Is it ever safe to say that there is no more room for improvement? Not in the eyes of Leyden principal Mr. Jason Markey and Bettendorf principal Mr. Jimmy Casas. In late October, twelve Leyden students and twelve Bettendorf students teamed up in a student exchange program to look at different aspects in each other’s schools, comparing and contrasting in an effort to make each school better. Mr. Markey stated, “I have been fortunate to be able to travel to several other schools the past few years, and I always take something away from each school that we could use to make Leyden even better. Knowing this is so valuable to my perspective as a principal. I knew if we could find a way to have our students visit another school that they would be able to take as much if not more to bring back to Leyden. I strongly believe the more connections we make the more it can inform our own improvement.”

As a participant of the event, I came away from the trip happy that Leyden has done a great job making improvements. But I also came away convinced that we need increased student voice and participation to foster more pride in and out of the school.

Currently, Leyden has a student leadership team that has a good student voice, but not good enough. Student voice is the individual and collective perspectives and actions of young people within the context of learning and education. This can include, but isn’t limited to, active or passive participation, knowledge, voting, wisdom, activism, beliefs, service, opinions, leadership, and ideas.1 The first problem with the team is that no one knows what the team is all about and who is on the team. The WSC Leadership team at Leyden is a group of 30 kids who come together to discuss the school and potential changes or improvements. . In November, the team goes on a trip to Addison Trail High School to meet with other teams within the WCS to learn how to be better leaders. The many students involved in this team are heavily involved in other clubs besides this team. This is helpful because they have the ability to talk to many other students that they know around the school to look for ideas, but there is no structured setting where all students would have the ability to give their ideas on what we can do to make Leyden a better place to go to school. The kids who do not already contribute ideas are either too lazy or don’t know where to share their ideas.

Students may think that the upper hand will not listen to their ideas because they are “just kids” and that their “ideas don’t matter,” yet the district is actually listening. The team has already brought up Turnabout and having Athletic P.E. as an honors class. So far, Turnabout has been brought back, but we are still working on bringing up new ideas to policy-makers this coming year, such as making spirit buses for away games. I, we, the students, are the ones who have to stay at Leyden for over eight hours a day, so shouldn’t it be set up the way you want it? Borrowing from Bettendorf, Leyden should ensure everyone has a say in the school by creating a program like R.S.V.P.(Bettendorf High School’s leadership/student voice program).

At R.S.V.P., all students are assigned to a classroom like an ACCESS, but it’s not just freshman year, and they don’t meet every day. They meet only when it is necessary. Here, students have the ability to talk about things that they would like to see things changed throughout their school and even their neighborhood. The talks consisted of topics from cafeteria food to even looking into creating a better mall or skate park nearby.

Leyden is looking into this program because it helps give everyone in the school a voice in a more structured environment. This program would give students the ability to have their input heard and possibly put into action. Even though the leadership team is already working very hard and coming up with lots of ideas, why can’t we have more? Why are we not having every single student in the school have the ability to speak their mind about how they think our school day should be spent?