In Detroit over 283 public schools have been closed since 2000, causing ongoing instability and chaos in the schooling landscape of the city. Much of this is due to the process behind opening and closing schools in the city. There are 12 “authorizers” or different bodies who have the sole authority to open or close schools and these authorizers are not directly accountable to Detroit residents. This results in inequities regarding the number of schools in each neighborhood and the populations those schools are serving.
Political will in Detroit is ramping up to address some of these issues around Detroit schools (see recommendations from the Coalition for the Future of Detroit Schoolchildren). If residents are to have a voice in shaping our school system, it is vital that we are having conversations about how our public school system works.
Detroit Future Schools collaborated with the citywide education organizing network 482 Forward, videographer Imad Hassan, and music producer Ben Christensen to create a video for community members that responds to the question: “Who gets to open and close schools in Detroit?”
Who gets to open or close our schools? How and whether our schools share resources has a huge impact on the work we do in the classroom. We made this video because we wanted to participate in the conversation about education in Detroit and bring awareness to the complex issues facing our school system.
As Detroit Future Schools continue to work towards our goal of humanizing schooling in Detroit, we are expanding our work beyond the classroom to gain an understanding of the larger challenges and political context shaping our classrooms. We look forward to continuing to partner with 482 Forward to inspire conversations and community organizing around education justice in Detroit.
Detroit Future Schools is now in its fourth year of facilitating in-school media programming and teacher professional development with the goal of humanizing education in Detroit. We work in a small number of anchor schools to develop and evaluate core instructional elements and practices. And this year we’re also excited to be launching a new project focused on documentary filmmaking.
Students from the painted Turtle Classroom, acting out the classroom agreements
We’ve also had some changes to our staff welcoming two new teaching artists to the DFS team: Andrea Claire Maio and Alicia Castañeda. Andrea is a Detroit-based filmmaker whose stories have been heard and seen on NPR, PBS, and at film festivals in the U.S. and abroad. Alicia has a background in creative writing and poetry and she also works as a writer-in-residence with the InsideOut Literary Arts Project. In addition to our new teaching artists, we are excited to introduce our new program director, Nate Mullen, who was previously the lead artist for DFS.
Work at The Boggs School & Tri County Educational Center
Our DFS classrooms are immersed in a diverse range of media projects. At the Boggs School we are working with the “Painted Turtle” classroom where 1st and 2nd grade students are responding to the question “How do I tell my story?” They are using photography, motion and storytelling to investigate the purpose and power of literacy.
At Tri County Educational Center, high schoolers are using graphic design to investigate the question “How can we use design to address problems in our community?” In the second semester both of our classrooms will be embarking on long-term research projects about their communities and will convey their findings through a public art project called “data murals”. The production of these "data murals" is supported through an award from the Knight Arts Challenge.
Below is a video that documents one of the projects from the 1st semester of the graphic design class at Tri County. In this project students chose one of the DFS “11 Essential Skills” that they most identified with, and drew their own self portraits.
As we continue this important work of humanizing schooling, we’ve realized that in order for our work to thrive we must address larger, systemic barriers. We’ve found that in many classrooms standardized curriculum and testing leave teachers feeling like they don’t have a voice in their own classrooms, and dehumanizes learning so that the only value lies in test scores. As we see test scores decline, schools are defunded and dismantled— in Detroit more than 283 schools have been closed since 2000. This creates chaos in our public education landscape.
The Out of School Project (OSP) : Documentary Workshop
Although there are many people organizing around reforming the structure of education, there aren’t enough groups organizing youth and bringing their perspective to the table. At the same time we found that many students desire more dedicated time and instruction in developing concrete media skills, such as filmmaking and graphic design, in order to grasp a deeper understanding of media making.
This combination of systemic problems in our schooling landscape, a lack of youth voice in organizing around school reform, and a desire from youth to make media, has made it clear to us that we need to expand and evolve our work beyond in-school programming.
With this in mind we launched a new program in which, for the first time, DFS is working with youth outside of classrooms. The Out of School Project (OSP) is a six-month afterschool program that brings together students ages 13 - 21 from all over the city – including Detroit Public Schools, charter schools, private schools, alternative schools, and even a few college students. In this program, students are creating media that inserts youth voice into the conversation about the challenges and opportunities facing Detroit’s public education system.
The OSP kicked off in January and involves weekly after school sessions with teaching artist Andrea Claire Maio. As we continue to research our education system and begin to frame our documentary film, we are excited to delve into the practice of filmmaking using a hands-on approach. We look forward to sharing our progress with you over the next few months!
DFS is launching our 1st Out of School Project in Jan. 2015, the Documentary Workshop led by teaching artist Andrea Claire Maio. Check out the info and application below:
WHAT
The DFS Documentary Workshop will investigate education in Detroit from the perspective of the young people who are most affected by it. We will spend six months exploring questions like: what does it mean for education to be humanizing? what does it mean for it to be dehumanizing? and how does the larger education system determine what’s possible in our schools? We will produce a documentary film that tells the story of our discoveries.
WHY
Too often, young people are reduced to statistics in the debate about education in Detroit. We believe young people can and should be leaders in addressing the complex problems we face in Detroit, from the drop-out crisis, to the crisis of local accountability in our separate school districts, to the need for new ways of measuring success beyond standardized testing.
WHO WE ARE
Detroit Future Schools is a digital media arts program committed to humanizing education in Detroit. The Documentary Workshop will be led by Detroit Future Schools Artist-in-Residence Andrea Claire Maio, a Detroit based filmmaker, whose work has been heard and seen on NPR, PBS and at film festivals in the US and abroad.
WHO WE’RE LOOKING FOR
We are looking for young people (ages 14 - 21) who…
have ideas for how education in Detroit can be better
want to grow those ideas in collaboration with others
want to learn about filmmaking
want to use media as a tool for change
WHEN & WHERE
You must be able to commit to meet for three hours per week after school at the Allied Media Projects office in the Cass Corridor (4216 Third Street). Exact meeting days and times will be determined in January.
Complete the application and return it to Detroit Future Schools 4126 Third Street Detroit, MI 48201 or email it to dfs@alliedmedia.org before December 31, 2014.
