What are ways adminstration can listen to student voice?

Dr. Joseph Williams III is a K12 leader, who currently works as a high school principal with Seattle Public Schools. He has 20+ years of PreK-12 experience, including 10 years as a special education teacher and 13+ years as an assistant principal and principal at the elementary and secondary level. He has earned multiple university degrees, including his doctorate degree in educational administration and MBA degree. He is certified as a teacher and administrator in the state of Washington, Missouri, and Georgia. As an African American school leader, Dr. Williams believes that all children should have an opportunity to get a quality education and have an amazing life!

In this episode, I interview Dr. Joseph a K-12 educator since 1994. I started off as a teacher and a coach. He taught for 12 years before becoming an administrator, and for the last almost 17 years he’s been a school administrator. 

He shares, “Students don't care how much you know until they know how much you care about them.” 

One way to create that for administrators is to make sure that they're visible and vocal.

Dr. Joseph gives an example of a student's voice by using a student advisory council, which is something that allows our students to have a voice to be able to come to him, he allows them to run that group and they're asking him questions, set the agenda, and bring up issues that concern them (what concerns us as adults might not necessarily concern students). He believes that it is very important to also make sure that everyone is represented in the group.

One very important thing he state was that there are student leaders in the building without a title, and those are the kind of kids we want on the Student advisory council. Also, he knows there are students who are natural leaders who might not be good role models for their peers because leading is not leading in a good way. So he challenges them to be a part of a group like the advisory council.

We talk about how pronouns were a challenge for him, but allowing students to engage with him and his staff brought about great learning and community.

He is big on the approach of taking it from both the administrative point of view and the student point of view.

Dr. Joseph is a big believer in being a facilitator of the learning environment. We challenge the issues teachers to have with cell phones - he states that teachers should incorporate the technologies so that the students stay engaged. He knows that it is important to embrace the technology that's out there. These kids are digital natives.

We talk about how imperative it is to build relationships with his educators. If we're truly educators. We don't need to stop learning.  We need to keep learning as well, just like we were teaching our students the same principles. It's very important for us to embrace we're still growing and we can't be stuck in 1995, 

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