Brown, Biddel and Tappan (2022) in the book “Trauma-Responsive Schooling: Centering Student Voice and Healing” assert, “Schools that wish to do trauma-responsive work well quite simply, need to include children as partners. Such work is, by its very nature, unsettling to the way things go. It requires humility, flexibility, improvisation, and openness to learning and change. That’s because healing depends on genuine relationships, which, by definition, are responsive and unpredictable. In short, such schools will need to evolve” (p.6). The authors point to what Heifetz (1994) considers an adaptive challenge, adults' willingness to share decision-making responsibility with students. Lyons and Brasof (2020) concur, stating “As scholars and practitioners seek to understand the logistics of implementing organizational mechanisms to support student voice in schools, research should consider the relevance of adult mindsets toward student voice initiatives” (p.367). In other words, do educators truly believe in the power of student voice? Are they willing to set a place at the decision-making table for students as true partners?

Informal student voice is also a powerful tool schools can use to address social-emotional challenges. “Research shows that creating the conditions for students to express their thoughts and feelings and to have some measure of control and agency over the circumstances of their lives reduces stress and enhances school engagement by increasing students’ sense of belonging, competency, and efficacy in school” (Brasof, 205; Cook-Sather, 2002 as cited in Brown, Biddle & Tappan, 2022). Student empowered social-emotional learning or SESEL as described by the authors creates a space for the organic expression of student voice. In the article “Student-Led SEL,” the authors make a distinction between traditional SEL programs, which are controlled by adults and SESEL, which is not a pre-constructed curriculum. In fact, SESEL considers the needs and concerns of students by being open to the organic emergence of student-created SEL activities. Whether through activities like “Somedays,” which allow students and adults to express a wish and work together to enact it or through “microadventures,” which infuse outdoor activities into the curriculum, students can play a meaningful role in determining the activities they engage in to support their own SEL.

In ”Letting Student Voice Lead the Way,” the authors who are co-directors of the Rural Vitality Lab, a collaboration between the University of Maine and Colby College “piloted and refined school-wide strategies for fostering student voice and empowerment in schools to promote mental health, well-being, and emotional healing” (Biddle, Brown, Tappan, 2022). The approach centers trauma-responsive schools as best achieved by building meaningful relationships with students. As the authors contend, “This requires that we listen to students and trust them as experts on their own experience and that we engage them as full and active partners in school and community transformation” (p.49). Perhaps the most powerful statement made by Biddle et. al. (2022) on the this topic is “To understand children's needs, particularly children who because of systemic injustice and inequity experience schools on the margins, we must create spaces and opportunities for them to speak about their experiences, to explain what isn’t working, to ask for what they need, and to share what excites them and nurtures them” (p.53).

In closing, CASDA is very interested in working with schools to place students at the center of efforts to address their mental health and social-emotional needs. Additionally, we recognize this work must also include examining the systems and structures within schools and communities creating and exacerbating social-emotional stressors linked to the interrelated challenges of poverty, equity, racism, trauma, absenteeism etc. In the near future, we plan to rollout a new service designed to work alongside educators, students, families and communities to co-design solutions through a holistic lens.