Publications on Student Activism

TOOLS for Student Activists

Learn how decisions are made in schools Students aren't the only ones making choices, and you can't change schools alone. See who else is involved.

Demand more of your school Simple tips that you can use from thinkMTV.

Create a petition for your education highlighting what YOU think needs changed in schools.

Create a student action proposal [PDF] NetDay asks "Are you planning to work with adults?" and then provides a tool that might help.

Consider this [PDF] NetDay offers tips about important considerations when you want to change your school.

Make your own media The Freechild Project offers a collection of examples and resources of young people creating media focusing on school and social change.

Write letters to education officials and politicians Letter-writing is one of the most effective tools for political action. This site lists a comprehensive guide for successful creating and executing a letter writing campaign.

Get your message to policy-makers This site concisely lists the most effective tips for communication with policymakers.

Learn how to mentor your teachers This site has really good tips and suggestions on how you can mentor your peers, younger students, and your teachers.

Guide to Getting a Student Representative on Your School Board Written by a student who lobbied his school board to involve students, this guide is a step-by-step for interested students.

How-To Evaluate Your School Specific tools developed by students and adult researchers designed to measure student learning, teacher performance, school climate, student voice, and several other factors in school.

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GUIDES for Student Activists

How-To start a student-led action campaign [PDF] Important tips and how-to's for starting your own action campaign.

Empowering Youth for School and Community Change [PDF] A guidebook from a campaign that engaged students and adults as partners to change schools.

Co/Motion: A Guide to Youth-Lead Social Change This guide is a comprehensive resource aimed directly at young people attempting to make a difference in their schools, communities and in society at large.

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STORIES about Student Activists

Student Activism Success Stories Stories collected from across the Internet about the effects and impacts of student activism for school change. Includes more than a dozen organizations from across the U.S.

Student Activism on the East Coast

Student Activism in the South

Student Activism in the Midwest

Student Activism in the Southwest

Student Activism on the West Coast

Students Push for Equity in School Funding Alabama students fight to save their small school from consolidation, Ohio students rally at their state’s capitol, and a government class in Poughkeepsie, NY throws itself into that district’s school budget deliberations.

Young Organizers Mobilize to Change Their World, Starting with School This web-based collection features two experienced youth organizing groups working to improve their schools, an interview with a veteran youth organizer, an annotated directory, and new research on the power of youth organizing.

Youth Action for Educational Change Details about a Hill briefing in Washington, DC, on student activism for school change.

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HISTORICAL PUBLICATIONS about Student Activists

Port Huron Statement The most often cited document from 60s activism. Provides a thorough analysis of how schools are structured to promote authoritarianism and how they should be formed as engines to promote democracy. (1962)

We’re Not Grinning Anymore An essay exploring the oppressive nature of schooling. (1970)

The Student Movement: Where Do You Stand? An exploration of different adult perceptions of student activism. (1971)

Students for a Democratic Society The foremost student activist group of the 1960s, often cited as the motivator of the "hippy" movement. (1962)

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OTHER MEDIA about Student Activists

Student Voices 2002 WGBH 89.7 went behind the scenes with Boston YWCA's Youth Voice Collaborative to produce "Classroom Voices: Teen and Teacher Radio Diaries." The series explores the first-hand experiences of Boston public school students and teachers in the midst of education reform. These radio diaries are from 2002.

Student Power!: Organizing For School Reform This In the Mix program chronicles the struggles and accomplishments of several student-run organizations who are turning their passion into power...and making school reform happen in their communities.

REPORTS about Student Activists

An Emerging Model for Working with Youth: Community Organizing + Youth Development = Youth Organizing Prepared by the training and support organization LISTEN, Inc., this paper explores the influences of community organizing and youth development on youth organizing; describes a continuum that identifies different levels and models of youth engagement; and outlines the fundamentals of youth organizing: its processes, guiding principles, practices and impacts.

Youth and Community Organizing Today This paper, prepared by journalist Daniel HoSang, traces the history of youth involvement in 20th- and 21st-century social change efforts and examines some of the major organizations, themes and trends in this burgeoning, but nascent field. The paper explores characteristics common to youth organizing and three primary issue areas around which youth organizing efforts are focused: public school reform, criminal justice, and environmental justice.

Youth Organizing: Expanding Possibilities for Youth Development Scholar-activist Shawn Ginwright discusses the nexus of youth development and youth organizing, and the promise of youth organizing in yielding both individual transformations and social change. The paper examines how processes unique to youth organizing have pushed and broadened youth development practices to include a deeper analysis of issues such as inequality and discrimination and their impact on the development of young people and their communities.

Annotated Bibliography on Youth Organizing Drawing upon the fields of youth development, community organizing and civic engagement, Social Policy Research Associates compiled this compendium to centralize information about the existing resources from and for the field of youth organizing. This appendix presents a digest of research and reports, reflections from the field, and youth organizing curricula and toolkits.

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REPORTS for Student Activists by Region

More Than Service: Philadelphia Students Join a Union to Improve Their Schools Provides details about the formation and operation of one of the first student-led activist organizations in the US focusing on improving education.

Taking Democracy In Hand: Youth Action For Educational Change in the San Francisco Bay Area This report highlights the accomplishments and growing wisdom of ten Bay Area youth organizing groups. It also sketches how their work builds, step by step, capital and capacity among participants; why youth-adult partnerships are important; where dots are being connected (between issues, between strategies, across races) and where they need connection (between youth and adult school reformers).

West Coast Story: The Emergence of Youth Organizing in California Researcher Ryan Pintado-Vertner analyzes the emergence and practice of youth organizing amidst California’s bellwether politics and culture and the immense geopolitical and cultural diversity of its sub-regions – Los Angeles, San Diego, the San Francisco Bay Area and the Central Valley.

A New Generation of Southerners: Youth Organizing in the South Authors Charles Price and Kim Diehl illuminate the physical isolation, entrenched fear and patterns of discrimination that have stalled community-building in the South, alongside the region’s growing diversity, cross-generational bonds and rich resistance traditions on which youth organizing is now building.

At a Crossroads: Youth Organizing in the Midwest Organizer Melissa Spatz challenges the notion of a homogenous Midwest, to map the contours of a growing and increasingly varied youth organizing field in and beyond Chicago.

Traditions and Innovations: Youth Organizing in the Southwest Daniel HoSang transports readers to a Southwestern landscape—beautiful and culturally rich on one hand, and historically oppressive and contentious on the other—to reveal youth organizing that draws heavily on tradition, yet is boldly innovative in its approaches.

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