In May 2017, High Tech High Chula Vista hosted the “Bridge to College and Career Conference.” It was a conference for high school seniors, who would be graduating in less than a month. It featured panel discussions on making the adjustment to college, financial literacy, how to take part in study abroad programs, and more. It also had exceptionally good catering. And the whole thing, from the catering, to the speakers, to the scheduling, was run by a high school senior—Dayan Corral, a member of my advisory.

I was reminded of this because High Tech High Chula Vista just hosted a “CollegePalooza” for students. I got in touch with some of my old colleagues, and asked “Didn’t Dayan invent this?” They set me straight: Dayan’s event was a conference, not a festival, and it was in the spring.  And, yes, it was still happening. It had gone on hiatus at the height of the pandemic, but it came back last year, and each year it gets organized by a member of the senior class. Michelle Alderete, one of the college counselors at High Tech High Chula Vista, told me that the “financial literacy” panel continues to be a big hit, and last year they added a mental health panel in partnership with the University of California San Diego Department of Psychiatry.

After I talked to Michelle, I gave Dayan a call to ask what she remembered about it. She told me she’d recently taken a look at her emails and documents from that time, she has no idea how she managed to organize such a complicated event. She also told me that the office of the registrar at San Diego State University, where she works now, is implementing lots of things that she originally did at High Tech High Chula Vista.

I got to thinking about the conference because one of the requests we get most often from teachers is for resources to help with empowering students, and elevating “student voice” in the classroom. Now, I don’t want to make this sound too easy (it really isn’t) but Dayan’s conference is a reminder that sometimes the best way to empower students is simply to trust them, and get out of their way.

This issue is packed with student empowerment! Aneesa Jamal tells the story of a math teacher in India who turned her elementary math classes into extended discussions—with the result that a fourth grader developed her own original divisibility rule for the number seven! Sean Gilley shares a how he used a simple weekly survey to give students a say in how his class works, Joaquín Ramírez Ramírez discusses some students’ reluctance to adjust to a more free and open-ended way of learning, Kurt Wootton and Eileen Landay offer lots of techniques for building classroom community, James Fester shares some of the many ways teachers can collaborate with parks, Krista Galleberg empowers her students as readers, and Robert Kuhl reminds us that the most important component of any learning space is the relationships within it.

We’ve got teacher empowerment in this issue too! Sandra Park and Kate Hogan share how school districts in California are bringing too-often-siloed staff members together to tackle big problems, Aurora Kushner, Jonny Soto-Altrogge, and Julie Benns have a tool to help you diagnose what’s missing from your school improvement project, and Ben Daley is bringing everyone together.

But that’s not all! This issue also has a piece that I wrote myself! It’s about how if you really want to empower your students and bring radical democracy to your classroom there’s no better historical model to follow than (believe it or not) pirate ships!

Thanks for joining us!

Alec Patton

Editor-in-chief