The idea behind how we approach community partnership at the Center for Racial Justice has always been about asking the community what they need. We identified this, this, student voice idea, getting feedback from, particularly at-promise, multi-marginalized students and then being able to figure out how we integrate their voices into decision making.
We started just brainstorming ideas of how Stanford could support San Jose Unified. It was a conversation of, you know, two organizations near each other thinking about things that could be worked on together but weren’t necessarily in place. And so that led to this, this project of talking to students that, you know, are labeled at promise, meaning that they are coming to school, they’re not necessarily doing well, but they could give us some ideas of how we could improve outcomes for them.

Because we don’t get to hear the voice of students who are maybe at the 2.0, 2.25 grade point average level. They might not be involved in activities or athletics. They may have different feelings about schooling. They might not feel as connected, and so we really wanted to hear from them what’s happening at Gunderson to inform what we do to better serve them.

So Gunderson High School is located, I always like to say it’s close to Oak Ridge Mall. That’s the landmark that defines us, and it’s a beautiful campus. We have just under 750 students currently in grades nine through twelve. A pretty diverse demographic. We are one of six public high schools in San Jose Unified.
And I was like, okay. Who do I need to loop into this project that will make this happen? And there’s one person. Dr. Subini Annamma.

He said, I want to bring you in because I know that these are the young people that need to be focused on. And so to me that was really exciting. ’cause so often when we, even when we so rarely do we ask for student voice.
Young people who are at the margins of schools, who are not experiencing success can actually tell us most succinctly what is not working in schools. They can tell us most accurately because they’re the ones who are experiencing it and they know why.

The Law and Policy Lab was a vehicle for us to create the platform for students to register for our class and then take a class where then Subini and I would be able to work through lessons and think about what do they need to learn during this part of the class, and then how might we utilize the class as infrastructure to allow us to carry out this project.

We wanted to create an educational experience for students that would be meaningful for them, where they’d get training in qualitative research and get training in understanding the importance of centering and elevating student voices, but also get training in policy development and policy implementation, and what is it like to interact with decision makers and how do you kind of strategically work through that process of ensuring that they know and are supported in implementing a change that you’re recommending?

The first part is. We needed to figure out how we’re gonna capture student voices, and so this is Subini’s expertise.
For me, the idea of rigorous methods is just making sure that the adult voice, when we come in, we don’t like, oh, they must be saying this, and we put our words on top of it. So I’m constantly like, stay close to the data, make sure the young people’s voices are being heard. How do you do that? And teach them how to do that.

The research question that we attempted to answer was, how might at-promise students shape school and or district policies and practices to improve their own educational outcomes? And, so, the entire qualitative research data collection process is really focused around answering that question.

I think what initially drew me to the project was the ability to work with students that may have had similar experiences to me in high school. So being directly involved with them and having that one-on-one in person interviews, and I think building relationships with the students was huge. I think Stanford can be something really scary, especially for high school students who traditionally don’t get asked questions or don’t get given an opportunity to speak.

I was there the day that the Stanford students met the Gunderson students, and I was watching, and the Gunderson students were silent, and I kept thinking, how are they gonna get anything out of them? And they did. They were able to build relationships very quickly by listening and having natural conversations. And from that they were able to pull some ideas and the students felt heard.

I did one interview, one-on-one, which is really interesting, and just to see how the student was able to open up with me like very quickly. I admired that level of vulnerability so much, and the way that they were able to kind of share their story and trust me with it was really important to me.

To have that experience where we like had the interviews and then to be able to come back to the school to do our presentation. Having that student like run up to me and give me a hug. And then seeing that student again at the focus group and just realizing that we could build these really small, like relationships with students was really cool.
And so to remind ourselves that we are not the center. We don’t know everything. And in fact, we have a lot to learn from other, other people, marginalized people, I think is a super valuable lesson, and that’s a lesson that these students took up wholeheartedly and committed to so deeply. I’m hoping that that’s gonna really stay with them for the long time, but it’s very clear they took it up for this class.

We recognize that the burden of implementing some of these changes shouldn’t all rest on just the district and the school. They already have so much to do. In fact, that’s why they asked us to step in was they needed to build their own capacity to be able to figure out how they, you know, develop some mechanism to get feedback from at-promise students.

This is not just something that you have to figure out how to do on your own. We’re gonna figure out how to bring all these different entities across campus together to have this conversation with you, to have this conversation with us. They’re going to give us ideas on how to revise the work, but they’re also gonna talk to you about how they might be able to help you in moving some of these ideas forward.

Having today where we’re having this convening, where we have all these experts in the room who are all working with us to figure out how exactly we’re gonna implement the changes that the students have identified and make sure that they’re concrete and that they have, like, a long lasting effect, not only for the students who are there now, but in the future, is kind of my biggest hope for this project.

I am incredibly impressed by the people that realized the value here and knew that this was worth their time because this is important with the actual report, which is mind blowing. I understood what was happening, but the depth and the methodology and the thoroughness is just incredibly impressive.

This work takes years to do and somehow we’re able to do it in 20 weeks, which I still look back at and just think, wow, like how did we do that? And a lot of it is because of our students. And so really just acknowledging them and knowing that this work is not possible without them pouring their energy and heart into this work.

I just then didn’t have a ton of experience giving educational research presentations, especially to people who are like experts in the field. So I think it was very intimidating, but also an exciting opportunity to be able to, like, be in front of superintendents and, you know, other very high up educational officials, and I think today was an amazing day where we saw so much great ideation of what that policy could actually look like and be able to present what we heard from students to them, and hopefully do those students justice.

You know a lot of these kids have been through traumas, have experienced very hard situations in schools, but they were able to not only speak on them in a way that was just so confident and they knew that they could make a difference. And so what stuck with me was their ability to, despite the struggle, despite the hard things, to advocate for themselves.
And I feel like I learned from them in that way as well. Just that one, the struggle doesn’t define you, and two, use your voice when you can because it really does matter.

Over the past year, I’ve had the opportunity to work on five different research projects at various capacities, and this one absolutely stands out as being the most exciting, aligned with my personal values and goals for why I’m here.
This is actually what it feels like to potentially pursue research as a career, and it’s taught me that I really really enjoy it and wanna keep doing this work.

What I’m really hoping to come out of this project is to continue the collaboration with the Stanford Law School and the Center for Racial Justice, and to really bring in what I say is the human capital aspect, like bring in actual practitioners, educators, students who are working with the law school to help us implement some of the findings and put it into action.

How can we take a process like this and make sure that we have something that we’re doing in all of our high schools? Because we have leadership at all of our high schools, middle schools. How can we make sure that we’re looking at what our students need that are not necessarily engaged in that process?
So hopefully this leads to continued collaboration and opportunities to continue to build the capacity for the district to do great work and support their young people there.