Kentwood — To grow their craft, two Kentwood teachers spent three days observing educational practices at schools in Memphis, Tennessee.
They are sharing what they learned in a podcast recorded at East Kentwood High School. Listen here: Experiential Learning with Kentwood Educators: episodes 1 and 2.
East Kentwood video production teacher Preston Donakowski and Discovery Elementary School second-grade teacher Reneeta Polson visited Memphis last spring as part of their work as teaching fellows with TeachMichigan, an initiative powered by Teach For America Detroit.
‘The diverse faces that were in that school and on that teaching staff kind of made you feel like you were back in Kentwood.’
— East Kentwood High School teacher Preston Donakowski
Donakowski and Polson joined a cohort of 20 teachers from around the state. They visited several classrooms to learn about how schools work in the city that was the epicenter of the Civil Rights movement.
TeachMichigan’s goal is to recruit, retain and develop more than 700 high-impact teachers and improve outcomes for students. In Kentwood, 71 educators including 64 teachers and seven administrators are involved. Cohorts include early career educators, those seeking National Board Certification and aspiring administrators.
Donakowski and Polson are both in the early career educator cohort of the program. The podcast was Donakowski and Polson’s final project for their first of three years in the program.
A Peek into Memphis Schools
As they explain in the podcast, they saw high school students serving as teaching assistants, teachers tapping into district-level social-emotional supports, and pre-K-12 project-based learning, as well as other examples of instruction in action.
Donakowski visited an all-boys charter school backed by the Memphis Grizzlies NBA basketball team, a private charter school run by the University of Memphis and the traditional Central High School.
They reflected on what stood out to them, what differed from what they are used to, and ideas for integrating some practices into KPS.
“Central High School was where I felt most at home,” Donakowski said, describing a building style typical of a large local high school. “The diverse faces that were in that school and on that teaching staff kind of made you feel like you were back in Kentwood.”
Donakowski said seniors at Central High School in Memphis work as assistants for teachers they’ve had in the past, adding another set of hands or even leading mini-lessons.
“The teacher’s assistant part was the thing that stuck out to me the most, seeing how invested the students were,” he said.
He said he sees lots of opportunities with his students serving as teaching assistants in his video production class. He has already had advanced students working with peers.
“Having students be TAs as an elective would be something to really explore here,” he said.
Polson toured elementary schools including Libertas, a Montessori school, where study and celebration of African American leaders is embedded in the curriculum. She learned about the school’s tech-free classrooms learning environment, where multi-age students, such as 3 to 6-year-olds, are in one class.
“I was so thoroughly impressed,” Polson said in the podcast. “Every student I encountered was actively engaged in their academics.”
She recounted how she witnessed students helping one another as they worked on writing sentences step-by-step.
“There was no teacher engagement in that,” she said. “It was all student-led.”
Read more from Kentwood:
• Enrichment program helps fill students’ recreation, academic needs
• What it means to be a ‘Grad with Grit’
