At Partners in School Innovation, we’ve spent over 25 years working alongside schools and districts to disrupt inequities that disproportionately impact students of color and multilingual learners. In Philadelphia, our work with the Middle Grades Success Network has been a multi-year effort to improve the number of students of color are on track in 8th grade and ready for high school success.

One of the most impactful shifts we’ve seen in schools moving toward more equitable practices is making space for students to be true partners in their learning. When students are not just invited to participate but empowered as co-creators, classrooms become more engaging, relevant, and effective.

That’s why, in this network, we’ve worked closely with schools to implement strategies that center student voices, like Cogenerative Dialogues (Cogens), a structured practice that brings students and educators together to collaborate and create real change.

Cogenerative Dialogues: A Powerful Tool For Building Relationships With Students Amplifying Student Voices

At its core, a cogenerative dialogue is a conversation; however, it’s not just any conversation. It’s a structured, intentional practice where students and teachers come together as equals to discuss what’s happening in the classroom, surface challenges, and co-create solutions. This approach is rooted in the work of Dr. Christopher Emdin, who emphasizes that for learning to be meaningful, students’ voices must be at the center. His research on reality pedagogy highlights that when educators listen to students' lived experiences and incorporate them into instruction, classrooms become places where students feel seen, valued, and empowered.

Our work related to cogens is also inspired by Zaretta Hammond’s work “Culturally Responsive Teaching & The Brain.” Hammond’s Learning Partnerships framework reinforces that student trust is built when educators share power, engage in active listening, and create space for students to shape their own learning experiences.

At Partners, we put these ideas into practice by working alongside educators to promote authentic engagement, increase rigor, and create the conditions where trust and student voice lead to meaningful instructional change.

A Closer Look: One School’s Journey Toward Centering Student Voices

At one Philadelphia middle school in the network, school leaders recognized an urgent need for change. They realized that more than half of their Black students were failing at least one core academic subject, and wanted to put plans into action that addressed this. Rather than making assumptions about why this was happening, we partnered with them to listen directly to students and understand their experiences.

How We Supported This School With Implementing Cogenerative Dialogues

Our Partners coaches worked side by side with educators to design and facilitate cogenerative dialogues, modeling the process while ensuring they were actively involved at every step. Together, we co-created the structure of these listening sessions, collaborated on selecting student participants, and guided educators in how to engage with and act on student insights.

By leading the initial sessions, we provided a hands-on learning experience, supporting educators with the tools and confidence to carry this work forward on their own.

Together, we set out to:

Use cogenerative dialogues as a tool for instructional improvement, ensuring student perspectives informed professional development and teacher practice.
Build stronger relationships between teachers and students by creating space for honest conversations and shared problem-solving.

At its core, this work was about increasing the percentage of Black students passing core academic courses by addressing the real barriers to their success.

A graphic with a testimonial from a Philadelphia middle school leader that states, "Partners in School Innovation has profoundly improved my work. Their guidance in professional learning and facilitating change ideas has transformed my practice." — **Image description:** This is a graphic featuring a testimonial from a Philadelphia middle school leader about their work with Partners. The quote states, “Partners in School Innovation has profoundly improved my work, helping me strengthen my equity-focused coaching and grow as an instructional leader. Their guidance in professional learning and facilitating change ideas has transformed my practice and deeply supported my school’s progress.”

How We Started the Cogenerative Dialogues

This process took shape through five steps::

1. Building a Culture of Listening

We worked closely with educators to shift their mindsets about student voice. Instead of thinking about students as passive participants, they were guided to see them as active co-creators in shaping learning environments.

This foundational shift helped teachers view students as collaborators in the improvement process, a principle supported by Hammond's work on learning partnerships.

2. Bringing in a Diverse Range of Student Perspectives

The school intentionally selected students from diverse backgrounds and academic levels to ensure every voice, especially those facing the biggest challenges, was included in shaping solutions.

3. Creating Interactive, Inclusive Spaces

Cogens weren’t designed like traditional feedback sessions. We used engaging protocols, like “voting with their feet,” a practice where students physically moved around the room to share their perspectives on key topics. Interactive elements like this and others encouraged honest, spontaneous responses and made participation feel natural, not forced.

4. Facilitating Honest Conversations
Since this was the school’s first round of cogens, they were facilitated by our Partners coaches. During these conversations, students were asked open-ended questions like:

What is the school doing to help you pass your classes?
What is the school doing to help you feel good about yourself?

Their responses highlighted gaps in instructional strategies and classroom culture that needed attention.

5. Unpacking Student Feedback to Make Meaningful Changes

Instead of simply collecting student feedback and setting it aside, we worked with teachers to analyze responses, identify themes, and turn insights into concrete actions educators could take. We shared the students’ feedback through quotes, videos, and thematic summaries. By modeling this process, Partners supported leaders in embedding student voice into their decision-making systems.

What We Heard from Students

Through these conversations, students surfaced clear themes that helped educators see their classrooms through new eyes:

They wanted learning to feel more relevant and more connected to their real lives and interests.
They needed stronger relationships with teachers. They wanted to feel that trust, respect, and care mattered just as much as the content.
They needed clearer, more supportive communication, especially during challenging moments.

Speech bubbles capture student feedback from cogenerative dialogues, highlighting their perspectives. For example, one bubble says, “Teachers get mad at us when no one knows the answer to a question. That doesn’t make you feel good about yourself.” — **Image description:** A collection of speech bubbles surrounds images of middle school students smiling and engaged in classroom settings. The speech bubbles capture student feedback from cogenerative dialogues, highlighting their perspectives. For example, one bubble says, *“Teachers get mad at us when no one knows the answer to a question. That doesn’t make you feel good about yourself.”* The feedback emphasizes students' experiences with fairness, teacher relationships, and the importance of culturally responsive teaching.

These insights directly inspired shifts in teaching practices, from culturally responsive curriculum choices to new strategies for engaging students and providing academic support.

From Listening to Action: How the School Responded

This Philadelphia school took steps to translating their students’ voices into lasting change in the following ways:

The school’s leaders worked with Partners to provide professional development focused on building authentic teacher-student relationships.
They embedded culturally responsive instructional strategies into daily teaching.

They collaborated with Partners coaches on creatingsystems for educators to regularly gather and act on student feedback.

Results and Next Steps: What Happens When Schools Center Student Voices?

Throughout the duration of this Middle Grades Success Network, schools expanded their use of student voice strategies, and more schools in the network adopted cogenerative dialogues and similar tools like student well-being surveys.

To understand the impact of these practices, Partners in School Innovation surveyed participants across the network. The results were clear:

100% of members agreed that the network amplified the voices of students and individuals who often lacked power.
Schools saw progress on 8th-grade on-track metrics for students.
Educators at these schools were increasingly using both qualitative and quantitative data to guide improvement cycles.

All in all, after partnering with this network of schools, one thing became clear: by amplifying student voices, schools can build a lasting culture of equity-focused improvement and create environments where students feel heard and supported.

Inspired by This Network’s Journey?

If you're interested in learning more about how Partners in School Innovation can support your district’s and school's path to transformation, or want to explore how our staff can empower your team to achieve exceptional outcomes, contact us today.

How a Philadelphia School Leveraged Student Voices to Improve Instruction and Learning Outcomes