As a student of Holyoke High School I believe that our voices are important. What does it mean for a student to have a voice? From my perspective, for a student to have a voice it means they have the opportunity to express the values, opinions, and beliefs that they have. Taking away a student’s voice can have an effect on them as it closes their freedom and ability to speak up and have a choice in their school and community. When it comes to a student’s voice, listening to and acting on student thoughts, opinions, beliefs, preferences, interests, and perspectives helps us, as students feel invested in their own learning and community.

We as students have a lot to say when it comes to situations involving our school and our community. Our voices, opinions, ideas, interests, and perspectives are important in order to promote improvement. Giving students a voice promotes self esteem and self worth. By giving us, students, a voice through choice, opinion, feelings and emotions it gives a sense that we are important and what we have to say matters. I think that us students have a lot to say, we have good ideas and opinions to bring out that could really impact and improve things especially when it comes to our school and community. I’m an active student voice as I am bringing my voice out by doing things like joining the herald and student government. The Herald allows me to express certain ideas and topics from my perspective that include facts and my own opinion on the topic. Student Government helps me get involved in change for the school in order to improve it. These are things that I do to bring out my voice outside of the classroom as an extracurricular activity, but what about including our voices in the classroom?

Including students’ voices in a classroom and incorporating it in a class lesson is a good way to include students’ voices more. Doing things like giving students more chances to discuss more through class debates and discussions, allowing for creative expression through posters and presentations, Writing in their voices like what I do in The Herald, making lessons more relevant to students, lastly encouraging and listening to those who speak up. Including these ideas not only gives students the opportunity to engage their voices into a classroom while incorporating it into the class lesson, but it also gives teachers the opportunity to hear out students’ ideas, opinions, perspectives, and feelings about a topic. This can bring students’ voices out more in order to see improvement and change in an effective way.

In conclusion, I believe that our voices, students’ voices, are important as it gives a sense that we are important and what we have to say matters. A big way to give students the opportunity to bring out their voices is in the classroom, incorporating it into class lessons. Doing things like discussing in the class through class debates and discussions, including creative expression through posters and presentations, writing in their voices about a certain topic, making lessons more relevant to students, lastly encouraging and listening to those who are speaking up. Giving students the chance to bring out and share our voices promotes self worth through sharing opinions, feelings and emotions as we express the values, opinions, and beliefs that we have in order to improve and make change in our school and community.