Students Speak Out: How to Make High Schools Places Where They Want to Learn

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For many students, memories of remote instruction during the pandemic are now as blurry as a hazy background on Zoom. But the impacts are ever-present. One study found the rate of students chronically missing school increased so much that it will likely be 2030 before U.S. classrooms return to pre-COVID norms.

Solving chronic absenteeism involves tackling big structural problems like transportation and infrastructure. But we also have to make our schools places where young people want to learn. Too many teens, in particular, had negative feelings about school even before the pandemic. Yale researchers conducting a national survey of high school students found most teens spent their days “tired,” “stressed,” and “bored.” Fewer than 3 in 100 reported feeling interested while in school.

Decades of research prove that students learn more when they experience high levels of academic engagement and social belonging in school. That’s why XQ developed Design Principles grounded in the science of teaching and the importance of cultivating caring, trusting relationships within schools. These principles are being used to rethink the traditional high school experience in schools and districts across the country to make learning more relevant and engaging for the needs of this generation.

Our partnerships are still new. But so far, we’re finding graduates from our first 17 schools have more interest in their classes and a stronger sense of belonging at school than their national counterparts. More than three-quarters of the XQ class of 2023 — which includes 17 high schools — said they were at least somewhat interested in their classes. And 52% of the XQ class of 2023 felt like they belonged “completely” or “quite a bit” at their school, versus only 40% nationally.

I spoke with four students from XQ schools across the country to hear what makes a difference in creating high schools young people want to attend. They are: Evan Bowie, Class of 2024 from Ron Brown College Preparatory High School in Washington, D.C.; Karisse Dickison, Class of 2024 from Elizabethton High School in Elizabethton, Tennessee; Henry Montalvo, Class of 2025 from Círculos in Santa Ana, California; and Lillian Roberts, Class of 2024 from Brooklyn STEAM Center. 

Create Bonding Activities

Círculos has fewer than 200 students, but Henry Montalvo didn’t know most of them when he started there as a ninth grader. That small size helped him adjust to the Santa Ana high school, but he also credited bonding activities. One called Community Week provides an opportunity for students to celebrate, pause and reflect. Students create their own schedules based on available sessions. Montalvo said they may lead the sessions alone or partner with teachers for non-academic, fun classes on topics like putting on a thrift shop and even Pokémon card-collecting.

“It’s just basically a time to come together as a community,” he said of the most recent event this past spring. “Sometimes you write a letter to yourself, and then they give it to you at the end of the year so you can reflect on it.” 

Evan Bowie said teachers at Ron Brown College Preparatory High School, an all-male district school in Washington, D.C. that’s part of the DC+XQ partnership, also look for creative ways to help students bond. Students might be asked, for example, to stand or move their desks into circles and answer a question like, “What’s your affirmation today?” Or, “How was your weekend?” He said sometimes it can feel like you’re being put on the spot, but it works.

Bowie said if he answered with, “‘It was boring.’ They’d be, like, ‘You got to give a real answer.’” The upshot: “It just pushes the student to think a little bit better.”

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Seek Student Feedback

Check-ins like this can also happen more formally, as they do at the Brooklyn STEAM Center. The program takes students from several local high schools for mornings or afternoons, five days a week, offering them concentrations in career pathways including cybersecurity, design and engineering, filmmaking and more. Brooklyn STEAM Center is in the Imagine NYC partnership with XQ.

Lillian Roberts chose culinary arts as her concentration. She enjoys how teachers meet with students quarterly. She said they ask how students feel about their classes, which includes “the way they’re teaching, if you have any input.” There are also student-led town hall meetings where students can give feedback anonymously on “things that you might not feel comfortable with.”

Bowie said his teachers at Ron Brown College Preparatory High School also solicit feedback on a weekly or monthly basis, depending on the instructor. They’ll ask questions like, “What went well this week? What can I improve on? What ways can you improve your grade?” Bowie said students are also asked to rate the classes on a scale of one to five stars and provide suggestions for how to make a class better, such as including more hands-on activities or more Socratic seminars instead of written assignments.

Make Personal Connections

Elizabethton High School is located in northeast Tennessee, an area that has struggled for years with the loss of manufacturing and the opioid epidemic. It was selected as an XQ Super School largely because of its teens’ proposal for more student-centered learning to benefit the community.

Karisse Dickison, who graduated this year and is heading to college, described a close relationship with school librarian Dustin Hensley — who regularly talks to students about what they’re reading and their extracurricular activities. When Dickison helped start a group dedicated to ending gun violence, she said Hensley would ask her about related events in the news.

“It was just nice to have him reach out and make sure that I knew what was happening in the world,” she said.

Bowie also valued a personal connection with English teacher Teresa Lasley, who encouraged him to apply to Georgetown University, where he’s attending this fall. He recalled her showing the class a video about how Black students didn’t feel welcome at the prestigious school. When he spoke with Lasley, he said she told him he doesn’t have to work extra hard to prove he belongs. “Going to Georgetown means you’re adding more to Georgetown,” he remembered her saying. “It’s better for them than it is for you. You belong. You already have it in you.”

He said that exchange allowed him to “be seen,” and that he’s witnessed similar exchanges between other students and teachers.

At Brooklyn STEAM Center, Roberts recalled one guidance counselor who reached out after he saw her crying. “And then we set up weekly meetings just to have someplace to talk about what’s happening,” she said. But at her other high school, she thought guidance counselors seem to focus more on “purely more academic things.”

Leave the Building

Students at all four schools experience internships, work-based learning and partnerships with community organizations, which they said make classwork feel more relevant. 

Montalvo said teachers at Círculos helped him land internships at a congressional campaign and with a law firm. He said these outside experiences lead to presentations in class. At Brooklyn STEAM Center, Roberts earned an OSHA 10 as well as a New York Food Protection Certificate, and joined a class trip to Italy to study cuisine. 

Dickison worked on social media and advertising at a local nonprofit. Some classes at Elizabethton High include project-based learning, such as one in which students helped solve a cold case involving a serial killer (their work became the subject of the hit podcast Murder 101 this year). Círculos also offers project-based learning, which Montalvo said makes classes feel more interesting. In his first year, he recalled how he and another student in his English class interviewed local environmental justice experts about lead contamination and the lack of green space, then made a presentation to their school and invited the greater community.

All three students who graduated this year are going to college in the fall, and Montalvo plans to go to college after graduating next year; he wants to be a lawyer. In our senior survey, 72% of XQ students in the class of 2023 planned to attend college, illustrating a great example of students remaining engaged in school beyond their high school years. 

But a sense of belonging and engagement can only happen with student input. “School is about ‘with’ not ‘for,’” Roberts said. “Everything is with the students. It’s not for the students. You have to do everything with the students in mind.”

Disclosure: The XQ Institute is a financial supporter of The 74.

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