Summary: 7 Teaching Practices that Nurture Student Voice

Source: Gonzalez, Jennifer. “7 Teaching Practices that Nurture Student Voice.” Cult of Pedagogy, Sept. 28, 2025. 

In Cult of Pedagogy, Jennifer Gonzalez (2025) highlights how U.S. schools often overlook student voice, focusing instead on test scores, rigid curricula, and external measures of success. This has not only failed to improve achievement but has also deepened student disengagement, with nearly half of educators reporting worsened behavior since the pandemic. Gonzalez explores how the Street Data framework—developed by Shane Safir and Jamila Dugan—offers a different approach: slow listening sessions with marginalized students, iterative feedback cycles, and practices that elevate student agency. Their new book, Pedagogies of Voice: Street Data and the Path to Student Agency, co-written with educators Marlo Bagsik, Crystal Watson, and Sawsan Jaber, provides concrete strategies teachers can adopt immediately.

Four Domains of Student Agency

The framework organizes practices into four domains: identity, belonging, inquiry, and efficacy. Each offers actionable strategies that educators can weave into daily instruction.

1. Awakening Identity

To ensure students feel their backgrounds are valued, practices include:

• Identity Mandalas: Circular representations combining art and words to help students express ancestry, experiences, and self-concepts. Jaber emphasizes these as “below the iceberg” activities that go deeper than standard icebreakers.

• Math Autobiographies: Students share their experiences with mathematics—both struggles and successes—through writing, art, or video. By humanizing math, educators can help students reframe a traditionally intimidating subject.

2. Awakening Belonging

Belonging is fostered through simple but powerful structures:

• Circling Up: Arranging seats in a circle so every voice can be centered equally. Watson notes this is particularly effective in math classrooms, shifting the subject from isolated problem-solving to communal conversation and argumentation. Students feel seen, and learning becomes collective.

3. Awakening Inquiry

Safir emphasizes that curiosity has been stripped from classrooms. These practices reinstate it:

• Wonder Wall: Students create a visual wall of questions they are genuinely curious about. These can fuel journal entries, discussions, or projects.

• The Sort: Students categorize responses to prompts, from simple choices in elementary school (e.g., “What is good for kids?”) to complex debates in high school (e.g., “Who are the 10 most important figures in U.S. history?”). This approach empowers students to drive inquiry, articulate reasoning, and engage in critical thinking.

4. Awakening Efficacy

This domain centers on helping students believe they can make a difference in their communities. Bagsik highlights two complementary practices:

• Intention Mondays: Students set personal and academic intentions for the week, reflecting on what they can control. This builds ownership and connects classroom learning with students’ lived experiences.

• Reflection Fridays: Students reflect on the week’s learning, choosing significant moments and explaining why they mattered. This closes the loop, promoting metacognition and self-awareness.

Why Student Voice Matters Now

Gonzalez situates this work in today’s climate, where book bans, censorship, and political polarization are pushing marginalized voices to the sidelines. The authors argue that amplifying student voice is not only pedagogically sound but also essential for sustaining democracy. By teaching students to listen, challenge, and collaborate, schools can cultivate empowered citizens who see themselves as active participants in shaping society.

For educators, Pedagogies of Voice provides a toolkit of flexible, replicable practices rather than prescriptive mandates. Teachers can start small—with a circle discussion, a Wonder Wall, or an Identity Mandala—and gradually weave these approaches into the fabric of their classrooms. The ultimate goal is to create learning spaces where students’ humanity is honored, their curiosity is sparked, and their voices are amplified.

By centering student voice, schools can move beyond compliance and performance metrics, nurturing agency and authentic engagement. In Gonzalez’s words, teaching in ways that amplify student voice is the best antidote to disengagement and the strongest path toward meaningful school improvement.

Original Article

Source: Gonzalez, Jennifer. “7 Teaching Practices that Nurture Student Voice.” Cult of Pedagogy, Sept. 28, 2025. 

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Prepared with the assistance of AI software

OpenAI. (2025). ChatGPT (4) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com