Call for 2017 Teaching Artists

Detroit Future Schools is hiring Teaching Artists to implement media projects in DFS anchor schools, starting January 2017. PDF ABOUT POSITION HERE

Media Projects from James and Grace Lee Boggs School

About the Teaching Artist position DFS Teaching Artists will work with teachers and the DFS staff for five months to develop and implement a Major Media Project (MMP). MMPs investigate a complex community issue through a collaborative media-making and design process. A MMP requires two months of preparation and three months of work in the classroom. This is a part-time, contract position with the expectation of approximately 140 hours of work (averaging 10 hours a week while in the classroom) over the period of January 2016 through May 2016. Teaching Artists will be compensated with a $3,000 stipend for their participation in this five month project. The deadline to apply is December 30, 2016. Our ideal candidate will start on January 7, 2016.

Specific Responsibilities The DFS Teaching Artist will:

• Build a strong, collaborative partnership with assigned classroom teacher(s)
• Develop in-depth knowledge of DFS “root practices” for the development of ethical agency, critical thinking and creative problem-solving
• Facilitate a DFS Major Media Project, in which the teaching artist will utilize the DFS root practices to guide students in:

  Developing skills in digital media production Investigating “Big Questions” which identify and deconstruct systemic problems that impact their lives and their communities Designing solutions for those systemic problems based on research Increasing students mastery of classroom curriculum in general

• Implement DFS documentation and evaluation procedures, which include:
• > Weekly lesson planning
• > Program evaluations before, during, and after the Major Media Project
• + Participate in Bi-weekly staff meetings

Qualifications The ideal candidate will have: + Demonstrated commitment to social justice values. + Demonstrated commitment to authentic youth leadership. + Mastery of at least one media arts practice (video production, audio production, graphic design, or web design) and at least one year of experience teaching that practice. + Two or more years experience working as an educator in K-12 schools or youth leader/facilitator in a community organization. + Familiarity with theories and practices of popular education. + Familiarity with arts-infused education practices. + Proficiency with Google applications (Google Drive, Calendar, etc.). + Thorough and creative lesson-planning, paired with the ability to improvise in the classroom. + Experience working collaboratively with a diverse staff. + Excellent interpersonal, written, and communication skills; strong public speaking skills. + Excellent self-management and time-management skills. + Ability/desire to work flexible hours, including occasional evenings and weekends, and willingness to travel occasionally.

How to Apply To apply, please send the following to work@alliedmedia.org with your name and “DFS Teaching Artist Application” in the subject line: + Cover letter + Resume + Three work samples such as art projects, curricula, articles or essays or reports, links to videos of work or workshops you have led, etc. Work samples that demonstrate your skills as an artists and/or educator. + Three professional references including names, emails, and telephone numbers.

Download a PDF of this job posting HERE

We strongly encourage people of color, women, LGBTQ, and disabled candidates to apply.

Rida Institute 2016: What Humanizing Schooling Means to Us

In early August, we convened 20 educators from Metro Detroit to kick off the 2016 Rida Institute at our three-day summer retreat. The Rida Institute is a year-long training for educators with a focus on critical pedagogy. At the summer retreat, we spent three days exploring and experiencing what “humanizing schooling” means to us as Detroit educators, using the “Rida Framework,” DFS’ primary curriculum planning tool.

While this marked our third Rida Institute, the work of preparing teachers to create humanizing learning environments feels particularly urgent right now, in the context of Detroit’s current realities. We are a city that claims the country’s highest percentage of youth living in poverty and some of the highest rates of violent crime. We are a city with a long and layered history of systemic racism that has resulted in the segregation of our regional school systems and the divestment of resources from many of our neighborhoods. As a result of State legislation that fundamentally restructures our public schools, this is a critical moment for us to explore what a humane and humanizing schooling experience could look like in this city.

Mapping Our Context

We define our “context” as the place and community in which we teach. The Rida Framework asks teachers to reflect deeply about their context and personal motivations and aspirations for why they teach. The framework then supports them to use these reflections to inform every aspect of how they develop curriculum, metrics and facilitation of their classroom.

We started by mapping out the assets and obstacles that our students face when they come to school, then collectively mapped out the larger context of our city, region and country. The maps served as a way for us to start a conversation about systemic issues, such as poverty, racism and violence, and how they affect our classrooms. One of the major ways systemic injustice shows up in individuals is chronic stress and trauma. We discovered that this is not limited to our students; everyone suffers from systems of injustice and inequality and many of us navigate chronic stress and trauma in our own lives. Using this realization as our foundation, we moved on to develop our purpose and principles of education, anchoring our pedagogy in healing trauma through relationship building.

Creating a Healing Learning Experience

 What does a classroom that is anchored in healing look like? Many of us, who have chosen education as our life’s work, did so because we experienced a healing learning experience at some point during our time as a student. For some of us, a healing learning experience means we had a teacher who really saw our potential and changed the way we understood a subject.  For others it means we went to camp or had an educational experience outside of class that gave us a vision of community and changed who we wanted to be in the world. Whatever the situation, these healing learning experiences were pivotal moments that allowed us to thrive in that moment and shaped who we are as people today.

As we developed our purposes for our classrooms, we examined our own healing learning experiences and worked to understand what made those experiences different from other learning experiences. Not surprisingly, most of us identified a healing learning experience as one in which we engage in deep, caring relationships; feel free to explore, be vulnerable and take on “big challenges”; and develop critical understandings of our lives. It is these elements of a healing learning experience that we hope to cultivate in our classrooms throughout the year.

Defining Success in Our Classrooms

After exploring our context and defining our purpose, we returned to the Rida Framework to develop plans for our classrooms for the upcoming school year. Working in small cohorts, each teacher examined their classroom to understand what was working and what wasn’t, and identified one goal, big or small, that they wanted to focus on for the year. As we move into the school year, teachers will continue to work on their goals and assess their progress through “tune-up” meetings with their cohorts and the larger group. In the fall we will develop a plan for documenting every classroom and in the winter we will come back together as a large group to evaluate and reflect.

Because the teachers are working in different schools, subject areas and communities, what success looks like will be different for each of them. This is one lesson that we miss so often in education: success is not uniform and doesn’t happen overnight. This concept was reiterated in a presentation by Danielle Filipiak, one of the founding teachers of Detroit Future Schools and now a PHD candidate in English Education at Columbia Teachers College. Danielle shared how over the course of her career her purpose and practice of education evolved through an ongoing process of iteration and investigation. Learning about her journey in education really nailed down many of the ideas that emerged throughout the retreat.

Detroit Future Schools is excited to continue working with these teachers throughout the coming school year. You can learn more about DFS’s practices and the “Rida Framework” in the DFS Guide to Humanizing Schooling. Read the guide online or purchase a copy on the AMP Store.

Apply Now for the 2016 Rida Institute

Detroit Future Schools mission is to humanize education in Detroit.  We believe that in order to transform our school system, we as educators must begin by transforming our own practices and by designing our classrooms to nurture the transformative leadership of our students. Detroit teachers and students need these leadership skills more than ever, as the actions of Michigan’s legislature threaten to dissolve public education as we know it, and as the learning environments of all schools (public, charter, and EAA) in Detroit become increasingly dehumanizing.

We are now accepting applications for the Rida Institute, a year-long professional development training with a focus on critical pedagogy.  The Institute will begin with a three day curriculum planning retreat taking place Monday, August 1 through Wednesday, August 3 in Detroit. The retreat will introduce teachers to the “Rida Framework,” one of Detroit Future School’s education planning tools for humanizing schooling. Participants will be trained in DFS’ best practices for curriculum planning and classroom culture-setting. DFS will continue to support participants in the Institute to reflect and course-correct throughout the year.

Apply here for the 2016 Rida Institute. The deadline to apply for the 2016 Rida Institute is July 18th.

Participants of the Rida Institute will attend the following training sessions:

 Rida Institute Retreat - August 1-3, 2016 This three day retreat will introduce teachers to the Rida Framework, DFS’s education planning tool. The tools supports teachers to articulate their purpose as educators within their context of their school, their neighborhood, their city, and the world. From there they will identify the skills and practices they need to cultivate (in themselves and in their classrooms) in order to fulfill that purpose. They will learn best practices for nurturing student agency and leadership. With the support of DFS staff, teachers will create unit plans and self-defined metrics by which they will measure progress towards their stated purpose and goals.

“Tune-up” Meetings in September, January and May Throughout the year, teachers will have the opportunity to come together to “tune up” their classroom plans and practices. The “tune-ups” will focus on classroom culture and instructional practices. Teachers will grow a supportive community of peers with whom they can troubleshoot challenges and share successes. Tune-ups will happen over brunch on the last Sunday of September, January, and May.

Classroom Documentation & Evaluation Every classroom will be observed and evaluated once throughout the year, using the Detroit Future Schools rubric of “11 Essential Skills” – skills which are needed to prepare students to solve real world problems. DFS staff will conduct interviews with students to evaluate their perceptions of the classroom and their attitudes towards school overall. Teachers will then reflect on these student evaluations during “Tune-up” meetings to understand what is working or not working in their classrooms, and adjust their instructional practices accordingly.

 The cost for the year long institute for individuals is $300. The cost to participate as a representative of an institution is $500. Meals will be provided throughout the three days of the Rida Institute Retreat and at other events throughout the Institute.

Scholarships are available – please indicate your need for a scholarship in the application form.

NOTE if you are not based in metro Detroit, please select the non-local option on the application. As a non-local participant you can only participate in the three day Summer retreat in August, for a cost of $150.

IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS ABOUT COST OR THE INSTITUTE PLEASE EMAIL NATE@ALLIEDMEDIA.ORG

The Rida Framework The Rida Framework is the primary planning and evaluation tool that DFS uses to humanize schooling, inspired by the educational theories of Paolo Freire, Jeff Duncan-Andrade, and James and Grace Lee Boggs. Freire, a Brazilian educator and theorist, believed that cycles of critical reflection and action were key to any transformative learning process. From this approach, users of the Rida Framework articulate practices (action) that will result in desired/outlined outcomes within their classrooms, which they will document and evaluate via predetermined metrics (reflection).

Learn more about the Rida Framework here.

Read a recap of the first Rida Institute held in 2014 here.

IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS ABOUT COST OR THE INSTITUTE PLEASE EMAIL NATE@ALLIEDMEDIA.ORG