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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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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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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.
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