parents, 

friends, and community members would come in to redesign bulletin boards around the school 

for Mrs. O on a volunteer basis.  I saw my role in working with Mrs. O as not only a researcher 

or mediator between her and the students but I was also in a position to support her student voice 

initiative so that we could develop practical and sustainable steps that would help her and school 

leaders like her sustain student voice in their schools.  

 

	

	

             Figure 18. Bulletin Board Commissioned by Mrs. O  

                        

 

 

                  

 

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Figure 19. Black Lives Matter Sign Shown in Hallway of Sunflower Elementary  

                        

 

Applying the three key levers of POYCEL to examine how Mrs. O engaged youth voice 

at Sunflower allowed me to analyze her leadership journey and the actions taken to engage 

elementary youth voice. These findings that I deem significant, reveal that Mrs. O and the Voice 

Leaders had different ideas about how and if their voices were truly being engaged. To explicate 

this point, I rely on the stories included in Chapter 4 that detail the student perspective as well as 

Mrs. O’s intentions and subsequent actions towards engaging student voice. In Chapter 4, I also 

present the Voice Leaders various portraits (illustrated and collage) which elucidate their 

priorities and issues that were front of mind for them as it related to change, voice, and 

leadership. In comparing the Voice Leaders portraits alongside Mrs. O, there are differences in 

how both the Voice Leaders and Mrs. O conceive of engaging student voice. For instance, Mrs. 

O’s concerns are heavily teacher focused with some attention to the community whereas the 

Voice Leaders speak to their knowledge of larger systemic issues that they wanted to do 

something about but were not positioned to.  

When presented with the Voice Leader playbook, we see Mrs. O’s understandings of 

student voice shift from an instructional focus to a more in-depth understanding of the issues that 

youth care about as she notices that they are already taking up matters that she recognizes as 

	

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social justice issues. Upon having this epiphany, Mrs. O discusses how she wants to use the 

playbook as data for her teachers with the hope that teachers might be moved and “brave 

enough” to incorporate their voices into the classroom. Mrs. O does not immediately recognize 

what her role as principal might be in engaging their voices. As Key Lever 1 of POYCEL 

outlines, principals must be committed to youth voice which is demonstrated in a few ways at 

Sunflower. First, by student voice being a part of the school improvement plan, it is clear that 

this is a priority area for Mrs. O and her school improvement team. Additionally, her efforts at 

“checking for student voice” reflect her orientations of seeking to embed student voice in 

classrooms. While the commitments to voice are present, they do no satisfy what is needed to 

authentically engage the voices of students at Sunflower Elementary. As Damini (2014) found in 

the elementary context, principals must actively seek out student perspectives. Therefore, the 

second lever of POYCEL which positions students as leaders must be present in order to make 

valiant strides towards engaging the voices of youth of color. It is worthwhile for principals to do 

the work of positioning students in non-positional/formal leadership roles as well as valuing 

what they already contribute to the school space as knowledge that is informed by their lived 

experiences. This is displayed towards the end of the study where Mrs. O decides that she will 

take the student playbooks (data) and begin running leadership groups with students where they 

are able to choose an issue and she can provide support. She emphasizes the importance of 

showing students that they are already leaders and that they have agency to pick topic and then 

take action with her supporting them.  Too often, leaders tend to adopt an approach of getting out 

of the way completely when positioning students as leaders (Mitra, 2012) yet POYCEL calls for 

students to be civically engaged and contributors to decision-making that happens alongside the 

school leader. Finally, the last lever in POYCEL requires school leaders to intentionally create 

	

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opportunities for student voice. By doing so, students are able to see themselves as having a 

voice on school matters. At Sunflower, Mrs. O’s actions followed her words. Not only did she 

commit to youth voice and prioritize the school issues that students raised in our project, she also 

placed leadership back in the students’ hands by allowing them to run their own student clubs 

that were focused on topics they cared about. While these clubs required teacher approval, it was 

a first step in the direction of creating opportunities for students to have their voices heard.  

Implications and Conclusion 

Leadership Preparation 

As a way forward, educational leadership as both a discipline and practice will need to 

consider how to best equip school leaders to center the voices that matter most – the youth they 

serve. The findings from this study offer contributions to the literature on educational leadership 

and student voice especially as it relates to student voice in the elementary context. Certainly, 

leadership preparation programs could benefit from incorporating the blossoming literature on 

student voice in educational leadership as well as introduce case scenarios like that of Mrs. O 

and other elementary school principals who go beyond administering surveys and focus groups 

but implement new ways of seeking out student voice.  Furthermore, assignments that 

incorporate critical self reflection of the leader and the community in which they lead are critical 

to growing in consciousness and understanding the importance of seeing youth as stakeholders in 

their schools.  

The Possibilities of POYCEL  

 In practice, these findings model how school leaders can begin to prioritize the voices of 

elementary youth of color by developing student voice initiatives that center their lived 

experiences and critical insights.  With the knowledge that there is not one student voice but 

	

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variability in youth perspectives (Gonzalez, et.al, 2017), the school leader stands to benefit by 

embodying the key levers that Lac & Mansfield identify to support student voice. By first, 

committing to youth voice in meaningful ways that require the school leader to critically reflect 

on their leadership actions – to critically listen and evaluate the ways that students are positioned 

in the school, a sense of belonging and mattering is possible for students. Simultaneously, the 

school leader is able to better respond to the needs of students because they have committed to 

the work of understanding their lived experiences and those of their students. Further, positioning 

students as leaders is important if the field is to truly rethink leadership in the margins.  

To extend our understandings of leadership beyond the bounds of an individual leader or formal 

administrator (Rodela & Bertrand, 2018) is to incorporate perspectives that have historically 

been silenced or dismissed. By engaging in repositioning students as leaders and decision-

makers in their education, students are able to be seen as leaders in the present and not how they 

are typically cast as leaders for a later future (Mortensen, et. al, 2014). Finally, as demonstrated 

by Mrs. O in her decision to run leadership groups with students and also create the space for 

students to run their own leadership groups, opportunities must be afforded for students to 

engage in the practice of leadership in ways that matter to them, not by presuppositions that 

adults place on how youth should lead.  

Social Justice Leadership 

As it relates to a social just leadership, the presence of student voice must be a non-

negotiable if social justice leaders seek to make issues of injustice (Theoharis, 2007). To advance 

any sort of equity-oriented or socially just agenda that seeks to improve schooling outcomes for 

youth of color, it would be negligent to not include their voices and honor their perspectives by 

leading in new ways. If we create conditions under which some children feel they must hide who 

	

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they are and what their circumstances are, we are denying the importance of democratic 

participation and meaningful relationships (Shields, 2004). This project was developed to 

intentionally provide pathways forward for school leaders to engage the voices of students 

beyond surveys and to see their voices as more than sources of data (Fielding, 2001). For the 

future, we must operate in the terrain of possibility that Mitra and colleagues (2012) identify as 

unexplored.  I especially make this case for the elementary context where there is very little 

research focused on how we might engage the voices of younger students. While methods and 

approaches like YPAR and PAR remind us that students are experts of their own experiences 

(Caraballo, Lozenski, Lyiscott, Morrell, 2017), implementing arts-based approaches allow for 

inquiry and reflection for younger students in ways that traditional approaches to student voice 

like survey and focus groups may not capture. In their work utilizing concept mapping, 

Fernandéz, Nguyen, and Langhout (2015) also found this to be true. They illuminate that 

concept-mapping for elementary-aged youth served as a tool to make connections between 

structural issues. To move beyond the traditional bounds of student and adult leader, methods 

that move beyond traditional bounds are also necessary and might bolster student engagement 

and interest in expressing their opinions about school.  

To Elementary Youth Leaders of Color 

For youth of color who navigate schooling in unique ways and are taught that they must 

engage in compliance in ways that ultimately other who they are (Kinloch, 2017), I want to 

affirm the possibilities in reach when your voices are centered. Just as young people from The 

Children’s Crusade, Black Lives Matter, and present day youth activists have shown us, your 

perspectives and insights matter. They have always mattered and made a difference in the fight 

for justice. When Naomi Wadler and her friend led a school walk out at their elementary school 

	

122 

for 18 minutes to honor the lives of youth, particularly Black girls who have been harmed by gun 

violence, she was 11-years-old. Havana Chapman-Edwards was in first grade when she saw 

Naomi speak out at the March for Our Lives in Washington, DC. Havana then decided to use her 

voice to speak against violence also. She led her own walkout in an orange astronaut suit, alone. 

She reminded us that “even if you’re tiny, your voice is not.” As you encounter adult leaders 

who model leadership in ways they understand, my hope is that you will be reminded that your 

perspectives and your leadership matters, too. Adults don’t have to have power over you but 

instead can have power with you (Van Lac & Mansfield, 2018). As adults like myself and many 

others (Bertrand, 2014; Mansfield 2014, 2015; Mansfield, Welton & Halz, 2012; Mitra, 2006, 

2008), continue to push the field of education to recognize that you are already leaders, I want to 

leave you with something that I learned from Emma, a Voice Leader in this project. She 

reminded me that “there is always another after” when we are working towards change – you are 

a part of constructing that after, and because of that, we can look forward to a better world.  

	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	

	

123 

	
	
	

 

 

	

124 

 

 

 

 

 

 

APPENDICES 

125 

 
 
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
 

	

APPENDIX A: Principal Interview Protocol 

 

	

Individual Interview Protocol 

 
The purpose of this study is to better understand how youth voice is engaged in the elementary 
school context by/with school leaders.  
 

•  First, I will ask you some questions about your background. These questions will include 

your place of birth, your age, racial/ethnic identity and socio-economic status among 
other identities you are open to share. From there, the questions will focus more on your 
teaching and leadership experiences.  

•  Second, I will ask you to share about your teaching and leadership experiences. In 

particular, I am interested in how you came to define your leadership practice.   

•  Third, I am interested in your own beliefs and philosophies around leadership and student 

voice beyond the classroom.  
  
 

Additional details of the interview include: You can expect this interview to last for 45-55 
minutes. To ensure your privacy, the primary researcher will treat your identity with the strictest 
confidence. In this case, the primary interviewer will be Courtney Mauldin. You will be given 
the option to choose a pseudonym for this study as well.  
 
Segment One: General background questions  
 

 Segment One 

1.  Can you state your preferred pseudonym for this research study? 
2.  If comfortable sharing, what is your age (you can also provide a range) and level of 

education? 

3.  How would you describe your socio-economic status growing up? 
4.  What are your preferred pronouns? 
5.  How do you identify in terms of racial/ethnic identity?  
6.  Are there any additional identities that you possess that you find informative to your 

schooling experience? 

students and teachers?  

 
Segment Two:   
•  What types of schools did you attend growing up? Can you describe the demographics of the 
•  What about when teaching? How would you describe the schools you have taught in? 
•  Tell me about your career trajectory of becoming a principal.  
•   In your opinion, what makes a culturally responsive principal or one who leads for social 
•  How does your school community respond to your particular leadership practice? 
•  Who or what informs how you define leadership? 
 

justice? 

	

126 

your school? What about your teachers? 

Now, we are going to switch to a series of questions that build from the last question.  
 
•  How have your lived experiences shaped your orientation to leadership? 
•  Who would you say most influences how you currently lead? 
•  Do you remember your school principals? What do you remember about them?  
•  How do you hold yourself accountable to the work of social justice/cultural responsiveness in 
•  Who informs the changes that have taken place in your school? Why? 
•  How do you define student voice? 
•  In what ways would you like to see your students’ voices operate in the school? 
•  Is there anything that you want to share with me that I didn’t cover in these questions?  
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
 
Repetitive Interview Questions  
 

1.  How does seeing and hearing about the themes that emerged in the youth voice projects 

make you feel? 

2.  Were you surprised by any of the themes? 
3.  What changes do you think are necessary in the school context after being presented with 

students’ school experiences? 

4.  How might this information influence your leadership practice moving forward? 
5.  In what ways might you see youth voice being engaged in the elementary schooling 

context? 

	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
 

 

	

 

127 

APPENDIX B: Initial Student Voice Unit Plan  

Table 1. Student Voice Unit Plan 

 

Creative 
Form  

Week 1  Poetry 

Lesson Focus 

Learning Artifact 

Defining Change/Different Types of 
Change 

Poetry Plates 

Week 2  Poetry 

Change Leaders 

Short Poems in Journals 

Week 3  Storytelling 

Identity (Who Am I Stories) 

Week 4  Storytelling 

Identity (Who Am I Stories) 

Week 5  Picture Collage  Leadership 

Week 6  Picture Collage  Leadership 

Week 7  Mural 

Week 8  Mural 

Week 9  OPEN 

Power of Voice 

Power of Voice 

Dialogic Spiral 

Week 
10 

Archive 

Dialogic Spiral 

Short Stories & 
Illustrations 

Storytelling through 
Collage 

 Change Collage 

Blackout Poetry 

Collective Mural 

OPEN 

OPEN 

OPEN 

 
 
Week 1, Session 1:  

•  Establish agreements/name of dialogue group with students 
•  Decorate notebooks with pictures, symbols, colors, words 
•  Students will be introduced to poetry as a form and begin to write their own poems 

during the “poetry plate” activity.  

Poetry Plate Activity  

Instructor will model this first for students on chart paper.  
• 
•  Students are to place their name in the center of the plate 
•  Students will fill their plate with adjectives or words that describe change.  

1.  What color is change? 
2.  How do you think it smells? 
3.  What does it taste like? 
4.  How does change make you feel? 

Allow students to be creative and to come up with as many words as possible.  
In the next session, students will take their words and create a short poem.  

	

128 

 
Week 1, Session 2:  

•  We will revisit the established agreements from last session.  
•  Students will not receive notebooks until consent forms have gone out? 
• 

Instructor will introduce different ideas about change using the text, Amazing Grace. 
Throughout the lesson, they should be adding words that stick out to them from the story 
on the back of their plates.   

•  After reading the text aloud to students, Group 1 will watch instructor model how to 

create a found poem from a collection of words.  

•  Students will then create their own “found poetry” using the words on their poetry plates 

and transfer these poems into their journals.  Throughout the lesson, they should be 
adding words that stick out to them from the story on the back of their plates.   

 
Week 2, Session 1: CREATE  
Lesson Focus: Poetry/What is a change leader or agent? 
 
Materials:  
Amazing Grace Read-Aloud 
Journals 
Large Art Sketch Paper 
*Anchor Chart 
Markers  
*Templates with sentence starters 
 
Objectives: 

•  SWBAT identify what a change leader/change agent is.  
•  SWBAT express how they see themselves as change agents through poetic form.  

 
Activity:  

change agent.  (5) 

 

•  We will revisit the story Amazing Grace as a whole group discussing the character, what 

challenges she faced, favorite parts. (5 mins) 

•  Using an anchor chart, I will have students to do a character analysis of how Grace is a 

•  After discussing the various ways in which Grace models being a change agent (words, 

thoughts, feelings), students will fill in a poetry template that describes how they are 
change agents. (20 mins) 

 
My name is ______________________.  
People think I am ___________________________.  
I come from _____________________.  
I believe in _____________________ and ____________________.  
One day I will _______________________________________________. 
Right now, I wish ______________________________.  
I feel _____________________.  
I know____________________.  

	

129 

My name is ____________________________.  
 

Students will each share their poems with the group and glue them onto construction paper, 
decorating the final product.  
 

•  Revisit key points about Grace being a change agent from anchor chart 
• 

I will model writing a collective poem whole group and how a “change agent” (someone 
who changes the world by doing) is at the front of my brain when I fill in the blanks 
about how I am or how I can be a change agent.  

•  Students will write their own poems using the printed templates and decorate and glue to 

construction paper as they like.  

Instructor will open with poem, “I am” on page 120.  
After reading the poem, I will ask students: 

1.  What does Qishu mean when they say that they are a little fire in the grasslands? 
2.  What about when they say they are like a little star in the sky? 
3.  How would you describe yourself? You are like what? 

•  Students will revisit collective poem and their personal poems in their notebook.  
•  Students will see instructor model how she writes her poem thinking about  how a 

“change agent” (someone who changes the world by doing) is at the front of my brain 
when I fill in the blanks about how I am or how I can be a change agent.  

•  Students will write their own poems using the printed templates and decorate and glue to 

construction paper as they like.  

 

 

 

Week 3: Session 1 (LEARN) 
 
Lesson Focus: Storytelling/Different Types of Change  
 
Materials:  
Destiny’s Gift Read Aloud 
Journals 
Large Art Sketch Paper 
*Anchor Chart 
Markers  
*Templates with sentence starters 
oud 
Objectives: 

Week 3: Session 2 (LEARN) 
 Lesson Focus: Storytelling/Identity 
 

	

130 

•  SWBAT identify what storytelling is and how it can create change.  
•  SWBAT to storytelling through the read-aloud, Destiny’s Gift.  

•  Printer/Notebook Paper  
•  Read-Aloud: Trombone Shorty  
•  Writing Journals for T-Chart 
•  Pencils 

 
Objectives:  

them.  

 
Activity:  
Intro to Lesson: (10 mins) 

•  See Screenshot below.  

•  SWBAT identify what storytelling is and why it is important.  
•  SWBAT identify the important parts of the story and what makes storytelling special to 

Since students created their “I Am” poems in the previous week, we will transition to a focus on 
identity to support their understandings of who they are as change agents and students with 
voices.  
 
Materials:  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

	

•  Before beginning the read-aloud, have students think about what makes the main 

•  Ask comprehension questions throughout.  
•  Discuss the identity of the character and how it may have influenced their experiences.  
•  Have students to share who tells stories to them in their family (grandparents, parents, 

character happy.  

aunts, cousins, etc.) 

131 

Figure 20. Snowballs and Airplanes Activity from Kitchen Table Curricular Toolkit 

 

 
Read-Aloud: Trombone Shorty (10 mins) 
 
(10 mins) 
I Do: Create an t-chart on large paper. 
We do: Have students to create a T-chart in their journals  
One side of the T-chart should focus on James’ Snowballs (what made James upset, caused stress 
or could have made him unhappy? The other side should focus on James’ airplanes (what 
things/experiences, event and people made James happy?)  
 
Closing Discussion (5 mins) 

•  Close with discussing with students the following Q’s 
•  How did James persevere in the text?  
•  What do you do to make yourself happy when you come across a challenge? 

 
Share with students that next class we will create our own short stories, stories that focus on our 
own snowballs and airplanes.  
 

Week 4, Session 1: (CREATE) 
Lesson Focus: Storytelling Through Collage /Writing our own Stories 
 

•  Open lesson with revisiting our activity of identifying our snowballs and airplanes just as 

we did with Trombone Shorty. Have students to share what they remember.  

	

132 

•  As you transition into the new lesson, ask students to share what their dream title would 

be of their life story. (5 mins) 

 
Materials:  

•  Pencils 
Journal 
• 
•  Construction Paper 
•  Visual Images by Adjoa J. Burrowes  
•  Construction Paper Shapes 
•  Magazine pages for word cuts  
•  Scissors  
•  Glue 

 
Objectives:  

 
Activity:  
 

•  SWBAT identify what storytelling is and why it is important.  
•  SWBAT identify that collages are made by overlapping multiple pieces of material or 

paper to create an image.  

•  SWBAT to tell their story through collage method.  

•  Share with students that today we will look at collage images by artist Adjoa Burrowes 

and also create our own.  

•  Explain that first we have to define collage ( write the word collage on chart paper and 

have students to write it in their journals with definition).  

 
DEFINITION: a technique that creates a work of art where pieces of fabric and paper are 
overlapped to create an image.  
 

•  Show art gallery of Adjoa Burrowes to students, have them describe what they see in the 

art and how they think Adjoa created the collage.  

•  Share with students that we will take various shapes and cut out words to create our story. 

Explain that we shouldn’t just cut out words  we don’t know or add shapes that don’t fit 
the snowballs and airplanes of our story. This means that we want our collage to 
represent our story.  

 

I DO: Model which words I would choose and the shapes I would use for my collage.  

• 
•  We Do: Pick 1 student to share what word they would choose to represent their airplanes 

and what shape?  

•  You DO: Have students to begin cutting out words that match the airplanes and 

snowballs of their stories. (6 mins) 

--Have students to pick the shapes that match their story and to begin to create a collage. (15 
mins)  
 

•  Close lesson with reminding students that our stories are powerful and deserve to be told. 

When we tell our stories, we use our voices to say who we are.  

	

133 

 
Week 4, Session 2 (LEARN)  

 
Week 5, Session 1 (LEARN)  

•  Students will still continue creating their story collages on this date.  

•  Students will be introduced to additional collage work by various Black artists who apply 

different collage techniques.  

•  Students will discuss how they define change as a whole group.  

 
Week 5, Session 2 (CREATE) 

Week 6, Session 1  (LEARN) 

•  Students will create their own personal change collages.  

•  Students will be introduced to Blackout Poetry using Scholastic’s Materials on Blackout 

Poetry.  

•  As a whole group students will create a blackout poem.  

•  Students will create individual blackout poems to define change in their schools and 

•  Students will be introduced to mural designs via media and photos from local murals in 

•  Students will engage in discussion about how murals are community art in pairs and as a 

•  Students will begin to create a collective mural, selecting former art pieces they have 

•  Students will complete murals. 
•  Students will also be introduced to the concept of the dialogic spiral and illustrate what 

that means to them and add it to the mural.  

 
Week 6, Session 2 (CREATE) 
 

communities.  

 
Week 7, Session 1: (LEARN) 

the Midwest.  

whole group.  

 
Week 8, Session 2: (CREATE) 

created in the dialogue group.  

 
Week 9, Session 1: (CREATE) 

 
Week 10: Final Session 

•  Student Interviews.  

 
 

 

	

 
 
 

134 

APPENDIX C: Modified (with Arts) Lesson Plan 

	
Note: The students were co-creators and co-leaders in how we spent our time after the first few 
weeks as noted in the dissertation. Therefore, this reflect the lessons leading up to students 
taking the lead in our lessons.  
	
Week 1, Session 1: (30 mins) (PLANNED) 

•  Establish agreements/name of dialogue group with students 
•  Decorate notebooks with pictures, symbols, colors, words 
•  Students will be introduced to poetry as a form and begin to write their own poems 

during the “poetry plate” activity.  

 
Poetry Plate Activity  

Instructor will model this first for students on chart paper.  
• 
•  Students are to place their name in the center of the plate 
•  Students will fill their plate with adjectives or words that describe change.  

1.  What color is change? 
2.  How do you think it smells? 
3.  What does it taste like? 
4.  How does change make you feel? 

Allow students to be creative and to come up with as many words as possible.  
In the next session, students will take their words and create a short poem.  
 
(5 mins) Open lesson with agreements. Share with students that in order for our group to 
continue, we have to create a plan for how we will participate in our space.  
-Consider how we share materials, how we speak to eachother, how we listen to Ms. Mauldin 
and the others in the group.  Introduce “bring it back” 
 
(5 mins) Share with students that today we will define and understand change.  
 
(5 mins) Ask students what they think change is. Write out the words that students come up with 
on the board/chart paper, etc. 
•  What color is change? 
•  How do you think it smells? 
•  What does it taste like? 
•  How does change make you feel? 

1.  Share with students that today I want to hear from them about what changes they 
believe should happen in their school and community but FIRST we will listen to 
a story about what it means to change something in your community.  
 

(3 mins) https://youtu.be/ML2dRP9i3FQ Students will watch 3 mins of Mari Copeny’s video 
(Little Miss Flint).  
 

 

	

135 

(5 mins) First, model that I want students to draw their hand in the center of their plate. With 
their plate, on each finger they will write different things they would like to change. For 
example, my thumb may represent me changing homelessness in my community, my first finger 
may be changing crime, my third finger may represent me changing my attitude.  (Have this 
done already)  
 
(10 mins) Pass out plates, markers, paint (if time) and have students to write 2-3 sentences on the 
back of their plate of why they want to change one of the things they wrote on their fingers. 
Explain to students that I have them writing/illustrating  this in a hand because change is in their 
hands like we saw with Little Miss Flint.  
 
 
Week 1, Session 2: (30 mins)  

•  We will revisit the established agreements from last session.  
• 

Instructor will introduce different ideas about change using the text, Amazing Grace. 
Throughout the lesson, they should be adding words that stick out to them from the story 
on the back of their plates.   

•  After reading the text aloud to students, Group 1 will watch instructor model how to 

create a found poem from a collection of words.  

•  Students will then create their own “found poetry” using the words on their poetry plates 

and transfer these poems into their journals.  Throughout the lesson, they should be 
adding words that stick out to them from the story on the back of their plates.   

•  Students will revisit and sign agreements for our dialogue group.  
•  Students will be able to define what a change agent is (someone who changes the world 

 
Objectives:  

by doing) 

•  Students will create their own word cloud by cutting and pasting words (that make them 

think of someone changing the world) in a timed fashion to their sheet of construction 
paper.  

•  Students will share what they think a change agent is at the end of their artifact by 

sharing their final product.  

 
Materials:  
Construction Paper  
Glue  
Magazines  
Scissors  
Markers  
 
Opening (5 mins)  
Share with students that earlier this week we talked about how change is in our hands and we 
picked different topics that we would like to change in our schools and communities. Today we 
will identify what makes a change agent or leader by listening to a story about a brave young 
person and then creating our own word clouds.  
 

	

136 

(10 mins)  
Ask students to share out what they enjoyed about our last lesson.  

1.  Have you seen anything else this week that made you think about our activity and what 

you would like to change? At home? At school? 

 How would you describe your principal? 
 What do you think makes a good principal? 
What is something that you would like to see change at your school? Why?  
What advice would you give a principal? 
 Do you think your voice is important at school? How do you know? 

 
Consider the following questions: Tell me about your elementary school. What do you like about 
it?  
 
2. 
3. 
4. 
5. 
6. 
 
(10 mins ) Read-Aloud  
 
(10 mins)  
After the read-aloud, I will model how to create a word cloud by picking out words that make me 
think of someone changing something. Words like powerful, brave, change, trees, water, money. 
All topics we have talked about so far.  
 
(8 mins)  
Share with students that they will have 8 mins to find as many “change agent” words as possible 
and they have to do this carefully.  When the timer goes off you should have as many words as 
you can on your sheet. We will not glue them until after the timer is off and I have told us to.  
 
(20 mins)  
Students will spend the remainder of time creating their word clouds and then will share at the 
end what change agent words they found and why they added them to their wordcloud. Remind 
students to initial their sheets.  
 

*Our last lesson organically turned into dialogue space. This reminded me that we should 
structure our time into half dialogue possibly once a week. While we may create one day of the 
week, Friday should be our discussion time.  
 
For our next lesson, I want to build off of the momentum of reading the chapter on, “The Honey 
Bunch Kids” where Dizzy was able to be principal for a day. We engaged in dialogue about what 
they would do if they were principal for a day. For this week’s lesson, we will plan to create 
from this portion for tomorrow’s lesson.  
 
Artifacts that we can turn into a playbook 

If I was principal for a day, I would ____________ writing and portrait.  

•  Change Agent Word Clouds 
• 
•  Build a School and everything it needs 
•  Map of Community change  
•  Change Plates (with hand) 

	

137 

 

Week 3, Session 1 
Opening (5 mins) 
Share with students that on Friday we read, The Honey Bunch Kids and talked in our dialogue 
group about how we know if your voice matters to your principal. Share that today we to create a 
portrait of ourselves as principal and write about what we would do if we were principal for a 
day.  
Materials:  
Cardstock Paper 
Markers 
Crayons 
Pencils  
 
(15 mins) Modeling 

•  Show students the page of Dizzy at the Principal Desk in the story, poll the group and ask 

them what they remember from the story.  

•  Share that while the author wrote her story in a funny way, we want to also think about 

the kinds of changes we have been talking about and how we might think about things we 
could change in our own school as Principal.  

•  Model on chart paper (split it for your portrait - landscape style) that I would start my 
story with the stem, If I were principal for a day, I would _____________. Model 3-5 
sentences.  

•  After modeling, illustrate a portrait of myself doing my best drawing. Share that they 

shouldn’t rush their drawings because these may go in a hand book that we are going to 
print for teachers to use in the classroom to learn how to make the school better.  

 
Week 3, Session 2: (30 mins writing and drawing time for students)  
 

Week 4, Session 1 
Students will sit in a circle with their portraits and engage with the questions below.  
 
Segment Three—Beliefs about Voice  
Tell me about a time when you felt your voice mattered.   
 

1. Can you share a time where you felt that you had something important to say but no one 
would listen? 
 
2. When have you spoken up about an issue? Did people listen to what you had to say?  
 
3. Who do you feel listens to you the most? At home? At school? 
 
4. Do you think that you would be able to change the world like the kids your age that we have 
learned about? Why or why not?  
 

	

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5. What’s one thing you would change in the world if you could? Why? 
 

Thank you for your time today. Do you have any questions about anything we talked about 
today? 
 
Week 4, Session 2 

•  SWBAT identify what a collage is and how we can use a collage to tell a story.  
•  SWBAT identify that collages are made by overlapping multiple pieces of material or 

paper to create an image.  

•  SWBAT to tell their story through collage method.  

Second half: CREATE  
Objectives:  

 
Activity:  
 

•  Share with students that today we will look at collage images by artist Adjoa Burrowes 

and also create our own.  

•  Explain that first we have to define collage ( write the word collage on chart paper and 

have students to write it in their journals with definition).  

 
DEFINITION: a technique that creates a work of art where pieces of fabric and paper are 
overlapped to create an image.  
 

•  Show art gallery of Adjoa Burrowes to students, have them describe what they see in the 

art and how they think Adjoa created the collage.  

•  Share with students that we will take various shapes and cut out words to create our story. 

Explain that we shouldn’t just cut out words  we don’t know or add shapes that don’t fit 
the snowballs and airplanes of our story. This means that we want our collage to 
represent our story.  

I DO: Model which words I would choose and the shapes I would use for my collage.  

• 
•  We Do: Pick 1 student to share what word they would choose to represent their airplanes 

and what shape?  

•  You DO: Have students to begin cutting out words that match the airplanes and 

snowballs of their stories. (6 mins) 

--Have students to pick the shapes that match their story and to begin to create a collage. (15 
mins)  
 

•  Close lesson with reminding students that our stories are powerful and deserve to be told. 

When we tell our stories, we use our voices to say who we are.  

 

 

 

 

	

139 

Week 5, Session 1 
 
Materials:  
Various types of paper  
Magazine sheets  
Scissors 
Pencils  
Journals  
 
Opening: Students will be introduced to change by walking a Soul Pancake video  
From Kid President, 20 Things We Should Say more Often. https://youtu.be/m5yCOSHeYn4 
 
After watching the video, instructor will discuss with students how Kid President thinks about 
change. Share that he thinks of change happening in small ways that have a ripple effect. This 
means that we can start by changing our words, how we treat eachother, how we care for other 
people and it has a ripple effect where people pass it on and we begin to slowly change the 
world. 
 
Share with students the quote from John Lewis (who fought for the rights of African-Americans 
that were being treated poorly in the 1960s and now) to write in their journals.  
 
If not us, then who? If not now, then when?  
Below the quote, have students to write what this quote means to them.  
Students will share out.  
 
Tell students that on Friday we will create new collages but these collages will focus on how 
THEY think about change.  
 
To help us get ready to do that and find “Change words,” we are going to create our own list of 
20 things we should say or do more often as a group.   
 
On chart paper,  instructor will write down what students come up with. At the end, students can 
come up and circle “change words” they think they might be able to find in the magazines on 
Friday for their collages.  
 
Close activity with reminder quote from students. Have them to repeat it to eachother. If not us, 
then who? If not now, then when? 
 
Week 5, Session 2 
 
 
Materials:  
Various types of paper  
Magazine sheets  
Scissors 
Pencils  

	

140 

•  SWBAT review what a collage is and how we can use a collage to tell a story.  
•  SWBAT review that collages are made by overlapping multiple pieces of material or 

paper to create an image.  

Journals  
 
Objectives:  

•  SWBAT to tell their story of change by using the collage method 

 
 
 
Opening: Students will revisit Soul Pancake video from last session.  
 
(5 mins) In journals, students will revisit their reflections on the John Lewis quote we discussed 
last session.  
 
(5 mins) Students will share with their peers what new ideas they have about the quote.  
 
(15 mins) Using change words from last session, students will create their own change word 
collage to create their own artwork image.  

	

	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	

	

 

 

 

 

 

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