AMP Blog: critical consciousness

A Detroit Future Schools classroom at Henry Ford Academy

The Classroom is Yours: Practices for self-governance

This is the second part in a series of blog posts highlighting lessons emerging from Detroit Future Schools. Detroit Future Schools is an AMP Sponsored Project.

Detroit Future Schools' goal is to make our work to humanize schooling in Detroit "open-source" and accessible to other educators. Below, Nate Mullen, DFS Lead Artist, reflects on student-facilitated debates as a practice of self-governance.

Patrick Butler's drama class at Western International High School

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."