Stories from Growing Leaders

Mimia, Elta, and Calin on determining our 2018 financial goal

I think the process for voting was a really great way to help with the class itself. Not only is Growing Leaders a cooking and gardening class, but it is a business class as well. Letting the students of the class decide the financial goal is a great way to have them learn how a business works and how we can improve it. The voting process was good because there was a strong equilibrium with everyone’s vote (including the teachers) because they were worth the same. It was a great learning experience.

-Mimia, 7th grade

In this process, I liked that it was democratic. I feel like if the adults chose I wouldn’t feel part of the business. The only difficult part for me was trying to talk to our representative about what he needed to say. I think that you should give the middle schoolers decision making power, but in moderation. For example, letting us choose this number made me feel way more involved with the company, but if we ran the school, there’d be trampolines and waterslides everywhere. That’s what I thought of this experience.

-Elta, 7th grade

The student led decision making went well because everyone worked to come up with a decision and we did it efficiently. The difficult thing was that not all people voted for something they actually wanted. I think letting us make decisions is good because then we can make sure all the ideas everyone has can get heard.
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-Calin, 7th grade

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