About the Project

The Seattle Student Equity Project will focus on three themes:

• Equity and Race Relations Bringing communities together through open dialogue and honest reflection around what is meant by racism and the impact is has on our society and more specifically, students.

• Student Voice Engaging the perspectives and actions of young people in educational activities that partner students with adults to improve schools.

• Service Learning Combining powerful opportunities to help others with substantial classroom learning goals.

Every Student Equity Team will be invited to participate in a program that includes four components:

1. Ongoing Training for students and adults focused on each project theme in order to increase the capacity through knowledge-sharing and skill-building;

2. Student-Led Evaluations of student perspectives about equity and race relations in Seattle Public Schools;

3. Service Learning Projects that are designed, implemented, and evaluated by students in response to student-led evaluations, and;

4. Cross-School Collaborations through monthly meetings and training that encourage students to share experiences and brainstorm responses.

School Guidelines

Each school that creates a Student Equity Team is requested to...

• Commit to fostering school-wide culture that meets the goal of the project
• Attend training events and meetings
• Conduct student-led surveying and service-learning projects
• Meet on an ongoing basis to plan, implement, and reflect on their projects
• Develop reports and/or presentations of project findings and outcomes
• Share findings and outcomes to school and/or district

Each team should be made of at least:

• One adult who students identify as an "ally" who is an administrator, a teacher, a parent, or a support staff from your school who can participate equally with students in all activities;
• Five non-traditional and traditional student leaders representing the demographics of your school, likely from 10^th and 11^th grades, who can participate in regular events
• Any number of students and adults who can commit the time needed to complete the project (approximately 1 hour weekly).

Student Guidelines

Students cannot just show up and hope to get something from Student Equity Teams. Every student has a vital roles where they...

• Learn about the role of diversity in our schools

• Discover how students across the country are working to improve schools
• Evaluate other students’ thoughts and feelings about diversity
• Develop powerful projects that respond to real school needs
• Earn service learning credit for graduation

Students should come to all Student Equity Team events and...

• Be ready to identify great ideas and take great actions
• Be willing to participate as partners with adults in all activities, including school-based and district-wide activities
• Be able to fully participate in all school team activities as an engaged member

Ask Yourself...

• Are you a “nontraditional” student leader?
• Do you have an hour a week to change your school?
• Have you participated in MESA class, cultural clubs, ethnic studies courses, social justice clubs, community-based activities, etc?
• Are you in the 10^th or 11^th grade?
• Did you participate in the Spring 2006 Youth Summit.

You don’t have to fit that description – those are just ideas about students we would like to see on board!