doorstop sessions
Doorstop Sessions are in-person workshops and mentorship programs for high schoolers. You bring what's wrong; we help you fix it.
Workshops and mentorship for students who want to change something at their school.
Free to public schools, built with students, and run at your school — during the day, at a club meeting, or after school.
what it is
A Session is a workshop at your school, run by our staff and volunteers. You bring a real problem: the food, the bathrooms, a teacher, a rule that makes no sense. We spend the time working out how to change it.
We'll walk you through how your school allocates money & makes decisions plus how to advocate for yourself and your peers.
You get to argue, practice, and hear what worked at other schools. We can keep working with you all year to provide more help and support.
a session
Our pilot Sessions ran on school lunch, bathrooms, and difficult relationships with teachers. Group discussion about what students actually wanted changed. Roleplay where students took on school personas — principal, board member, teacher — and tried to organize cultural change. Then direct instruction on strategies to take back to their own school.
students in our pilot Sessions
things they took on: lunch, bathrooms, teacher conflict
what it costs a public school
We saw high engagement, and real follow-on improvements to students' actual school experience.
Sessions are built with schools, student governments, parent groups, and student clubs, so they can run during the school day, at a club meeting, or after school.
your school
Sessions aren't a canned assembly. Before we run anything, we find out what is actually wrong at your school.
We meet you to understand your school's specific problems. We can observe classes, hold focus groups, and listen one-on-one.
We run Sessions with interested student groups: instruction on self-advocacy, learning games, and practical advice on real problems.
We run Sessions tailored to your school's real problems, and we want to keep meeting with and supporting students — not visit once. Where it's useful, we combine Sessions with tutoring, parent engagement, and after-school activities.
ask for one
You don't have to be student body president. If you're in a club, on student government, or just a student who's annoyed enough to email us, that is enough to start. Teachers, parents, and administrators can reach out too.
Four quick questions — your school, what's wrong with it, and how to reach you. Or just email us instead.
built with help from 100s of students at Doorstop Education