Student-Led Ed: A New Era of Educational PD

In early June 2020, over 80 (mostly BIPOC) CPS high school students from a South Side school co-signed an email to the school's administration communicating hurt and frustration following the very public murder of George Floyd and subsequent civil unrest in Chicago, and what they perceived as few of their (mostly white) staff reaching out to offer them words of love, support, and affirmation.

The students were invited to a meeting with the principal and one of the assistant principals, and had space to share their concerns and anger. Had the email been sent out to all staff, it would have been polarizing and put many staff immediately on the defensive. It was important that our staff heard from our youth, but we didn't want their message landing on deaf ears.

The students ultimately decided they wanted to lead a Teach-In about antiracism and their experiences for our staff. They planned a morning and evening session with one of the APs and a teacher, and executed their professional development for staff with empathy, wisdom, brilliance, and research-based analysis. They decided they wanted to do more.

So the students then planned a student forum on Race and Unity for their peers. They ended up holding a morning and afternoon session, and even invited incoming students to the school. The event unified student voices and gave youth who felt voiceless a place to share their thoughts and feelings. 

In June, their AP came back to them with another opportunity: to present and use their experiences together to lead a professional development session to help school leaders and network leaders in CPS amplify student voice in their schools. The students and AP conducted two sessions to 100% positive feedback, some of which is included on our website's testimonials page. Adults were floored by student genius and the way in which our students conveyed urgency and actionable strategies people could take to support the most underrepresented voices in their schools.

While reading through the feedback the sessions had garnered, the AP realized that there weren't existing organizations or companies whose sole mission was to provide student-led professional development, despite many schools and school districts identifying student voice and agency as high priorities, and educator after educator touting the value of student-directed professional learning. And, Student-Led Ed was born. The AP who supported the students in creating these professional development sessions founded this organization, and the students who put in the leg work and inspired the organization will become most of the inaugural Student Leadership Fellows cohort in 2021. These same students will co-create the application that other students will use to apply to the cohort. Applicant focus will be on CPS juniors who receive free or reduced lunch and identify as either BIPOC or LGBTQIA+, as our organizational goal is to not only promote student voice and its power to change school culture, but to specifically uplift youth voices that are too often overlooked and silenced. 

Student Leadership Fellows will generally be part of a two-year cohort during their junior and senior years, with the exception of the founding students who will serve for one year.  All Student Leadership Fellows will work part-time for the organization creating and facilitating digital professional development sessions, and will receive a first-year stipend of $20,000 and a second-year stipend of $25,000, up to 100% of which students can choose to bank toward a 4-year, renewable college scholarship. We believe it is crucial to pay our Student Leadership Fellows a wage that represents the value of their voice, experience, and their labor. In addition, we recognize the need to provide holistic supports for students, so all Student Leadership Fellows will receive college and career coaching, life coaching and mental health support, financial education, and leadership and facilitation development- all free of charge. After their initial year, all of the original student leaders who helped birth the idea of the organization will be Honorary Advisory Board members for as long as they wish.

This financial goal will ensure that all of our founding Student Leadership Fellows can receive their stipends next year when we launch completely, and will purchase devices for students to create and facilitate digital professional development for our first year of operation. We will still need to raise additional funds for adding more Student Leadership Fellows, operational costs, and Executive Director salary, but the primary goal right now is to fundraise to ensure our youth are taken care of.

Since June, they have provided professional development to over 200 people with 100% positive feedback and zero financial reward. Our goal is to reach 2,000, free of charge, by this time next year. When we officially launch in August 2021, we will operate in a sliding scale capacity, but we never want to have to say no to a school that needs our support. We have filed our 501(c)(3) application, but due to COVID-19, processing is taking longer than usual, and most nonprofit grant applications require a 501(c)(3) to apply. Please help me make sure our youth get paid for their genius next year! We are immensely grateful for any donations you'd be willing to offer to help us launch and reimagine educational professional development and improve school culture across the country!

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