Student Voice is an organization that--
it is in the name.
It really uses students from all over the nation
and gets their opinion on what's going on,
how they can take charge of their education and be a real--
make a place for themselves at the table.
Not just have it by a bunch of adults who obviously went
through and are involved with education, but by also
people who are experiencing it today.
A friend of mine graduated high school last year,
and he moved up to Washington DC for college.
And he kind of reached out to me this summer and said,
hey, I know you're really involved with education,
and I'm part of student council, and so
I'm always very much wanting to make sure
that everyone's voice is heard, everybody.
Kind of like gets their view seen.
And he's like, you know, my organization
that I'm involved with--
Student Voice-- is doing a roundtable discussion
with superintendent Molly Spearman this summer.
And so we're asking about 10 students from around the state
to come and kind of talk with her about education
in South Carolina right now.
Would you like to be a part of it?
And immediately I was like, of course.
Yes.
I actually got to hear superintendent Spearman speak
at Girls State this summer, and I had already
absolutely falling in love with her and just everything
that she kind of stands for.
And so getting to go and speak with her really
opened the door to Student Voice for me.
When I was at the roundtable with Superintendent Spearman,
we talked about school buses and safety in South Carolina,
and getting more availability for that,
because that's a huge issue.
And we also talked about standardized testing,
because this past year, there was a pretty big issue.
Our state is amazing at providing the opportunity
for students in their junior year
to take a standardized test that's paid for by the state
and done for them at their high school, which is amazing.
However, this year, we worked with ACT and a lot of schools
tried to do it online, and there was
a huge issue with that with buffering
and a lot of delays in the system.
And so kind of straightening that out and trying
to work with what if some students are an ACT student,
and some are an SAT student?
Because the tests are very different,
and we still want to be able to highlight
that for each student.
And a lot of the times, this test
can be really burdensome financially.
And so being able to offer either one from the state
at least once--
and so we were able to talk about that,
and actually it's going to be made available for either one.
So that's really exciting.
And you get to choose which tests you want to take,
which is huge.
So yeah, it was a really productive conversation.
I think it's important for students to speak up,
because we think differently.
We're currently experiencing education, and having--
being taught, and I think that the only true reflection
of that is by hearing exactly what the students are
going through.
And so if you don't speak up and say, hey, this is working.
Or hey, maybe we could take this a different way.
Maybe we could provide some solutions,
then it's going to be really hard to see
a change, or at least a change in the direction
that we think is important.
And so I think that's really important even to--
whether it's to be on student council
and go ahead and take charge of those leadership roles,
kind of like I have been very big on doing,
or to just talk to someone who is and say,
hey, this is what I'm experiencing.
Could you bring this up?
Could you see what we can do about it?
Let's work on this.
It's definitely a community effort
between all the students, and we have
to be-- we have to come together to see how we can improve,
instead of just griping and hoping things will change.