Student Voices

At Thurgood Marshall, we want our students to be great readers, writers, mathematicians, and scientists, and have the capacity to create and to set their own goals for lifelong fitness. We are also preparing our students to be engaged citizens, with the skills to be leaders in their community. When we surveyed parents, staff, and students, qualities that you want to see developed in our students are Empathy (our focus this year), Curiosity, Self-Respect, Accountability, and Perseverance. One very important skill we want our students to leave Thurgood Marshall with at the end of Fifth Grade is self-advocacy, which touches on many of these qualities. We want students to be able to recognize a problem and be able to advocate for a solution. Developing skills for self-advocacy was a schoolwide goal last year. Ms. Matsui, our school counselor, worked hard to teach lessons at every grade level related to this goal. To facilitate self-advocacy, school adults do our best to listen when students bring problems or concerns to us.

One recent example of this is Fourth Grader, Penelope. She recently wrote a passionate letter to me about the need for more vegetarian options in school lunches. I forwarded this letter to Aaron Smith, Director of Nutrition Services, to see if he had any response for Penelope. He certainly did! Mr. Smith responded by coming to Thurgood Marshall a couple weeks later with a team of staff from culinary services. He met with Penelope to explain that he brought a sample vegetarian entrée for the whole school to try and wanted to get her feedback in particular. Penelope gave a thumbs up to the “Vegetarian Frito Pie,” and this will be added to the Nutrition Services menu. How exciting to see the difference our students can make when they use their voices! (And many thanks to Mr. Aaron Smith for being so responsive to our Fourth Grader’s request.)

In various years, we have had students advocate for school policies to be changed. The requests have included longer recesses, different game rules, adding an Enrichment class, celebrating Pride Day, and holding a march to bring awareness to the environment. Our staff works hard to hear student concerns, talk through them, and make changes when it is possible. Some other Fourth Grade students, including Derek Bader, Juliette Jones, and Otis Woods, asked if they could lead the effort to plant more trees on our playground. There is a whole process to go through in order for this to happen on district property, and our conversations about this have developed into a SEM Class (Schoolwide Enrichment Model) on leadership in your community. There is now a group of students working on learning how to work through the district to plant trees, to plant a garden, to raise money for a cause they are passionate about, and more. These are students who are learning firsthand how to be engaged citizens as elementary students. Just think what they will be able to accomplish as adults!

Pi Night Pikus

Ate a pie

Now

Full of regret

Pi is good

Pi

Is bad to eat

Pie in face

Not

Neverending

Siliently

Count

All the digits

Bubbling

Up

Always one more

Pie…hmmm…hmmm

No!

Pi is  better

Pie no! No!

I

Don’t like pie (much)

What am I?

Oh!

Little circle

Lovely pie

Whoo!

Endless joyful

Eat a pie

they 

Are so tasty

Pies are round

Pi

Is infinite

I’m so sad

The

Pie is all gone