Formed at the beginning of the fall semester, AC Speaks! is a new student leadership group for students in Academic Choice (AC) to be more active in their small learning community. Organized by AC Humanities co-leads Joseph Smith and Brooke Mckinney, AC Speaks! aims to provide students with a platform to “take initiative and make the community better, to come up with ideas, organize events, and (organize) fundraisers,” according to Smith.
“I thought since AC doesn’t have any kind of group or mechanism for students to have a voice and have a say in how their community is run, it would be a good thing for AC students to bounce ideas off of me and help out with events,” said Smith, “Just see things from a student’s perspective.”
Smith came up with the idea for a student group last summer as he was preparing for his new role as co-leader of AC Humanities. The group was initiated at the beginning of the fall semester and has been slowly developing throughout this school year.
“Not only do I hope to add more choice to AC, but also provide more structure,” Smith said. “How do you make decisions? How do you reflect on your own decisions and how do you learn from your choices? Make better choices in the future? I’d love that to be AC’s schtick, being able to make choices, make mistakes, and learn from those choices.”
Currently, AC Speaks! is working on fundraising money to complete their long-term goal of sending AC students on a field trip, as well as the short-term goal of creating merchandise for purchase.
“I had often thought, how can I make AC better? One thought that frequently came to mind is this desire for more field trips, for more events,” said Smith.
Other small schools, including Berkeley International High School and Arts and Humanities Academy, have taken students on educational trips. According to Smith, AC students would benefit from field trips as well.
“We know that (the Communication Arts and Sciences) and (Arts and Humanities Academy) do (field trips) a lot, and a lot of AC students feel like we don’t get that enough, and we want to be able to do that as a small school,” said Ren Senant-Giraud, a senior in AC. The students in AC Speaks! with the support of Smith, organized a fundraiser of baked goods and snacks at the BHS Open House on Thursday, Feb. 8, 2024, where they raised almost $500. Additional snacks are still being sold in Smith’s room, C112. All of the proceeds are going to AC.
“I had hoped over a long period of time, over many years, that AC Speaks! could be the seed that could initiate more community and more community identity within AC. Maybe (students) want a certain class or a change in curriculum. If they want to learn about a very specific topic or subject, I would want AC Speaks! to be the very first place that they go to to be heard. It’s a direct line between the teacher leaders of AC humanities and the students themselves,” said Smith.