Hello friends!
Short version: My latest stuff-raiser needs your support! Click here to find the wish list.
Long Version:
After nearly two years at another school, I was chosen to be a founding staff member at Sustainable Futures Public Charter School in Columbia Heights. Our first day of school is in a week! Sustainable Futures is the nation’s first competency-based, project-based alternative high school. This means that our students advance through school based on demonstrating mastery of our standards, not just by sitting in a room for four years and doing the bare minimum.
Remember the Nat Turner Unit, my interdisciplinary approach to slave rebellions and such? That’s what Sustainable Futures is all year round, for Humanities AND math/science. Stay tuned for the return of Nat Turner as well as The People vs David Bowie, in which I lead my students through a trimester-long study of the Bowie canon, culminating in the students prosecuting and defending Bowie against charges of cultural appropriation.
I call my classroom “The Spot Where Truth Echoes” — named from Saul Williams’ poem “Sha Clack Clack.” More about this and my educational philosophy can be found here.
My room currently is an empty, white room in the basement of All Souls Church. Luckily, because of my school’s devotion to rethinking and undoing traditional education, I have been given the freedom to design this room as I see fit. I have chosen the shape of a living room–a room where LIFE happens, not just tests and reading and all the old stressors of traditional school.
This living room will have comfortable furniture in one corner, such as a sofa and chair, floor lamps for softer lighting, and rustic trunks for storage and seating. We’ll have an Ottoman to kick up our feet, and wall hangings to make the harsh walls more welcoming.
I cannot create “The Spot Where Truth Echoes” without you. Please visit our Amazon Wish List and see if there is anything you’d like to sponsor, even if just a gift card.
If just thirty of my readers donated one gift card each, we would be done with this campaign before the first day of school!
Thank you so much for reading all the way to the bottom! I hope you’re excited by my new endeavor. And if you do participate, please be sure to send me an email with what you purchased so that the school can send you a proper gift acknowledgement for your tax purposes.