Youth workers and teachers are often guilty of the same thing: They call on the kids who raise their hands. You know who I'm talking about, because just like me you've done it before. She's the bright and articulate leader who knows the answer. He's the quick and deft analyzer of information who holds the key to the activity. I think that inside of that dynamic there is a tension in a lot of youth voice activities that is rarely acknowledged.

Michael Fielding calls out this tension best in his Framework for Assessing Student Voice. He asks several simple questions. The next time you go marching into a youth voice activity you are facilitating I want you to ask yourself the following:

• Who is allowed to speak?

• To whom are they allowed to speak?

• What are they allowed to speak about?

• What language is encouraged / allowed?

• Who decides the answer to these questions?

• How are those decisions made?

• How, when, where, to whom and how often are those decisions communicated?

I am beginning to think that we must do whatever it takes to engage those young people whose voices rarely get heard. If that means that youth-serving orgs give up a wall of the building specifically for graffiti then so be it - those voices must be heard. If that means that a committee meeting is spent surfing the web with students and adults looking for quality curriculum resources, then so be it - those voices must be heard. Music in the hallways, geocaching for community resources and skateboarding for peace must all be seen as options, because at the end of the day it doesn't really matter what the specific activity was: its the experience of learning that comes from it that matters. We have to teach young people by demonstrating to young people that we value their voices equally to our own. Whatever it takes to do that, let's get it done.

I have spent the last few months here in New York City working with the Cloud Institute for Sustainability Education. They are national leaders in the Educating for Sustainability movement, providing training, resources and network leadership for hundreds of schools across the country.

While here I've been building out their youth voice focus, and I have some interesting products coming. One of them is a series of case studies of schools that have strong youth voice elements. I have compiled the following checklist to help me think about their informing beliefs, and thought I should share it here. I'd love to here what you think!

Authentic Youth Engagement is…

• Collective Activities are led by youth and adults together – not individually
• Connected Activities embody interdependence and model it among youth and adults
• Empowering Youth voice is a driving force throughout activities
• Equitable Adults recognize young people have differing backgrounds that require different approaches
• Focused Activities are appropriately outcome-driven
• Healthy Respectful disagreement, speaking up, and other avenues that equalize disparities between youth and adults are at the core of the activity
• Learning Young people gain skills, knowledge and tools to be effect agents of change
• Mutually Beneficial Young people and adults acknowledge each other’s dreams, actions, outcomes and reflections
• Relevant Activities are responsive to the lives of young people
• Responsible Adults and youth develop and sustain their capacity to be “response-able”
• Substantive Activity design and outcomes are designed to impact individuals, organizations, communities and society
• Self-Motivated Young people feel driven to participate

I might be wrapping up a white paper on authentic youth engagement in sustainability education within the next week - let me know if you'd like to see a draft by emailing adam at freechild dot org.

Published on Monday, February 18, 2008 by The Los Angeles Times

Student’s Deportation Roils New Mexico Town

ROSWELL, N.M. - This conservative city on the barren eastern plains of New Mexico long had been spared the acrimonious debates over illegal immigration that have racked so much of the Southwest.

That is, until December, when immigration enforcement entered the murky terrain of the local high school.

A school security officer stopped Karina Acosta, an 18-year-old pregnant Roswell High School senior, and discovered she was in the country illegally. He called federal immigration authorities, who swiftly deported her.

The district superintendent protested and the officer was removed from the school and transferred back to the city Police Department. About three dozen angry students and parents marched on police headquarters — a notable event in a town not accustomed to controversy — and were met by a handful of counterdemonstrators who backed the officer.

The schools suffered a sudden drop in attendance as students whose parents were in the country illegally kept them home. The local newspaper was peppered with angry letters to the editor denouncing illegal immigrants. And even two months later, unease permeates the community.

“What shocked me more than anything is what it did to this town,” said Coreta Justus, one of Acosta’s teachers. In the classroom, she said, “you can feel the difference vibrating from the students. I don’t think they have those safety feelings anymore. School used to be a very safe place.”

In 1982, the Supreme Court ruled that illegal immigrants had the right to attend public schools and that educators could not ask students whether they were in the country legally. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has a policy against entering campuses.

But local police forces like Roswell’s are increasingly being pressured to crack down on illegal immigrants.

“You have legislatures that say one thing, a Supreme Court that has ruled something else,” said Scott Douglass, Roswell’s interim police chief.

“The country’s not giving really clear signals.”

Douglass defended his officer, saying he was obligated to call immigration officials once he learned that Acosta was in the country illegally.

There have been cases elsewhere of local police arresting illegal immigrants at schools to be deported. Last year in Tucson, police were called to a high school because a ninth-grader was caught with marijuana. When the student’s family arrived, they arrested the student, his mother and his brother and handed them over for deportation.

The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund sued the Albuquerque Police Department in 2005 after officers called the Border Patrol to a local high school. In a settlement last year, police agreed to stop asking residents about their immigration status.

“A school should be a safe haven, and any sort of law enforcement related to immigration status should be very, very limited,” said Marisol Perez, an attorney with the Mexican American legal advocacy group. That conflicts with the widely held opinion that police should be free to ask suspects whether they are in the country legally, she noted.

Roswell, the home of the New Mexico Military Institute, is an island of motels, gas stations and modest houses. For decades, illegal immigrants have come here to work in the surrounding dairies and ranches, mixing with Latino families whose ancestors settled here before the land was part of the United States.

In the city, 44% of residents and 60% of students are Latino. Roswell is also home to a number of Border Patrol agents, and the agency has a training facility 40 miles to the south.

Karina Acosta came to Roswell from Mexico in 2004. Her teachers say that at first she felt alienated from other students and wanted to return to her home country, but slowly adjusted. Polite and industrious, she improved immensely in school and started working with her mother in a fast-food restaurant.

On Nov. 27, she was driving her friend Brenda Molina and Molina’s brother to school. Stopping in a fire lane outside the neighboring middle school to drop off the brother, she caught the attention of Roswell police Officer Charlie Corn, Roswell High’s safety officer.

According to Molina and a written account from Acosta’s mother, Bertha, Corn pulled up behind Acosta in the high school parking lot. When Acosta admitted she didn’t have a license, Corn asked her whether she was in the country legally. Corn told her to bring proof of legal residency the next day.

Acosta did not see Corn for several days. On Dec. 5, Corn ordered Acosta to his office and called immigration authorities on his cellphone. The immigration officials told him to hold her for deportation, according to Douglass, the police chief.

Acosta’s mother said in her statement that she rushed to the school and Corn handed her his cellphone and told her to talk to the immigration official, but she declined.

Bertha Acosta could not be reached for comment; friends say she is terrified. Corn said he had been directed not to comment. Teachers and students complain that Corn frequently asked Latino students to prove they were in the country legally and got one other youth deported several years ago.

Corn’s supporters say he has no racial biases and point out that his wife is Latina.

After news of the deportation broke, teachers say, parents refused to let illegal immigrant children go to school.

Some teachers may secretly approve of the deportation but don’t realize how it affected students, said one of Acosta’s teachers, Dolores Fresquez.

“My kids from Mexico are angry and hurt,” Fresquez said. Supporters of the deportation “don’t understand how many in this school are here illegally.”

One of the counterdemonstrators at police headquarters Dec. 14 was Jack Satterfield, 53, whose youngest daughter goes to Roswell High School and deals with classes crowded by, he believes, illegal immigrants. A retired construction worker, he thinks Corn’s action “was great. Our schools are so overpopulated. The majority of the people agreed with it.”

City leaders are eager to put the incident behind them.

“This was a first-time occurrence and hopefully a last-time occurrence,” City Councilman James Monteith said. “I have no ill thoughts about that man [Corn], and I feel terribly sorry for her.”

But mutual distrust lingers. Latino activists say the problem extends beyond Acosta’s deportation. Tales are rampant of Latinos pulled over by police for alleged traffic violations and questioned about their immigration status.

Adolfo Reyes, 38, a U.S. citizen, said that happened to him in December. Combined with the deportation, it has made him worry about what could happen to his children if they’re stopped by authorities.

“We’re concerned they’re going to call [immigration] on our kids,” Reyes said. “Our kids don’t carry their birth certificates or IDs.”

Douglass said the Police Department was still trying to determine when it was appropriate to ask residents about their immigration status.

“I’ve been trying to educate myself and hammer out a policy,” Douglass said. The Acosta case has “muddied the spring pretty good, and it’s hard to have any clear direction.”

nicholas.riccardi@ latimes.com

As I completed the SoundOut Student Voice Curriculum I compiled a list of basic knowledge about the education system students need to have in order to be effective school change agents. This is based on my experience working with hundreds of students in schools across the U.S., as well as consulting with teachers from a wide range of schools who are doing this work everyday.

An Overview of Public Schools

• Intro to the School System
• Reflecting on Your Education

Student Voice 101

• Student Rights
• Intro to Meaningful Student Involvement
• Advocating for Students

Student/Adult Partnerships

• Working with Adults Allies
• Adults as Roadblocks
• Action Research for School Change and Student Evaluations of School

Learning about Learning

• Which 3 Rs today: Reading, Writing and Arithmetic or Relevance, Rigor and Relationships?
• Understanding Basic Curriculum
• Assessing School Performance

Learning Outside of School

• Project-based learning, service learning and more
• When Homework Matters
• Out-of-School Learning
• Homeschooling, Unschooling and Taking Control of Your Learning
• Summertime Doesn't Suck

The Politics of Schools

• What Lies Behind, Underneath and Within Education and Reform
• Standardized Learning and Testing
• What Happens After the Test?
• The Future of Schools

Let me know what you think, what's missing, and what I should take out. Thanks!

"Protection is never neutral, disinterested or without negative consequences. Sheltering children from the work world has made them totally financially dependent on parents. The daily regime in school reproduces factory discipline. Their bodies, their time and their intellects are monitored by bells, confinement to desks, by exams, grades and punishments, and by teacher surveillance.

Other institutions have arisen to contain those who do not adapt in home or school. With each new outburst of rebellion, there is a cry for more discipline, more specialists. With each new act of brutality against children, which comes to light in the press, there is a cry for more protection, more intervention. Is it not time, while keeping in mind the very real vulnerability of children in the current system, to call into question the idea of protection? To ask what has it achieved?

If protecting children we are making them more dependent and vulnerable to exploitation, then this is not only counterproductive, but hypocritical. When adults think of protecting children, it is always against the danger "out there," against other adults since they themselves know "what is best." We seem incapable of realizing that a protector can also be an abuser, a person who does not respect a child's integrity or wishes - in short, any adult, be they parent, teacher, stranger or youth worker.

Real protection is self protection. Adults need to work with children to confront dangers and problems, to examine what resources and rights children need in order to be stronger and more independent. And adults need to look at how they benefit from children's dependency.

This section comes from As Soon as You're Born They Make You Feel Small: Self Determination for Children, a small booklet written by Wendy Ayotte that was first printed in 1986. I enjoy reading like this, whether or not I fully agree with it, simply because I like the challenge inherent in reading and reflecting on it. The rest of the booklet is just as powerful, and Ayotte was successful in her guerrilla marketing effort with the booklet: my Google search turned up almost 400 hits online, for this booklet that was printed in 1986. I know its been re-released again, but still - its nowhere to be found online. That's awesome.

My thoughts on this section? I agree with Ayotte's point about childrens' reliance upon adults, and the dichotomous and alienating relationships enforced throughout our society that ensure that reliance. However, I do take exception to the implication that children and youth do not have any need for a protective role between themselves and adults. In reality there is a role for that reliance - just as much as there is a necessity for adults to rely on young people. That is the nature of interdependence.

I told you this has been going on for a little while! Following is an excerpt from the introduction to the New Youth Voice Handbook, with links for your entertainment:

For more than a century youth voice has brought the front pages of newspapers across the United States to life. Examining the New York Times archives shows that as early as 1885 the paper reported about a youth in Arkansas with a headline shouting, “Youngest Mayor a Murderer,” after the youngest leader of any town in the U.S. shot a man during an argument. Schools have been an important focus of youth voice since at least 1937, when the Times reported that, “Children Protest School Transfer: 200 Stage Demonstration in City Hall Park and One Airs Grievance to Mayor.” In 1950 the paper celebrated youth voice as it announced, “Jersey Youth Leads Advisory Council.” Almost appearing surprised, in 1960 a headline stated, “Teen-Agers Blunt at State Discussion of Their Problems,” while in 1963 the paper finally determined that, “Teen-Agers Take Action on Urgent Social Issues.”

Note that in this section I'm trying to introduce events that have gone past my radar in the past, which has included the Newsboys Strike of 1899, the various activities of the American Youth Congress, the Port Huron Statement of the Students for a Democratic Society, and the pamphleteering of Youth Liberation of Ann Arbor, Michigan. And all of that says nothing of Sonia Yaco, Vice-President Agnew's sympathy with the Youth Liberation Movement, or calls for a "youth nation" within the U.S.

I am ready to admit it: I have become a history geek. I know, I have written about it before. But after recent conversations with a few colleagues here in New York City I have decided to put my energy into writing during this next period of time. There are too many stories, too many lessons and too many opportunities to forward youth involvement that we just shouldn't loose. Writing is one of the best ways I know to share them.

I consistently get questions at workshops about recruiting young people. It can feel so hard to well-meaning adults to bring children and youth on board in the projects, organizations and communities where we so desperately want and need them to be involved. Today I drafted a tip sheet on recruitment for the Cloud Institute for Sustainability, and I want to share some thoughts I've had about recruiting youth for youth programs.

Lesson One: Market Your Brand. I have learned that recruitment shouldn't just be seen as a once-yearly activity shared in a little flyer and then forgot about. When its done best youth recruitment is seen as an ongoing process, just like advertisers do it: rather than simply launching Coke as a summer drink, its a year-around refreshment. Instead of telling us about Cloverfield the month before it came out, movie watchers were bombarded with ads a year before it came out. By building a constant presence and a regular energy these products enforce their brands in the lives of youth. Youth programs should be branded in that same way by establishing a constant presence in the lives of young people. In the same way that Sprite markets excitement and urbanity, youth organizations should market values, too: positive experiences, powerful ethics and pragmatic outcomes should be at the core of the message. Only then will we not have to market to youth based on benefit; instead the programs designed to serve them will be as ubiquitous as Coke, and something that all young people expect in their lives.

Lesson Two: Keep Youth On Board. First off, let me say that YOUTH ARE NOT YOUR CUSTOMERS. They are not buying anything, and no, they are not consuming your programs. Consumption implies that they have no role in the development, production or re-invention of whatever you're marketing. Young people must have a greater role than that. The way to keep youth involved is by treating them as equal members in your activity, program or organization. Create opportunities for them to lead and grow through your activities. Engage young people in program research and planning, administrative leadership, facilitating and training other young people, evaluating activities and organizational governance. Make open communication and intergenerational transparency the norm in all of your activities. Young people can feel the investment your organization is making in them when they receive quality training and support throughout your activities, and when they have meaningful opportunities for reflection and evaluation. Only then will they want to stay involved, and for a few different reasons, the primary among them being the feeling of being involved. Experiencing power feels like everything else; sharing it feels like nothing else, because there are so few places in our society where that actually happens. Make it so.

Lesson Three: Engage Youth as Recruiters. Maybe the most important method anyone can employ to recruit young people is to actually engage children and youth as recruiters. My experience has consistently shown me that young people are more consistently more effective at recruiting other young people than adults are. Its seems so logical, because young people know how to relate to their peers and how share the issues with them in ways we don't. They also know where and when to reach them. Make sure youth recruiters have all the information about your program you can give them, including information about sustainability, your program or organization, and the expectations and outcomes of activity. Every recruiter should be able to tell young people why they should get involved, who else is going to participate, whether there is going to be food, and how many people will be coming. Practice recruiting before doing it. That includes going over the approach, the message and the wrap-up.

There are a lot of other important considerations, too, and this is just a start. Let me know what you think are some other things to think about!

A few days ago I excitedly shared links to a great new TV show about Summerhill School in the UK. A great recent ally of Freechild, Margaret, shared some wonderful reflections as well as her reaction to the show: Just like me, she watched every episode in a row! Its that good.

But why Summerhill and the focus on it? Entering my eighth year of working in schools promoting student voice, I am confident to share that there are a lot of reasons, but they boil down to this: Summerhill is real. Rather than a half-boiled conception of what youth could do, instead of a compromised perspective of what society could be, more than 80 years ago A.S. Neill built the foundation of a wonderful place built on absolutism, just like public schools, only opposite.

Instead of telling students what they can do and what they can't, instead of instilling an idea of what you should learn and what you shouldn't, Summerhill is a complete environment that embraces the student's conception of learning from the ground up. This type of freedom exists in few other places around our world, and it is fantastic that Summerhill has been able to carry through this vision in its most genuine, most absolute form.

Do I think Summerhill is for every student? Surely not - but every student should be able to choose that form of schooling as an option. Do I think there are problems in the Summerhill model? Maybe. I just listened to a Lupe Fiasco song where he says, "Wings don't make you fly and a crown don't make you king." That reminds me that having a voice doesn't make you heard, and I am afraid that a Summerhill experience might program students to expect that experience of radical democracy everywhere they go. Maybe that's a problem.

But overall, I deeply admire everything inherent within and throughout the school. If you want to read more about Summerhill I would suggest you start at their website, much of which Zoe Redhead has written herself. Then check out the Wikipedia article about the school - its growing nicely. There are also several books about the school. Did I mention the television show?

“Education should not be the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a flame.”
– William Butler Yates

In the early 1800s it was common for non-enslaved Blacks in the United States to take the last name “Freeman” as a testimony to their freedom. Since that time young people have become bound by the ongoing structuring of society, through school, afterschool programs, church activities, and family life. These shared legacies led a group of Olympia-based youth activists and allies to create a new youth empowerment resource organization called The Freechild Project in April 2001. Today, Freechild is an internationally-renowned advocacy organization.

Our mission is to advocate, inform, and celebrate social change led by and with young people around the world. The organization serves as a not-for-profit learning space, think tank, resource center, and advocacy group that facilitates networking, training, resource-sharing, and technical assistance for young people and youth-serving organizations around the world.

By establishing a network of local and national organizations Freechild has reached tens of thousands of young people and their adult allies around the world. We have created dozens of unique publications, resource databases, and popular education workshops that promote children, youth, and adults working as equal partners in democratic social change.

Freechild believes that as a collective body within a global community, children and youth around the world are subject to segregation, alienation, and injustice without parallel. Further, as members of distinct ethnic, racial, and socio-economic groups, many young people suffer unequalled oppression as the targets of genocide, hunger, and war. It is no wonder that in these times when the health of democracy is sacrificed for commercial gain and familial vendetta, many people find it hard to have hope. When Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke of the “World House,” it is almost certain that he didn’t intend for children and youth to inherit a decrepit house, slipped from its foundation, stripped of its siding, plastered with billboards, and crumbling apart inside.

What is that slipped foundation upon which the World House is built? Is it a higher authority charged with morality and righteousness, or a man-made composite of economy and education, government and military? The Freechild Project believes that it is Community, that common connection of diverse people for a collective purpose. The citizens of modern communities tend to neglect or deny that collective purpose; worse still, many people deny that young people have any purpose at all.

Popular culture seems to exacerbate this situation repeatedly by constantly railing against youth. While corporate marketing to children and youth infiltrates every facet of our culture, movies simultaneously glamorize and degrade the collective image of young people today. Two recent books summarize young people today as The Scapegoat Generation, and as “The Abandoned Generation,” while a popular website portrays them as a shapeless, placeless, and an unknowable “Fluid Generation.”

Other culprits to perpetuating negative stereotypes about youth include politicians and government officials who continually attempt to pin vandalism, loitering, and other crime on young people. It is ironic that this demonization actually benefits, and is sometimes perpetuated by, the very nonprofit agencies that purport to provide prevention and intervention programs for young people. Finally, in this period of federally-mandated and locally-supported standardized testing, it is of little surprise that children and youth themselves are often blamed for the failures of the education system. This, despite the reality that most students never have the actual opportunity to make significant decisions or advocate for what is important to themselves in schools.

Demonstrating the wisdom of youth, one young leader recently said, “I’ve never met an apathetic young person, [but] I’ve met a lot of hopeless and discouraged young people, who think that they are not big enough to change things.” This assessment summarizes the raison d'etre of dozens of youth-driven groups in Washington today. Benefiting communities across the state, young people and their adult allies are working together to engage children and youth as social justice activists, action researchers, community planners, popular educators, democratic decision-makers, and as empowered advocates as never before. They are calling for the knowledge, experience, ideas and opinions of young people to get heard now, for their own benefit and for the benefit of democracy.

The issues that young people are addressing across today are as diverse as the children and youth who are engaged. Coming from every walk in society, young people are addressing issues of economic injustice, racism, education reform, sustainable agriculture, disproportionate incarceration, affordable housing, gay youth rights, lowering the voting age, homelessness, among hundreds of topics. Their action is sophisticated, appropriate, and increasingly sustainable; by creating media, joining community boards, distributing foundation funding, creating global technology networks, activating the hip hop community, and politicizing traditional youth programs, young social change agents are radically transforming two pillars of society’s treatment of children and youth: namely, adults’ expectations and the role of young people in democracy.

It is said two different people will rarely interpret a master’s art the same way. Social change led by and with young people usually has the same effect. Some adults scoff at children and youth who lead action, declaring their actions idealistic and simplistic, while many others maintain the standard of ignoring their contributions totally. Some see young social change agents as anarchists and rebels, while others see them as peons and kiss-ups. Fortunately for our society as a whole, still other adults proclaim that engaging young people is a matter of effectiveness, civil rights, youth development, and ultimately, ensuring democracy.

The benefits to democracies around the world are innumerable. Social change led by and with young people provides individual children and youth with important opportunities to experience and impact democracy first-hand; allows adults the chance to relax and learn from young people by working with them, instead of for them; and it gives our communities hope by developing lifelong expectations and opportunities for everyone. One of those expectations is that there are communities worth living in for everyone, including youth. One of those opportunities is that democracy needs to be constantly reinvigorated through social change.

In his last book before he was assassinated, Dr. King, wrote,

"One of the great liabilities of history is that all too many people fail to remain awake through great periods of social change. Every society has its protectors of status quo and its fraternities of the indifferent who are notorious for sleeping through revolutions. Today, our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change."

I truly believe we're standing on the edge of one of those great periods. Activists, educators, youth workers, young people, and all people must stay awake and vigilant to the challenges facing society today. The need to strengthen democracy has never been greater, and the resources have never been so limited. Communities can no longer afford to ignore the power of children and youth, either morally or fiscally. As Henry Giroux writes, “The stakes have never been so high and the future so dark.” Young people provide light in that darkness – let’s encourage their flames to grow.

I [heart] Summerhill. If you don't know, Summerhill School is located in the United Kingdom. It was started in 1921 by A.S. Neill and has become a role model for democratic education and youth power around the world.

Following are episodes from the UK television show entitled, "Summerhill." It dramatizes the school's struggle to stay open in the face of government pressure to conform to standards. I hope you enjoy the show and the lessons it embodies, and I'd love to hear what you think.

• Episode 1 Part 1
• Episode 1 Part 2
• Episode 1 Part 3

• Episode 2 Part 1
• Episode 2 Part 2
• Episode 2 Part 2

• Episode 3 Part 1
• Episode 3 Part 2
• Episode 3 Part 3

• Episode 4 Part 1
• Episode 4 Part 2
• Episode 4 Part 3

Special thanks to Sue Dolamore from LIFE of Central Florida for forwarding these!