Encourage Student Self-advocacy
Overview
Actively and authentically encouraging all students to seek support, ask questions, and advocate for what they believe in creates a safe space for risk-taking and skill development and supports a Sense of Belonging. Fostering an environment for self-advocacy helps students to develop autonomy for their own learning needs and fosters identity development. Importantly, how students develop the skills needed to advocate, make good choices, and pursue their goals can be influenced by many facets of a student's identity, such as their race, gender, Primary Language, or disability status, as well as the intersection of these and other identities. Providing students with an inclusive learning environment that validates students for who they are can support them in understanding and advocating for their needs.
Example: Use This Strategy in the Classroom
Watch how these students become self-advocates for their learning as they share their strengths and challenges. By having a voice in their learning, these students develop greater awareness of what works best for them and how to advocate for supports they need.
Design It into Your Product
Videos are chosen as examples of strategies in action. These choices are not endorsements of the products or evidence of use of research to develop the feature.
Learn how products like GoSoapBox use anonymity to help students feel comfortable asking questions or for help. Students experience fewer barriers to showing that they do not understand something when they can ask questions in a more private manner.
Additional Resources
Additional examples, research, and professional development. These resources are possible representations of this strategy, not endorsements.
Factors Supported by this Strategy
More Teacher Modeling & Support Strategies
Teachers can support language development by using and providing syntax that is appropriately leveled (e.g.
Teachers support language development by using and providing Vocabulary that is appropriately leveled (e.g., using word wall words).
Content that is provided in clear, short chunks can support students' Working Memory.
Building positive and trusting relationships with learners allows them to feel safe; a sense of belonging; and that their academic, cognitive, and social and emotional needs are supported.
Teaching students how to label, identify, and manage emotions helps them learn self-regulation skills.
Teachers can help students understand that learning involves effort, mistakes, and reflection by teaching them about their malleable brain and modeling their own learning process.
Providing feedback that focuses on the process of developing skills conveys the importance of effort and motivates students to persist when learning.
By talking through their thinking at each step of a process, teachers can model what learning looks like.
Teachers sharing text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-world connections models this schema building.
Maintaining consistent classroom routines and schedules ensures that students are able to trust and predict what will happen next.
Reading aloud regularly exposes students to new and familiar vocabulary and texts.
Reading aloud books about skills children are learning provides another model for their development.
Providing students a voice in their learning is critical for making learning meaningful.
Wait time, or think time, of three or more seconds after posing a question increases how many students volunteer and the length and accuracy of their responses.
