MASSP News Center

On October 8, 2007, 5 schools gathered to receive training on a great new school improvement program called RSVP: Raising Student Voice and Participation. The schools in attendance: Grayling HS, Grand Blanc HS East, Franklin (Livonia) HS, Milan HS and Hudsonville HS.

These schools spent a half-day in Lansing preparing to take back to their schools a program that will provide an avenue for student-led changes and school improvement. What’s so special about this program? It actually allows every student, yes, EVERY STUDENT in the school, to have a voice.

Raising Student Voice & Participation (RSVP) is a new student engagement program sponsored by the National Association of Student Councils that can be easily integrated into student council programs. RSVP has been developed as a means to involve and empower students to identify issues in their schools and communities and to take steps to address and resolve them. In RSVP, student council leaders are involved from the initial phase of planning and facilitating student summits that engage entire student bodies, to assembling student action teams that will carry out plans for resolving those concerns identified in the summits.

The RSVP program is anchored in the vision and beliefs of the National Association of Student Councils. It also supports the NASSP report Breaking Ranks II: Strategies for Leading High School Reform by providing principals with a way to utilize the leadership of their student councils. Students trained to run the RSVP program in their schools will use NASC-identified leadership skills necessary to successfully facilitate student summits and manage civic action initiatives.

Purpose:

• The RSVP program will give student council leaders the training and resources to:
• Reach out and engage all student populations in civic-based activities
• Facilitate student summits that will identify significant issues that students wish to address through dialogue and civic action
• Extend leadership opportunities and positions to non-elected students on student council-led initiatives
• Establish a process and framework for developing and implementing student-led action projects to address issues
• Assist principals in identifying and recruiting non-elected students to serve on various school committees

At-A-Glance:
The RSVP process begins with student leaders being trained as facilitators. They then host a series of student summits where any member of the student body can speak up and share issues and concerns about school and community.

Through the summits, the student body identifies its three top issues that the leadership team uses to form civic action plans. Those plans are presented to the school administration for approval and then finalized for presentation to the student body. From there, student leaders recruit interested students to assist in implementing the civic action plans.

Throughout the process students learn about the power of voice and the skills necessary to plan and work together towards making a positive change.

Watch for future RSVP Trainings throughout Michigan!