Deeper Learning New York

Every year, schools roll out new initiatives to fix culture, boost engagement, or address behavior but too often, the people most impacted by those issues aren’t at the table. In this interactive session, teachers and school leaders will explore how Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) can serve as a powerful, restorative tool to reimagine their school and classroom culture with students, not for them.


Grounded in real school-based examples, this session walks teachers and leaders through how to design and implement a YPAR project from identifying a challenge to guiding students through research, data collection, solution design, and action. Participants will learn how YPAR builds students’ leadership, confidence, and advocacy skills while also helping educators and administrators develop actionable, student-informed strategies that heal culture, not police it.


By the end of the session, teachers and leaders will walk away with a framework for launching YPAR in their context, strategies to use student voice as a driver of school culture transformation, concrete examples of how YPAR has addressed issues like attendance, relationships, and academic engagement. This is about more than checking a box for student voice, it’s about letting students help you rebuild what’s broken for them by them.