The school
Phoenix Rising is the last stop for most of our students academically. It is a therapeutic, not punitive, program with the intention of breaking the cycle of suspensions and absences that have come from litany of small and large offences that—rather than academic progress—have marked their school experience. We are responsible for meeting state and federal education mandates, but often our first priorities for our students are for them to learn how to be students and feel safe and successful again. We want to send them on as productive, engaged citizens who are on the better side of the social justice system. In such a situation, it could be easy to lower expectations. One of my greatest challenges is to introduce and maintain a level of rigor to which my students are generally not accustomed. With our small staff, classes are necessarily multi-grade. Our staff is about an equal balance of teachers and social workers. We do not give homework often, but smaller classes and special times available for one-on-one meetings help.
Ours is a Big Picture Learning school. The Big Picture network helps to organize their affiliated schools (many but not all for at-risk students) around a three-part strategy. The first of these is relationship-building. Students' learning is weakened in situations where students do not feel safe or comfortable; conversely, students' learning is enhanced in an environment where they do. The second is relevance; reluctant students are more
inclined to strive for academic success when they see its relevance to their lives, needs, and personal interests. The third is rigor, based on the idea that especially with at-risk students, rigor is more readily achieved after relevance and relationships are established. BP students are encouraged to get to know themselves as young adults and as learners so that they can be advocates for themselves and others. This unit asks them to do both, as they look inward to their own stories and outward, as voices to be shaped for society to hear. As a Big Picture school, our site has traditional core classes supplemented by a project-driven advisory block. The final written product of this unit is typical Big Picture assignment, but it will address standard objectives and include products relevant to all language arts classrooms.
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