Learning With Students, Not Just About Them: Eagle Rock at Big Bang

What happens when students are not just invited to attend a conference about education, but are trusted to help shape the conversation?

That question followed Eagle Rock to Big Bang, the annual conference hosted by Big Picture Learning, where educators and students from learner-centered schools and organizations gathered to explore what it means to reimagine learning.

This year, Eagle Rock brought two students, Milo and Julia, who joined Eagle Rock staff members Josán and Dan to participate, learn, and present to educators from across the country.

For Josán, who works in Eagle Rock’s Professional Development Center and coordinates the Student Ambassador program, bringing students to Big Bang was an opportunity to put one of Eagle Rock’s core beliefs into practice: students should have meaningful opportunities to shape their own learning and contribute their perspectives to the work of adults.

Students as partners in the work

Milo and Julia did more than sit in the audience. They co-presented workshops with Eagle Rock staff, bringing their own experiences and perspectives into conversations about youth-centered education.

Milo and Josán facilitated a workshop called “Origin Story,” a version of a workshop Eagle Rock uses to begin its Changemaker Cohort. The experience asks participants to consider a foundational question: Who are you?

For Eagle Rock, that question is more than an icebreaker. Understanding who is in the room, what experiences they bring, and what has shaped them can help build the relationships and trust needed to do meaningful work together.

Milo had previously experienced the Origin Story workshop as a participant in Eagle Rock’s Changemaker Cohort. This time, he helped shape the presentation itself. Josán and Milo worked together on the slides and script, with Milo contributing his own voice and helping adapt material for youth and adult participants at Big Bang.

That process became learning in its own right.

Milo was working toward mastery of Eagle Rock’s competencies around facilitation, delivery, and guiding group energy. Preparing for the conference meant practicing how to communicate an idea, respond to a room and help a group move through an experience. Then came the opportunity to put those skills into practice with a real audience.

And the audience was not small. The Origin Story workshop included roughly 30 participants, more than half of whom were students.

For Josán, that student presence made the experience particularly meaningful. Instead of talking about youth-centered education primarily with adults, Eagle Rock students were helping lead the conversation with other young people who were also thinking critically about their experiences in school with other educational leaders from across the country.

Moving toward authentic youth-adult partnership

Julie and Dan led another workshop focused on youth-adult partnership, using Hart’s Ladder of Participation as a framework for examining how schools involve young people in decision-making.

The framework moves from forms of participation where adults retain most of the power toward authentic partnership, where students help identify the purpose, develop the ideas, and shape the work while adults provide support and help make those ideas possible.

This distinction matters.

Inviting students to participate is not necessarily the same as sharing power with them. A student might be asked to speak at an event, answer questions chosen by adults, or represent a school without having meaningful influence over what happens. Youth-centered learning asks educators to go further.

At Eagle Rock, that means continuing to ask: Where are students making decisions? Where are their ideas shaping the work? And what would it look like to move more of that power into students' hands?

Julia brought her own perspective to those questions during the workshop. Even for people who had encountered the framework before, her examples and experiences offered a different way of understanding what authentic partnership can look like at Eagle Rock.

That is part of the value of student voice. When students are treated as contributors rather than simply recipients of education, they can change the conversation itself.

Learning outside the classroom

Big Bang also reflected another idea that connects closely with Eagle Rock's approach to learning: meaningful learning does not have to happen inside a classroom.

As part of the conference, participants took part in “Leave to Learn” experiences that connected them with people, organizations, and places throughout Dallas.

Milo explored the Perot Museum of Nature and Science, while Julia had the opportunity to learn from a Dallas piñata maker about his creative process and work. Other participants visited organizations including Cafe Momentum, which combines employment, education, and wraparound support for young people.

These experiences offered a reminder that learning can begin with curiosity.

Instead of starting with a predetermined lesson and asking students to absorb it, what happens when we start with an interest and give students space to explore where it leads?

That question is central to Eagle Rock's competency-based approach. Students have opportunities to choose classes based on their interests and engage in real-world learning experiences where they can develop competencies through authentic work.

Taking Eagle Rock into the wider education community

For Milo and Julia, Big Bang was also an opportunity to experience what it means to represent their school and engage with a broader professional community.

They participated in conference activities, presented workshops and were interviewed by Big Picture Learning's student-led media team. They also connected with students from other schools and explored ideas about communication, education, and leadership.

The conference ended with a moment of gratitude, as participants recognized people who had changed their thinking, offered a meaningful insight or contributed something important to their experience. Milo was among the students recognized by his peers.

For Eagle Rock, these moments point toward a larger question: What becomes possible when we prepare students to participate in the conversations that shape education, rather than waiting until they become adults to invite them in?

The answer is still unfolding.

But at Big Bang, Eagle Rock students were not simply learning about youth-centered education. They were practicing it. They were developing real skills, sharing their experiences, learning alongside peers and adults, and helping others see education through a different lens.

That is the kind of learning we want to keep creating: learning that gives students both the opportunity and the agency to help shape what comes next.

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