We have come to a time that students have been gradually recognized and accepted as purposeful, intentional, active, and capable individuals rather than simple recipients of instruction. Increasingly more schools and organizations have developed programs that advocate and promote student voice and research. In this episode, we highlight the work of the Center for Inclusive Innovation of Digital Promise.

The students speaking on the show were part of the League of Innovative Students (LOIS), a cohort of 30 high-school students from League of Innovative Schools member districts, representing a network of more than 150 forward-thinking school districts in 38 states. These students were invited to conduct research on top equity challenges for Digital Promise’s Challenge Map. Each one of them identified an education equity challenge that was prevalent in their respective school communities and conducted research to gather additional student perspectives about the challenge. They will share what they learned from their research, including the ideas they gathered from their student peers for how to address some of the most common challenges in education. They are:

Hailey Godin, San Ramon Valley Unified School District
Julia Aguas, San Ramon Valley Unified School District
Kaonna Hyacinthe, Richland School District 2
Nethra Dhamodaran, San Ramon Valley Unified School District

Briza Diaz of Digital Promise will accompany the students. Briza Diaz is an Education Researcher at Digital Promise’s Center for Inclusive Innovation, where she works on program evaluation and development. Her experience in different aspects of education has culminated in her current work to further education equity and stakeholder voice in education. One of Briza’s projects includes the Challenge Map, which was created to communicate shared challenges that districts across the country are addressing in order to surface promising solutions. The map aims to gather solution ideas to top education challenges from the perspectives of different members of school communities, including students, teachers, school and district leaders, parents/caregivers, and community members.