Empower Youth Voices is a leadership program that was created with a partnership between MSON and Close-Up, a group based in Washington, D.C., that focuses on educating young people about current issues and bringing young people to D.C. Close-Up is also the organization that helps host our tenth graders for the annual trip to D.C. Interested tenth graders apply to be considered for the program. The program meets for four weeks, every Tuesday and Thursday over Zoom, with students from a variety of locations, ranging from Hawaii to New York. They talk about how to deliberate over issues and come to a consensus over a possible solution to the issue. This year’s program started November 15 and ran through December 15. 

Close-Up reached out to Nicole Masole, Director of Community Engagement and Inclusion, and Sara Teegarden, US history teacher, to get FWCD students involved.

“It is an opportunity for students to learn how to lead deliberations,” Teegarden said. “It teaches discussing, coming up with opinions, different views and how you back those up with evidence, how to express those respectfully, and how to come to agreements when not everybody agrees.”

Some current issues that were tackled were education and healthcare. The students who attended learned how to facilitate deliberation. The program teaches how to help people discuss a stance with the idea of coming to an agreement on a position, especially when you have people from multiple sides with differing opinions about the issue. The idea is to focus on deliberating, not debating.

 “The students who attended this are now coming back to the government classroom and are bringing the issue of education or healthcare and leading a deliberation with their peers. My students are doing this in class,” Teegarden said.

Only sophomores at FWCD are able to apply for Empower Youth Voices. Walker Gaines ‘24, Benjamin Hoppe ‘24, Dabin Lee ‘24, Lily Hyde ‘24, Evi Scaling-Brown ‘24, Piper Baine ‘24, and Rhea Alexander ‘24 are the students participating in Empower Youth Voices representing FWCD.

“I’ve learned about the education and healthcare system,” Hoppe said, “and about the different sides about how people want to improve it and why there is so much deliberation about it.” 

The students participating in Empower Youth Voices need to apply to become a part of the program.

Hyde wanted to apply because it gives young high school students “a unique opportunity to express our opinions and viewpoints outside of the classroom,” she said. “I wanted to learn more about how our government runs and what improvements we can make going forward.” 

The students are loving the program. Empower Youth Voices takes students who enjoy government and brings them a step forward. 

“It is nice to take the things we learn in government as sophomores and actively apply them outside the classroom,” Hyde said.