Noe and Jonny just met. But they spent the better part of a Tuesday in October asking each other some pretty personal questions. 

Tell me about a time at school where you really felt welcomed and included. What about a time you felt left out? 

Noe, a senior at Nestucca Valley High School, and Jonny, a senior at Tillamook High School, shared that they noticed students who don’t speak English as a first language were struggling. They felt shy about asking for help. They didn’t feel included. 

Noe, a senior at Nestucca Valley High School, learns how to conduct an empathy interview, which is a listening technique where people answer open-ended questions about their experiences. Photos by Tracey Goldner. 

Then they traded their own stories about how students segregate themselves based on differences like their beliefs, what they want to be when they grow up, what they look like. 

The two students are part of Northwest Regional Education Service District’s 9th Grade Success Network. The network is aiming to get more students on track to graduate by the end of their freshman year, with a special emphasis on students who are historically marginalized. 

Research shows that when students have earned at least six credits by the end of freshman year, they are 3.5 times more likely to graduate in 4 years. Using that research as a guidepost, NWRESD launched the network nearly a decade ago. 

Over the years, it has grown from a handful of high schools to nearly 35 from around our four-county region. Rural schools like Banks, Gaston, Nestucca Valley and Tillamook participate alongside large suburban schools like Beaverton, Forest Grove, Mountainside, Sunset, Tigard and Westview. 

In 2020, the network started including students so they could share their ideas and test them out. 

Including students helps the network avoid the dangers of designing projects without including the people the work intends to help: the students themselves. 

Ryan Hamilton, a professional learning coach who mentors 58 student interns in the 9th Grade Success Network, says empathy interviews are powerful because sometimes what people say they need is different from what they actually need. “We’re not asking for what people need,” he says. “We’re asking for their stories.” 

In modern times, the disability justice community popularized the term: Nothing about us, without us in the 1990s and 2000s, and a similar sentiment runs through this network. 
The concept is catching on, and this year 58 students are participating — up from 26 in 2020.

“Students are the experts of their experience,” says Annie Tronco, a professional learning coach at NWRESD who works on the 9th Grade Success team. “They need to be an integral part of anything we are doing to improve conditions and outcomes in schools.”

Noe and Jonny are participating alongside their schools’ 9th Grade Success team leads: Daniela Moreno Gutierrez, a school counselor at Nestucca Valley, and Erin Balun, a health teacher at Tillamook High School.  

“I believe student interns are a huge reason why ninth grade success work has been successful at Nestucca,” says Daniela. “It’s always inspiring to see how each student intern group comes up with new ideas and opportunities to motivate the freshmen class to stay on track to graduate.” 

A student intern reviews the ways he can interact with students to learn more about what they need and how to help them feel more connected to school. These listening tools help students come up with ideas they can then test out. They use real-time attendance and student experience data to evaluate whether their interventions are working. In addition to empathy interviews, students learn how to run surveys, focus groups, one-on-one check-ins, classroom observations and story circles.  

The students attend an all-day seminar in October and another in May where they present their work. They participate in workshops in December and February. They also meet regularly with educators at their schools who are working to boost on-track rates and receive additional mentoring from professional learning coaches at NWRESD.  

Every student who participates has to apply and interview for the role and then sign an agreement outlining the work they’ll be expected to complete. They learn valuable skills like how to set goals, analyze data, interview, make project plans and then follow through with them. 

They are essentially involved in the same continuous improvement work — the process of setting goals, collecting and analyzing data, testing and implementing changes, reflecting and learning and repeating the cycle again — as the educators in their schools. 

At the end of the year, they receive a $500 stipend. 

Last year, Jonny started up a mentoring program for Hispanic students at Tillamook High School. He plans to continue that work this year. Noe is new to the network and will spend the next two months formulating his project.  

Noe is really hopeful for what this work will achieve. When teachers and administrators know what is going on for students behind-the-scenes, he believes it will make a big difference. 

“I want a school system where students feel supported, where they want to come to school, where they want to learn, and in general that’ll just be a better society for everybody,” he says. 

In another rural district to the east, Farris, an eleventh grader, and Lillia, a tenth grader, are looking forward to working with school counselors Alyssa Jacobson and Erin Akin at Scappoose High School this year. 

From left: Farris, a junior, and Lillia, a sophomore, at Scappoose High School, are both new student interns in the 9th Grade Success Network this year. 

Alyssa and Erin work with about 200 freshmen, sophomores and juniors each, and both are focused on improving ninth grade on-track rates at their school. 

After reviewing data for their school and attending the session with other interns, Farris and Lillia said they were intrigued to see that students weighted student-to-student connection as more important than student-to-teacher connections. 

They are thinking about how they could use the school’s already established Link Crew to strengthen the relationships younger students have with upperclassmen. 

The Link Crew is a group of leaders on campus who organize the first day of freshman year. They lead tours of the school, host informational sessions and Q&A forums, distribute class t-shirts and help students make that transition into high school. 

They wonder whether connecting Link Crew leaders to students earlier — starting in eighth grade and then having more opportunities for them to connect after that initial first day — could improve those students’ experiences and ultimately improve their school’s 9th grade on track rates. 

“We already have that Link Crew group and if we have them help us, that could be a really cool collaboration,” Farris says. 

Last year, Scappoose High School’s on-track rates were among the highest in the region at 95%. They are hoping to reach 97% this year and are focused specifically on supporting students who are experiencing poverty and Hispanic and Latino students. 

Alyssa says she appreciates all of the structure and support the 9th Grade Success Network provides. She also values having student interns on the team. 

“There is only so much that we can see from the adult perspective,” she says.  

To learn more about our 9th Grade Success Network, read: Freshman Year Isn’t What It Used to Be — That’s a Good Thing.