By Drew Schrader, Challenge Success School Data Partner
Each fall, teachers face an exciting opportunity. The start of the year is about setting expectations, building community, and introducing content, but it’s also an opportunity to lay the groundwork for something deeper: student agency.
At Challenge Success, I regularly review our comprehensive student experience data with schools to understand how students are doing — particularly around three essential outcomes: well-being, engagement, and belonging. What we seen over and over again is that these three outcomes amplify one another. Students who feel a sense of belonging are more engaged. Students who are engaged experience lower stress. And a key lever driving all three? Agency.
What is agency?
At its core, agency is the degree to which students are taking action in support of their own learning. While there are layers and nuances to student agency, in our survey, we focus on agency around practical, recognizable behaviors:
- Do students ask questions to improve their learning?
- Do they share their preferences or needs with teachers?
- Are they able to let teachers know what they are interested in?
These actions, asking, expressing, and connecting, provide a foundation for a more empowered, agentic student experience.
The Link Between Agency, Engagement, and Belonging
Agency is increasingly coming into the foreground in conversations around students and learning, and for good reason. Agency is strongly connected to how students experience and engage with school. In our survey, we break engagement down into three well-established categories. Behavioral engagement reflects the degree to which students exhibit the behaviors of an engaged student, such as paying attention, working hard, and completing assignments. Cognitive engagement reveals students’ sense of meaning and purpose in their work. Affective engagement refers to the actual enjoyment and interest in learning.
When it comes to agency and engagement, the connections are simple:
- Behavioral engagement grows when students feel like their questions are welcome.
- Cognitive engagement increases when students can share their preferences and make learning feel meaningful.
- Affective engagement deepens when students get to explore their interests and feel seen for who they are.
Belonging, too, is built through agency. When students share their needs and their teachers respond sportively, they learn that school is a place where they matter. Responsiveness like that builds trust. And when students feel trusted and seen, their well-being improves.
A Three-Step Blueprint for an Agentic Start
So how do we start the year in a way that builds agency from day one? Here’s a simple three-phase plan:
1. Begin with Connected Warm-Ups
Use the first two weeks to set the tone: every day, every class starts with a warm-up that builds connection and encourages voice.
Try this structure:
- A brief reflective question (displayed via Google Form as a bellringer)
- A think-pair-share at table groups
- A brief short whole-class share out
Start with playful questions (“What’s your go-to hype song?” or “What superpower would you pick?”), then gradually shift toward deeper ones (“What makes you feel safe making mistakes while learning?” or “What helps you get back on track when you’re stuck?”). As you go, start to make use of what you hearing to shape the learning environment. For example, rotate through playing students’ hype songs as they enter class and do the bell-ringer.
In addition to getting to know each other, students build habits of reflection, speaking up, and makingconnections which are core ingredients of agency.
2. Make Time for 1-on-1 Conversations
Over the first month, aim to have a short 1:1 chat with every student. These can be casual and brief, but the goal is clear: show students you’re listening.
Review their warm-up responses before the conversation. Ask follow-ups like:
- “You mentioned you’re into anime — ever thought about creating your own character?”
- “You said math was tough last year. What made it better (or worse)?”
These chats help you tailor instruction and deepen relationships. And they signal something powerful: you matter here.
3. Track Connection Through the Lens of Agency
Finally, build in a light system for tracking connection and agency. Create your own simple rubric:
- Is this student regularly asking questions?
- Have they shared a preference or need?
- Do I know something meaningful about their interests?
You don’t need a fancy spreadsheet, just a simple system to help ensure no student falls through the cracks. This helps you make invisible growth visible and keeps your attention focused on equity and inclusion.
The Payoff
When students feel empowered to ask, share, and explore, everything changes. They become more engaged, less stressed, and more connected to school. And while there’s no single move that creates that outcome, there is a mindset that all students can be agentic if we nurture it.
Challenge Success, a nonprofit affiliated with the Stanford Graduate School of Education – elevates student voice and implements research-based, equity-centered strategies to increase well-being, engagement, and belonging in K-12 schools.