When a rural school in Washington’s Yakima Valley held a student listening session, one 5th-grade participant surprised everyone. Although chronically absent, on this day she arrived early and chose a seat at the front of the room. Throughout the session, she was clearly enjoying herself. She confidently shared her thoughts and even began calling on other students to share. By the end of the session, she asked if any other students in the room were Native American like her. One student raised her hand, and the two shared stories about their tribes, rituals, and the fall salmon migration. For these students, the session became a space where they felt seen and valued.

When students are invited to share their experiences in ways that feel safe and meaningful, their sense of belonging and engagement grows. Student belonging has been defined as students experiencing supportive, accepting, and respectful relationships with others in the school community (Goodenow & Grady, 1993). Belonging is associated with a wide range of positive outcomes, including improvements in school attendance, graduation rates, motivation, social well-being, classroom behavior, academic self-efficacy, and happiness (Allen et al., 2018; Jackson et al., 2020; Porter et al., 2023). Sadly, a recent study found that almost 40% of U.S. high school students do not feel connected to school (Wilkins et al., 2023).      

At the University of Washington Center for Educational Leadership (CEL), we provide student-centered, contextualized professional learning for leaders from the central office to the classroom. One of our professional learning initiatives, Leading for Student-Centered Schools, aims to break patterns of disconnectedness within schools. In this program, school leaders are invited to examine how their lived experiences and ideas influence leadership; practice deliberately listening to students, particularly those who are often underserved; develop analysis skills that encourage deeper listening; and craft a collaborative vision for student engagement and belonging moving forward.

Professional learning that builds student belonging

Many leaders have not intentionally learned how to listen actively to students; others have forgotten the importance of doing so since leaving classroom-based roles and moving into administration. Our sessions help leaders observe listening practices and reflect on their practice so they can elevate student voice and strengthen understanding between leaders and students.

One of the hallmarks of our professional learning is a structure that makes the practice of listening public. We invite leaders to listen to and observe a student focus group in a fishbowl style. Session participants observe as a facilitator guides students to share their perspectives. Then, leaders consider what they heard and learned about their own listening practice and draft potential next steps. Initially, these next steps tend to be structural; for instance, the critical act of making time on a busy calendar for listening to students. Over time, we hear leaders become more sophisticated in their reflection and next-step planning, including noticing their own biases and tendencies, such as jumping into problem-solving mode or getting defensive.

We then guide leaders through selecting their own focus groups of students — typically those who are often unheard or least engaged in school — to better understand their unique experiences. Because we know adults need opportunities to reflect on new practices as they learn them, we coach leaders as they try the listening practices themselves, and we help them reflect on how their mindsets, beliefs, and technical listening skills are changing.

Tools that support intentional listening

We have found that simple, student-informed tools can help leaders develop a regular practice of listening to what matters most in students’ daily lives. We have created several tools that leaders can use in flexible ways, which can be found at k-12leadership.org/resources/.

Because it can be challenging for professional problem-solvers to suspend judgment and resist the urge to immediately fix, we developed a focused listening protocol to help school leaders slow down and truly absorb student input. This protocol guides leaders through important considerations such as how to intentionally select students and prepare them to participate, arrange seating to equalize status among students, set norms, and when/how to respond to what is shared.

To help facilitate student listening sessions, CEL guides leaders with the Student Experience Story Guide. Designed by students and for students, it provides a straightforward approach to hearing what students are experiencing at school and how they want and need school to look. The students who helped CEL develop the tool, many of whom typically have not experienced success in school themselves, emphasized that they worried adults would put the onus on them to complete a task rather than just listen to what the students had to say. Students consistently said that if leaders wanted to know how to make schools better, they should “ask us these questions and hear us out.” This tool now plays a key role in CEL’s professional learning as a scaffold for leaders to deepen their listening.

The Student Experience Story Guide helps leaders open conversations with students by asking about their best and worst days and the aspects that shaped them in both positive and negative ways or as “heroes” and “villains.” Answers can be surprising. For one student, the lunchroom might be their “hero”; for another, that same place might be their “villain.” While simple, these conversations can illuminate specific aspects of school that are and are not working for students throughout the day.

For example, in one Washington school district some students talked about the anxiety they feel around fire and lockdown drills. Students in one large southern district asked that classrooms have enough desks for every student, so they always feel welcome. In one small rural district, multilingual students asked for more chances to work in teams with their classmates and celebrate their cultures.

A student experience vision shaped by student voice

Equipped with authentic insights from students, particularly those historically underserved at school, we work with leaders to cocreate a shared vision for student learning and experience. Research shows that senior leadership teams are central to setting the vision, direction, and priorities of the school (Roffey, 2007). Without a clear vision for the school, general priorities and things like standardized test scores lead, leaving behind the social and emotional needs of the community. Leaders are more likely to prioritize and foster a school culture that values belonging and inclusiveness when they are dedicated to ensuring that each student can succeed (Roffey, 2007). The cocreated visions are used to guide everything from teacher professional learning and learning walk look-fors to parent and community engagement.

Student experience visions typically incorporate aspects of the same insights we heard from students across the nation who say they want to feel happy and proud at school, though local contexts and language vary.

For example, here are a couple of student learning and experience visions from a partner district:

• “[We] strive to ensure the success of every student by fostering strong, supportive relationships and enacting engaging and active lessons.”
• “[We are a] supportive and inclusive community where every student feels a sense of belonging, is actively engaged in learning, and knows they are valued, seen, and heard. Through meaningful relationships, student voice, and a culture of collaboration, we empower all learners to grow academically, socially, and emotionally.”

After listening to students, visions for student learning often include students having control over their own learning, opportunities to actively participate in class, and on-ramps to interesting, rigorous thinking and tasks. This aligns with research showing that a positive climate impacts student learning, and that the whole school community benefits when the adults at school share the responsibility of creating a positive learning culture (Allensworth & Hart, 2018).

Stories of success

In Albuquerque, elementary principal Desiree Earnest leads a diverse school with a high percentage of students receiving special education services. As the school moves toward a more inclusive model with special education students joining general education classrooms, part of our professional learning with leaders has been to ask these students directly what matters to them.

Through listening sessions, the special education students raised concerns such as overcrowded classrooms. This challenge could have easily been overlooked without intentional listening. We find time and again that explicit invitations to those students who often go unheard to share insights uncover priorities that leaders can act on to improve student experiences and foster belonging.

The Nooksack Valley School District provides another example. CEL’s years-long professional learning partnership has included analyzing research on student belonging and collective efficacy, practicing focused listening sessions across the schools, and coaching around active listening. As a result, leaders are taking the practice of listening to heart and learning more about themselves and their students.

Leaders in the Nooksack Valley were so inspired by this learning that they trained their teacher leaders on conducting student listening sessions. Before this training, 5th-grade teacher leader and team leader Tuli Candela was unaware of how she could listen differently. Through the professional learning, Candela learned to stop thinking about her response while a student was speaking and simply be present. Candela’s colleague, kindergarten lead teacher Phi Nguyen, said she didn’t know what she was missing until she slowed down and heard what the children were saying. Instead of asking, “What’s wrong?” when students have a moment of conflict, she now says, “Tell me what is happening.” This open-ended approach shifts how students answer so they explain rather than defend or blame.

Through the Nooksack Valley’s work of listening deeply to students, students’ words such as “I can make choices,” “I belong here,” and “I am important” guide the vision for student learning and experience. Leaders are using this student guidance to shape teacher professional learning so it’s not only focused on the curriculum but also supports students’ feelings of agency and belonging.

Returning to the Yakima Valley focus group where we began, leaders worried that the chronically absent students they selected wouldn’t show up. Not only did those students come, but their enthusiasm, including that of the Indigenous 5th grader who engaged her classmates, spoke volumes about how ready they were for the invitation. We have noticed this pattern across the country.

The invitation to share their stories started to shift everyone’s perspectives — students’ and adults’ — and increased the connections between students and educators. Anecdotally, principals noticed these students’ attendance improved.

When leaders make time to hear students’ stories, they transform both student engagement and their own understanding of what school can be. Seeing and hearing students is not a one-time event; it’s a practice that strengthens belonging, agency, and connection for the long term.