Detroit Future Schools program offers a new classroom paradigm |DFS featured in Model D

Model D Media recently released an excellent piece by David Sands, "Detroit Future Schools program offers a new classroom paradigm". The piece speaks to the history of the work Detroit Future Schools has been doing over the last three years and the impact it has had in the classroom.

Quote From Allie Gross, a DFS teacher from our 2nd year

"I feel like my students gained so much. They really looked forward to the DFS artist coming into the classroom," says Gross. "It really centers upon student-centered learning and students expressing their opinion and backing it up with evidence. Those became key components of my classroom, which I'm very grateful to DFS for introducing to me."

Check the piece out here!

There are also some amazing shots from one of our last days of school at the James and Grace Lee Boggs School by the amazing Marvin Shaouni.

I [heart] Detroit Future Schools: The Guide to Transformative Education by Christopher Rogers

Our Guide to transformative education got some [love] from Christopher Rogers in a recent blog post at the National Writing Project Digital's Digital is site "I [heart] Detroit Future Schools: The Guide to Transformative Education - See more at: http://digitalis.nwp.org/site-blog/i-heart-detroit-future-schools-guide-transformative-education/6073

“Me and the D: (Re)Imagining Literacy and Detroit’s Future.”

How can we use digital media, literature, and investigations of our communities to help us rewrite our stories and roles within the world?

Danielle Filipiak and Isaac Miller not only asked such a question, but also designed a whole curriculum for their 150 Detroit students in Western High School so as to investigate the question amongst many others relating to identity, place and power.  And better yet, they documented and analyzed their process and findings and published them  in their English Journal cover piece, “Me and the D: (Re)Imagining Literacy and Detroit’s Future.”

As outlined in the Detroit Future Schools Toolkit, we believe that a humanizing classroom requires the integration of four core instructional elements:

1.Critical Pedagogy 2.Documentation & Evaluation 3.Community-School Interactions 4.Digital Media Arts Integration

 Danielle and Isaac do a phenomenal job of detailing how they not only made the core ELA curriculum relevant to their students but also integrated all four of the above elements into their practice.

For teachers asking how to engage students in rigorous content while prioritizing a humanizing practice,  this piece is a perfect starting point.