This week, CAST Schools Deputy Director Jen Maestas and I attended the Aurora Institute conference in New Orleans, where Jen presented CAST’s approach to youth voice and purpose-driven education along with our longtime partner nXu. At the conference, Author Rhonda Broussard shared her work as an interviewer had taught her that inquiry and curiosity were not sufficient, one must ask the right questions in order to engage in deep thinking, and intentionally create space for authentic responses.

This journey led her to write a book “One Good Question,” where she asked global thought leaders the question: “in what ways do our investments in education reveal our beliefs about the future of young people.”

The answers revealed much about the varied values and beliefs about the role of education as well as the value we place on young people in our societies, she said, but it was only after the book was published that she realized that she had not asked young people to reflect on this same question.

She sought to right that wrong with a panel of young people from New Orleans, her home, and a city that is unique in this country for upending its entire public school system to replace it with charter schools, a place with a rich history of activism and deep cultural pride.

It is an oversight that we at CAST find happens more often than not in systems that are in theory designed to serve youth. It is all too infrequent that youth are actually asked to comment, to share feedback, or to offer constructive criticism.

From this short panel, we learned that young people often gravitate towards spaces outside of school in order to experience real-world opportunities, or for the chance to engage in hands-on learning, places where they feel as though they are treated more as individuals or adults. They often feel as though there are no mechanisms to communicate to their teachers how they want to be talked to and treated. They feel like the contributions they can make to building stronger systems for young people often go overlooked.

We’ve wrestled with these insights as part of our school design at CAST, seeking to incorporate youth voice and choice into our processes, and to continually find places for feedback, and to genuinely listen to the students who inhabit our schools and give them life.

To close with the one good question of Edwin Coleman, a senior at Ben Franklin High School in New Orleans: “What routes will you as educators take and do differently to make it known that you care about students’ education and their futures?”

Jeanne Russell

Executive Director

CAST Schools