On March 10, Mr. Swanson and several Bret Harte High School seniors will present a student project at the Small School Districts’ Association (SSDA) State Conference in Sacramento.
The project, “Assessing the State of Education,” was created in Mr. Swanson’s AP Language and Composition class when these students were Juniors. It started with a basic problem: students understood how to analyze rhetoric but struggled to see why it actually mattered. So, instead of studying another historical speech or text, the class focused on something immediately relevant—what feels broken about high school and what could realistically be improved.
What began as a short exercise turned into a weeks-long, 50+ page research project on public education in the U.S., ending with ten concrete recommendations for Bret Harte. Two AP sections completed separate versions and compared which was more persuasive.
Students presented their work to a curriculum committee and the school board, and several recommendations were implemented, including cell phone caddies, expanded course offerings, and a review of POND classes. The project and the process will now be shared at the SSDA conference as an example of what’s possible when student voice and real decision-making are taken seriously.
Student presenters are Brayden Bowersox, Jonathan Carter, Boek DePonte, Paulina Vallejo, Cheyenne Stephens, and Jayden Stone-Frerking.
Learn more about the SSDA at https://www.ssda.org. Questions can be directed to Mr. Swanson at jswanson@bhuhsd.k12.ca.us.