A Progress(ive) Report on Urban Leadership Education at DMPS

High school students have been in the midst of final exams all week so, in a spirit of progress reports, we dropped in on the Urban Leadership program headquartered at Central Campus, now in the middle of its second year, to get an update from co-directors Emily Lang and Kristopher Rollins. Boy, is there a lot to report!

Highlights include:

• Minorities on the Move, the summer creative writing workshop, has expanded to all five DMPS high schools and is now being facilitated by program alums.
• Movement 515, the spoken word poetic core that later birthed Urban Leadership, has also branched out to all of the high schools, sprouted a street art component and even led to the district’s first-ever school versus school poetry slams during the fall semester. All thanks to a $70,000 grant obtained through United Way.
• RunDSM was officially adopted by the district and that has led, in turn, to six high school students being hired through the 21st Century Community Learning Centers program to pilot a Half Pints Poetry program at King Elementary in the upcoming semester.
• The Urban Leadership curriculum expanded from one to two years and now includes seventeen high school students serving internships as mentors in three elementary schools where they work with 4th and 5th graders.

Urban Leadership moved up to the third floor at Central Campus this year and now fills two rooms. Besides the traditional classroom, an adjoining room serves as performing arts space, complete with a custom made soap box in the corner where student poets can prep themselves for competitions and community events. That finishing touch was provided courtesy of Ben Molloy and his students in the Central Campus Home Building department and is one good example of the cross-pollination that goes on between and amongst CC disciplines. Another is the urban garden that’s in the planning stages and will be a joint effort of Urban Leadership and Culinary Arts.

“When we took our team to BNV (the annual Brave New Voices International Youth Poetry Festival) last summer in Philadelphia they got to work on a similar project there,” Rollins said. “Chef (John) Andres is fired up to do one here and we figure to donate whatever produce his program can’t use at the (Central Campus) Café to the refugee farmer’s market at Lutheran Social Services.” Stay tuned for more details as they emerge on that front.

A year ago this burgeoning movement staged Des Moines’ first-ever Teen Summit at the Des Moines Social Club and the sequel event promises to be bigger and better. It’s scheduled for January 30-31 at the same venue and the driving forces behind it can’t wait.

“Like any inaugural event we learned so much last year,” Lang said. “And the amazing youth in this city have worked so hard to put this together and join forces that it is going to be powerful.” Read from the official invite:

Teen Summit 2015 is a two-day event produced by students in Urban Leadership 101+102 at Central Campus. The goal of the summit is to create safe spaces for teens to discuss issues facing their communities, brainstorming possible solutions and becoming ambassadors for change. During the summit, 70 Urban Leadership students and 20 youth from each of the five comprehensive high schools will engage in town hall meetings, artistic workshops, a documentary screening, and a public performance.

The topics students have chosen to discuss are:

1. Police Brutality
2. Women’s Rights
3. Race and Poverty
4. LGBTQ Rights

The public is invited to attend on Sunday, January 31 at 2:00 PM in the social club’s Kum & Go Theater.

Next summer’s BNV festival is scheduled for Atlanta and DMPS will again be well-represented after last year’s team was invited to perform at the opening ceremonies. But Lang won’t be making the trip. She and Rollins, the ever-rhyming partners in all things that they are, are expecting their first child in June. So that’s another good reason the original crew from the early days back at Harding Middle School are now taking the reins and giving back some of what their leaders have given them. Rollins and Lang need help!

Well-trained in citizen activism, soon the young but practiced poets can learn the ways of babysitting. Instead of “spitting” truth they can coo some lullabies for a change and leave the spitting to Baby Rollins-Lang.