3 New features of Detroit Future Schools for the 2013-2014 School Year

Detroit Future Schools is going into its third year of programming and we could not be more excited! We have learned so much from the past two years of integrating digital media arts into Detroit schools and providing year-long teacher professional development in more than 24 schools across the city. Two things have become clear to us:

1) It is possible to transform classrooms into learning communities that advance our full human potential. 2) The inputs required to make this transformation happen are relatively simple.

DFS has honed a set of instructional practices that when applied consistently have proven to create the conditions in which humanizing education can thrive. We measure humanizing education by the presence or absence of 11 Essential Human Skills within a classroom, such as critical consciousness, metacognition, and curiosity. We look for these skills in teachers as well as students.

As classrooms are the cells in the body of our school system, we believe that transformation in education at this level has the potential to transform entire schools, and ultimately, the education system as a whole.

As we enter the 2013-2014 school year, we have re-structured our program to have greater impact in a smaller number of schools. We are excited to announce the following new features of Detroit Future Schools:

ANCHOR SCHOOLS

In two years, DFS has been welcomed into 24 schools across the Metro-Detroit area. This year, we made the decision to only work in four schools: The James and Grace Lee Boggs School, Hamtramck High School, Tri-County Educational Center, and Henry Ford Academy: School for Creative Studies.

This decision was made in part because the two-year, non-renewable federal grant under which we launched Detroit Future Schools ended in 2012. While we were successful in securing contracts to continue DFS in six schools, we decided to work only in the four schools where we see potential for long-term partnership. Administrators at all four of these schools deeply understand and appreciate the vision of DFS and will work with us to generate the funds necessary to sustain the program in their schools moving forward.

We look forward to being able to have a more concentrated impact in a smaller number of schools. At the same time, we plan to create more local and national spaces through which to share the lessons emerging from the in-school program. Ultimately, we believe this scaling-down-to-go-deep approach will strengthen the root system of DFS for the long-term.

ZINE AND TOOLKIT

We are committed to an "open source" approach to humanizing education that will allow the maximum number of people to benefit from the practices and ideas that emerge from our anchor schools. Towards this goal, Detroit Future Schools produced a zine that any teacher, youth or artist in schools can use to integrate the spirit and practices of DFS in their own learning space. The zine includes theDFS Vision Statement and theoretical framework, instructional videos, evaluation templates, and lesson plans.

To accompany this zine we created a toolkit of classroom signage that is essential to the implementation of DFS practices. This toolkit includes: an 11 Essential Skills Poster, a Media Project Workflow Poster, Detailed DFS Timeline for the Year. 11 Essential Skills cards, Debate Signs and Rules, Bloom’s Taxonomy, and a Day One DFS Handout.

RIDA INSTITUTE

For the 2013-2014 school year we will provide more opportunities for educators outside of our Anchor Schools to receive professional development training in DFS core practices.

In February of 2014, DFS will invite educators from across Detroit and the country to participate in the "RIDA Institute" – an intensive three day crash-course in reimagining what is possible within schools. The question “what is the purpose of education?” will frame the institute, as participants explore the educational theories of Paolo Friere, Duncan Andrade, James and Grace Lee Boggs and others.

Moving from theory to practice, RIDA Institute participants will think critically about the specific social and historical contexts in which they work in order to create their own purpose of education statement. From there, they will use the DFS RIDA framework to create visions for their classrooms and the kind of students they will produce. We will share instructional practices for integrating the 11 Essential Skills into classroom content, as well as daily practices for making lesson-planning more efficient and effective.

Participants will have the opportunity to design and refine lesson plans over the course of 3 days, returning to their purpose of education statement to evaluate what instructional practices best allow them to fulfill that purpose. The RIDA Institute will take place in February 2014.

Because space is limited, participants in the institute will be selected through an application process. Enrollment fees will be determined on a sliding scale for individuals and institutions. Contact ammerah@alliedmedia.org for more information.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Keep us going and growing: Sign-up to be an AMP sustainer!

COMMENT ON THIS POST ON AMPTALK »

DFS Classroom Visit: "Thinking about your thinking!"

"Thinking about your thinking!" This is what the 5th graders in Allie Gross’s Detroit Future Schools classroom at Plymouth Educational Center yell back in unison, in response to the question, "What does metacognition mean?"

This is not because the definition has been drilled into them through rote memorization.  Rather, it is because Allie has built a strong culture of "thinking about your thinking" in her classroom over the course of the school year, with support from DFS artist-in-residence Conja Wright.

AMP’s Detroit Future Schools program is a year-long digital media artist-in-residence and teacher professional development program. Its goal is to prepare Detroit area youth to envision and actualize a more just, creative, and collaborative world.  We look for 11 Essential Traits of Habit, Character and Mind in students, teachers and artists to measure our progress towards this goal. Metacognition is one of those traits.

After observing Allie’s classroom for two hours, I saw how integral this trait is to all of the other Essential Traits.  When students take ownership over their own knowledge, they lay the foundation for self-determination; they are able to reflect on not only their actions, but the thought processes that guide those actions, ultimately giving them more power to determine for themselves who they will be in the world.

Allie is clear about who she expects her students to be in the world: people who will change the world by first changing themselves. The students lead each other in a call and response chant every day:

Be the what? Be the change! Change the what? Change ourselves! Change the what? Change the class! Change the what? Change the world!

As the DFS artist-in-residence, Conja Wright reinforces the classroom culture of metacognition and self-transformation through the integration of media arts.  Since the beginning of the school year, Conja, a librarian and professional storyteller, has immersed students in the idea that they can be authors, not simply characters within the story of their lives and their worlds.

During the first quarter of the year, Conja read and analyzed creation myths from a variety of cultures with the students.  Throughout the rest of the year, she is helping students build the skills they need to tell their own stories about who they are, what their relationship to their environments is, and what it means to be a "changemaker."

The role storytelling plays in changing the world is no simple matter.  It triggers questions like, who has the power to tell stories? How do stories gain power? What is the responsibility of storytellers? Neither Allie nor Conja are interested in pretending that it is, just because their students happen to be 5th graders. They embrace the complexity of these questions and use them to build the metacognition their students need.

On the day that I visited the class they were grappling with the question, "to shoot a photo or to help: what’s the most effective way to change the world?"  The week before, they had analyzed a photo of a woman who had been shot by the police in Haiti, after stealing some chairs.  In the photograph she’s laying on the ground, surrounded by a ring of photographers.

The question of "to shoot a photo or to help" had germinated even earlier in the year, during a "changemakers event," in which the class spent the day cleaning up a park in their neighborhood.  That day, Conja worked with a team of students to photograph the clean-up.  This documentation effort had raised a question around the value of doing changemaking work versus telling the story of changemaking.

The students drew upon these past experiences, as they launched into a "Fishbowl" conversation on the topis.  A "Fishbowl" is a standard DFS practice for structuring an equitable conversation.  The conversation begins with a small group of chairs in the middle, with the rest of the class observing.  After the conversation has gotten going, any student on the outside can "tap" themselves into one of the chairs by tapping one of the other students out.

Allie began by reviewing the rules of the Fishbowl with the students. These include things like, "use evidence," "engage in conversation, don’t just try to convince people of your opinion," "seek a common vocabulary."  The Fishbowl starts, and Allie transcribes the whole thing, with as much accuracy as possible. She doesn’t participate in the conversation at all–it’s entirely the responsibility of the students to self-facilitate, another core DFS practice.

Below are excerpts from their conversation:

"I’m going to start by defining effective.  ‘Effective’ means when we clean up the park.  It’s effective because we’re doing something with the community.  But it’s more effective to shoot a picture than to help, because then a lot of people can see it."

"I disagree with Kamaree and Danielle, because if you help, then the person you help can spread the word and so can you, and then people can know more about the problem through the person that helps."

"I want to ask Daniel a question—why wouldn’t you do both?"

"If you took a picture you wouldn't have enough time to help…"

"I disagree with Daniel, if you take a picture and put it on the Internet millions of people can see it."

"A lot of people can’t afford to get on the Internet!"

"What if they don't like the Internet?"

"Usually some people… I’ll let Nya go. I’ll finish my point after."

"Can we get back on topic?"

"First, I want to say something about the real question…. I would want to take a picture. If you take pictures more people will know. I understand what Daniel is talking about with people not having computers but instead of talking about problems, what about solutions? Like making flyers instead."

The Fishbowl discussion lasts for about 10 minutes.  Allie calls everyone back to their seats and they begin to analyze the transcript together.  She asks the class, "do you think this was a strong or weak Fishbowl? Why or why not?"

"I really think it was slightly good because first we started off talking about the topic, but then we got a little off because we got mad about Daniel’s answer… then people started yelling and they weren’t taking turns."

"I think this fishbowl was all right.. I only think we had issues with transitioning, but otherwise I noticed Nadia, Daniel, Bronson were tracking and asking questions… I think it’s good we figured it out."

After discussing what went well and what could have gone better, they set goals for a second Fishbowl: do better at providing evidence, stay on topic, people on the outside should do a better job of "tracking" the conversation.  They also add two sub-questions to the topic: "what source would you use to spread the word?" and "what does change the world mean?" Here are some excerpts from the second Fishbowl:

"I think they should do both, like Niyah said, in the picture of the woman who was shot I saw all the photographers trying to get the best picture so they could get photography awards. I don't think it’s right. They could have taken her to the hospital."

"Why did they shoot her instead of arresting her just because she stole? Some criminals steal more."

"It could have not just been that she stole the chairs while the police tried to take her away. She could have assaulted an officer. You wouldn't kill someone for stealing chairs, there are more valuable things in the world."

"I want to hear from Elijah."

"you shouldn’t get shot for stealing something."

"I was going to ask, why did she steal the chairs? Did she need it?"

"I’m sorry for cutting you off but Ms. Gross just said stay on topic."

"Did anyone think they could put it on the Internet? Someone could start a protest or something, like when the kids heard that the school was going to close and they protested for it to stay open."

"Actually I think he made a good point, he made a text-to-world connection… how one text is like another… and I think you should do both because actually if I had to choose I would do both, Because the police should get bad guys but they were the bad guys."

"I changed my mind, people can effect change by putting it on the internet, then people can start a protest, like the protest where the kids walked out of class to get their point across."

After the second Fishbowl ends, they do another transcript-analysis.  This time they focus on two questions: what was strong or weak about the process of our Fishbowl?  and what was strong or weak about the content?  The students conclude that the process of this Fishbowl was worse than the first one because there were more people walking around the room, causing distractions.  Then they turn to me and ask my opinion.  I tell them that think the content was noticeably better because they got to what I saw was the heart of the issue: what does it actually mean to change the world?

Then they ask me what I’m planning to do with the story that I’m writing about their class.  I tell them that  I’m going to put it on the Internet so that other people can learn about the work they’re doing in their classroom to change themselves to change the world.  But then I start to wonder, is that the most effective way to change the world?  They’ve got me thinking about my thinking...

Written by Jenny Lee.

Read previous DFS classroom visit blog posts exploring Curiosity and Critical Consciousness.

COMMENT ON THIS POST ON AMPTALK »

DFS Classroom Visit: Using Drama to Build Critical Consciousness

One of Detroit Future Schools' 11 Essential Traits of Mind, Habit and Character is "critical consciousness." We define critical consciousness as a process of "questioning established systems, practices, hierarchies, processes and histories, both macro and micro." We work to foster this trait in all DFS program participants, including: teachers, students, artists and program coordinators.

As part of the DFS professional development training, teachers reflect on their established patterns of instruction and how they are or are not fostering the 11 Essential Traits in their classrooms. They identify which traits need the most growth and then work closely with a teaching artist to design ways of using digital media arts in the classroom to support that growth.

At the start of the 2012-2013 school year, one of our 12 DFS classrooms decided to make critical consciousness the focus of their first semester. Patrick Butler is a drama instructor at Western International High School and Bobby Colombo is a DFS Digital Media Teaching Artist.

Below are their reflections on how they evolved one of Patrick’s established lessons to better foster critical consciousness, using digital media arts.

PATRICK BUTLER, DRAMA INSTRUCTOR:

A typical assignment for my beginning drama students is to write a eulogy. Students write and perform an informal, 60-90 second introduction speech, then watch videos of well-known orators like Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Robert and John Kennedy, even Richard Nixon, and discuss what makes a speech successful. One of the videos I show is Robert Kennedy's moving speech delivered upon hearing the news of Martin Luther King's assassination. While not technically a eulogy, Kennedy's words of praise and respect can easily be seen as a fitting tribute to a great American leader, and are the precursor of an actual eulogy. The class then discusses and defines what a eulogy is, as well as when and why eulogies are given.

The next part of the assignment is for each student to write a eulogy about a fictional character. This allows the student to get creative in regard to character choice, and how or why the character met his/her demise. The students then perform these eulogies as if they were actually at a funeral or wake.

This year, while thinking about the socially conscious goals of DFS, we came up with the idea of having the students write a second eulogy, this time "mourning" the loss of an aspect of life in Detroit that most of us would like to see gone. First the class spent time brainstorming, and we made a list of societal ills that we would like to see dead and buried. Abandoned houses, hunger and racism were some of the most popular ideas, and students wrote and performed each eulogy, explaining how our society would be better off with each problem gone for good.

BOBBY COLOMBO, DIGITAL MEDIA TEACHING ARTIST:

With my assistance, we recorded the students performing their pieces. Students worked in pairs using Audacity (free audio editing software) to cut and splice their classmates' individual eulogies into new, original audio pieces with a collective voice. After they finished these audio pieces, they used iMovie to make video slideshows, putting images corresponding to their new eulogy underneath the audio. This helped build another DFS Essential Trait: collaboration.

This lesson demonstrates how long-time teachers can make simple changes to their instructional practices in order to cultivate the 11 Essential Traits of Habit, Character and Mind in their classrooms. It also shows how digital media arts provide a powerful vehicle through which to do this.

You can view a sample from the eulogy video project here.

COMMENT ON THIS POST ON AMPTALK »