Youth voice and the Llano Grande Center

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

12-2006

Abstract

The Llano Grande Center for Research and Development (LGC) was initially invited to respond to the articles in this volume because there were no ‘youth voices’ in this special edition, one ostensibly about ‘youth voices’. The Llano Grande Center is a non-profit education and community development organization founded in the mid-1990s by youth and teachers out of a public high school classroom in a rural South Texas (USA) community. The Center was created, in large part, to cultivate youth voices as important elements of curriculum development and teacher training at the local public high school. As youth became active participants in the curriculum building process, they also became researchers in a series of action research initiatives sponsored by the Llano Grande Center, out of the local schools. The youth who lent their energy to the formative stages of the Center are now teachers and cultural workers in the same rural schools and community. These young teachers now cultivate this process of building the new youth voices—a process that also informs the pedagogical programming practices of the Center. One of the significant lessons learned by the Center is that higher education and learning are not linear processes. We have also learned that the insight and fresh ideas youth bring to the work of education are not enough in and of themselves; they also need agency and power. This understanding informs the work of the Center, which is grounded in strong teaching, learning, and leadership development defined by authentic youth and adult partnerships.

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Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC

https://www.tandfonline.com/share/C5XQ7CNHIK7EI2TGPAHZ?target=10.1080/13603120600895478

Publication Title

International Journal of Leadership in Education

DOI

10.1080/13603120600895478

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