Trusting Students to Lead: Promise and Pitfalls

Abstract

This story captures the tensions that existed when a small charter high school attempted to provide powerful leadership opportunities for students who had few. It details the process and outcome of offering students leadership roles in designing and implementing a student-led discipline committee. In the process, much changed at the school. The student committee conceived of discipline problems not as psychological shortcomings of students but as social problems with roots in the family, the school, and the larger society. Students structured new approaches to discipline and used new tools in discipline cases. This story tells of the struggles, resistances, and learnings involved. Over the course of the year, we found that leadership breeds leadership. Most importantly, this story provides a model for how to engage students in the discipline process and offers advice on what pitfalls to avoid along the way.