T his month we heavily focused on student ownership and student’s voice during our classes. This means that during our group times we intentionally spent the class asking for student feedback, ideas, and activities the students were interested in completing together. This is important to us as we desire to model how we value each individual child by hearing directly from them and want them to learn how to do this with their peers as well. It is one of our core values in our middle school class.

After having much back and forth discussions about ideas and student input we decided to add in a cooking class weekly as well as some video game time as an incentive for completing homework and STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math) project.

We’ve enjoyed seeing the students build community through video games as they compete side by side instead of zoning out on their phones. We had our first cooking class this month where we made open-faced sandwiches with chocolate chip peanut butter and apple slices. We are looking forward to seeing more student engagement as we continue empower them.