- [Announcer] Coming up on "One Detroit," we're focusing on local programs that enrich young people.

We'll show you how improvisation is changing the lives of some Detroit Public School students.

Plus we'll tell you about a nonprofit that gives teens tools to succeed.

Also ahead, a Detroit teacher makes it her mission to encourage children to read and we'll share a story from our "Destination Detroit" series.

It's all coming up next on "One Detroit."

- [Narrator 1] From Delta faucets to Behr paint, Masco Corporation is proud to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world experience and enjoy their living spaces.

Masco, serving Michigan communities since 1929.

Support also provided by the Cynthia & Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit PBS.

- [Narrator 2] The DTE Foundation is a proud sponsor of Detroit PBS.

Through our giving, we are committed to meeting the needs of the communities we serve statewide, to help ensure a bright and thriving future for all.

Learn more at DTEFoundation.com.

- [Narrator 1] Nissan Foundation, and viewers like you.

(light upbeat music) - [Announcer] Just ahead on "One Detroit," an organization is helping young people navigate life's challenges.

Plus, we'll show you how a local teacher is getting more books in the hands of students.

And a Detroit woman tells her family story as part of our "Destination Detroit" project.

But first up, a program for students in the Detroit Public Schools Community District is helping boost their self-confidence and life skills.

The Detroit Creativity Project uses improvisation to help elementary through high school students succeed.

"One Detroit's" Chris Jordan caught up with the program's founder, actor and comedian Marc Evan Jackson, and one of its well-known supporters, Detroit area native and former "Saturday Night Live" cast member, Tim Meadows.

He also visited an improv class to talk with students.

- Did you see that?

- Whoa, a meatball?

- How did they know I was hungry?

(audience laughing) You want some?

- Off the ground?

- Oh yeah.

I've started catching them.

(audience laughing) - This is my favorite day of the year.

This is our Spring Student Showcase.

We do this every single year.

We bring together kids from a lot of different schools who never get to meet each other or play together during the year, and they all perform for friends and family and the public.

Some of the kids performing here today will have never performed really on stage in front of an audience.

They've done improv in the classroom, but this is their first performance in front of an audience.

- Is it spoiled?

- Ew!

- Breathe.

- I think learning improv at this age is really good.

I mean, I wish I'd have learned when I was younger.

I think the thing that you learn from doing this, and I think you'll find it in the kids you meet here, they have a higher level of confidence in themselves.

They're able to like express themselves much better and I think for a teenager that's, like, huge.

- Who you talking to?

- You don't see the camera up there?

- Detroit Creativity Project was begun in 2011 by a group of improvisers and performers who all met at The Second City theater when it was downtown.

- I am blessed to have been part of a generation of The Second City Detroit, the sadly now defunct Second City Detroit that was at the corner of Woodward and Montcalm at the Hockeytown Cafe next to the Fox Theatre back in the late '90s.

And there is enough of a hit rate.

Enough of us have left there to go on to do fun and exciting things in entertainment that we get asked frequently here in Los Angeles and in New York and various places like what was in the drinking water in Detroit in the late '90s?

A lot of my friends that work as actors and directors and writers and musicians, we got together in 2011 and we said, "What should we be doing to give back to the city of Detroit?"

And it took about two cookouts at my house before we were like, "Oh, improvisation is what's made all of our lives great.

That's something that we should be sharing with the youth of Detroit."

So piloting a program in late 2011, early 2012, we began the Detroit Creativity Project.

We teach improv.

Improv is unscripted short form theater where you get a suggestion from the audience and create something from nothing.

We began teaching that in Detroit Middle and High Schools and it's just a wonderful skillset in addition to being fun and funny, it carries with it some not so secret, really wonderful life side effects.

- It's adaptation, it's dealing with change, it's any moment in your life realizing that something different might happen.

And if you can be cool about it and you can roll with it, then anybody else can look at you and just say, "Hey, that makes sense, maybe I can do that too."

- I like drama improv because I like to join things that like get me out of my comfort zone.

So like I join drama and debate because it can help with public speaking.

- Most of the time, the ones that is the most shy, even in walking in the hallway, now they're verbal.

According to their teachers, especially in math, they volunteer, they're more outspoken, and they're like, "What did you do in that drama class?"

I'm like, "I didn't do anything.

Most of the time it's them."

When I watch Jason and Dana kind of pull some things out of the kids, I'm sitting back like, "Oh my goodness, look at this kid."

I remember when.

- It's a true pleasure to watch a student who goes from, you know, in their shell or even students who are super careful, they don't want to be wrong, they don't wanna make a mistake.

It's very, it's super cool to watch those students go from that state to blossom into a young person that's empowered, that is connected to their own choices, their own voice, that are confident enough in their ideas to be able to share them and build with other people.

- Improv for me is like a expression of freedom.

It's like you don't really have to follow a set of rules, it's just you can freely express yourself.

Also to like really get in the rhythm of being in a social environment and you know, expressing your feelings with other people.

- I love the creativity of improv because you can just say anything on the spot, whatever you're thinking in your mind, you just make it come to life.

I'm a creative person.

I like to build stuff and make it come together as in one big assemble.

And I like working with people a lot.

- You become part of a community of people that are like-minded.

It's almost like, "Oh, I met other people who are just like me.

You know, you're weird just like me.

You like comedy just like me.

You're creative just like me."

And so, it's really great 'cause you get strength from that.

- Correct.

- All right!

(group applauding) - Devising the curriculum initially for the Detroit Creativity Project, the teaching of improv is fairly universal, but we had to pivot a little bit because we realized we're teaching this to, in some cases middle school students, in some cases high school students.

And now we've even moved younger.

We have third graders and fourth graders in some of our programs.

- We've just got this amazing group of teaching artists.

They're all improvisers and performers and teachers themselves.

We have a social worker on staff.

We have people who have been teaching improv for decades and they're amazing with the students.

- Typically, every semester we've got about 10 to 15 classes in about 10 or 12 schools.

We are so fortunate to be partners with Detroit Public Schools and local area schools, Hamtramck, Lincoln Park where we just go in, we have the classroom teacher stay in the class and we teach improv games.

- They are contestants in a spelling bee.

The host will give you a word that is made up and the host is gonna ask you to spell it.

I'm a professional, I'm an actor and a drama teacher.

When I heard about Detroit Creativity Project and their mission to not only just teach improv skills but use it as a tool of empowerment, I signed up to to be a teaching artist.

And this is my fifth year.

Throughout these five years I've learned so much that has impacted me as an artist and just as a person.

There's a range of emotions.

What I would love to see from your characters before we even begin, I already know how your character feels.

My teaching style is more so reflective of reflexive of what I'm seeing.

So today, I created a game based on what I was seeing from the students.

And that was these students at Bates are extremely intellectual.

They're very, very bright and they love to be engaged, and they love to be challenged.

Finding ways to still move the group towards that freedom we talked about, I ain't gotta be right, I ain't gotta have the right answer, I ain't gotta have the right statement, to push them there definitely takes you paying attention to the group and knowing what the group need.

Listening, watching, observing, and responding.

What was challenging?

What was easy about that second?

- Okay, 'cause since I had an accent with my voice that I was doing, it was like hard to keep my voice up.

- It really helps me because it helps my brain think of new things on the spot immediately.

- I was feeding off of everyone's energy.

Like, when I heard one thing, I thought of another, and I was like, "Oh, that could go there."

And then I added my own thing into it and it just became one.

- Some of the activities are more focused on things like a character building or emotion point of view.

So we utilize the different games and warmups based on a specific skill that we're trying to work on.

For example, yes and.

- Yes and is probably the biggest rule in improv, which is just accepting an idea and then building on top of it.

So it doesn't always mean that you have to agree with the idea, but in the scene you accept it and you build upon it.

- And you're building together, you're working together, you're honoring what they're saying and adding to it.

Everybody shows up and does their part, and it turns out that if you do that in real life, it goes better.

Improv is really only important for people who ever have to come across another human being in their life.

If you were on the planet Mars, maybe you shouldn't take an improv class.

If you're anybody other than that, you should take an improv class because what it shows you is that you're improvising all the time anyway.

There's no script for your day.

And it shows you that, and then it teaches you that it matters how you approach it and it makes you a more curious, more interested, and therefore more interesting person.

- Once the kids had like a first couple of classes, I was tuned in, I'm like, "Oh, this is it."

And I was always taking notes.

Even some of the most troubled students, I think if they kind of tried improv, it would help them because it does bring out emotion.

It also teaches them how to deal with that.

It teaches them how to communicate.

- It truly opens your life up.

You realize that failure is not a lasting condition.

Not everything's going to go perfectly every day, but you realize it's not fatal, it's not a lasting condition and you fear it less so it makes you more willing to go into the unknown.

It opens up what psychologists refer to as acceptance of uncertainty.

So it reduces the anxiety.

- After school, when I think of after school, I'm like, "Oh yay, I get to do improv today, it's Monday."

And it actually makes me look forward to Mondays because everybody's just so fun here.

They help us like express our emotions and, like, they tell us that nothing's wrong.

- This is great 'cause I'm sure there's other people just like me in Detroit who are in public schools that have talent but don't know how to express it or don't know how to find out what they like.

And I think even with improv, it's not even about acting sometimes, it can be just about being able to like, have confidence and speaking in front of people, and like trusting yourself.

- If every one of our students nails a job interview one day because they can think on their feet and have the confidence to know that they're gonna be okay in any situation, then this program is a success.

- We've seen improvement in test scores, we've seen improvement in attendance.

It helps with math and with reading.

- The progress, I'm one person, I'm able to see in a student in less than a year, sometimes it's six weeks.

I'm so excited by the discovery of their own voice, their own power, their own confidence, whatever they go on to do, they'll be great at it because they'll believe in themselves.

They'll have the confidence and the experience of communicating with others and working with others.

So whatever they decide to do, they're gonna be great at it.

- [Announcer] The nonprofit organization, Teen HYPE, empowers young people through educational programs that lift up their voices, encourage personal growth and build leadership skills.

"One Detroit" Contributor and "American Black Journal" host, Stephen Henderson spoke with Teen HYPE, CEO, Ambra Redrick, and member, Omega Clemons.

(light upbeat music) - One of the things I love about Teen HYPE and the whole idea is I feel like what you're doing is helping young people find their voice and not only find their voice, but also find where and how they can use it.

- Absolutely.

- And it's such an important thing to do when you're a young person.

- It is, it is.

I'm sure you can remember those years during your 10 years.

(laughs) - Sometimes fondly.

Sometimes not so fondly.

But I remember.

- The importance of having space to do that.

When you have those moments of self-discovery and you are trying to find out who you are is such a beautiful moment as you kind of stumble upon that.

One of the beautiful things about teenagers.

- How did you come up with the idea for Teen HYPE?

- Oh, I wish I could say I took credit for an idea.

Co-founder, but it was a very like divine order thing.

We started our work many years ago in a hospital actually under public health.

And we quickly discovered how important youth voices and those young people actually came together, created a council, a young person said, "I've got an idea for a name, how about Teen HYPE?"

And things just kind of took off from there.

We did a lot of work in the community early on with young people.

And one day we got a call for a larger audience and realized we couldn't do a normal, like, didactic presentation, and we had to come up with this idea of trying to do theater.

- Theater, right.

- And that is where theater was born.

- Yeah, and the number of young people who've gone through this program is phenomenal at this point.

- Oh yeah, we are going into year 21, so we are approaching adulthood also.

- That's right.

- And it feels like, I can't believe that we've served well over 30,000 kids.

- It's incredible.

That number is just mind-blowing.

- Yeah, it is.

And still feels very small enough to see young people come through the door and still recognize them by name and see young people that have gotten married and are doing wonderful things.

- Yeah, yeah.

And Omega, you are a member of Teen HYPE.

Tell us about how you got involved.

- Well, how I got involved was, first, I didn't know anything about Teen HYPE, but at the time I was homeschooled and I was really looking for somewhere to express myself and be myself and discover who I was.

My father actually, he recommended Teen HYPE to me.

And I became interested and I was just drawn to the opportunities that they were giving out.

Like, I saw the singing, the chances of poetry, the chances of dancing and acting, and that really spoke to me.

And I ended up signing up and we went to the interview 'cause the interview process, before you are admitted, like actually in Teen HYPE, and I passed the interview and I was just greeted with so many, like, friendly people, and I just felt like I already had a community without actually like getting to, without having the bond yet.

- [Stephen] Yeah.

- There was already something there.

- [Stephen] That's really powerful.

- And I would say that's how I got involved in it, was just that.

- Yeah, - My father was like, "You should do."

I'm like, "I should."

- "I'll try that out," right?

- [Announcer] A Detroit teacher is spreading the joy of reading.

Alyce Hartman came up with an idea on how to get more books in the hands of students at a time when school library resources are diminishing.

"BridgeDetroit" Contributor, Eleanore Catolico, teamed up with "One Detroit" to tell the story of Birdie's Bookmobile.

- We fit together.

(light upbeat music) Because we fit together like beats of a drum, like the chorus of notes and the chords that you strum.

- [Eleanore] Inside Room 148, Alyce Hartman reads a book about an eclectic trio of musicians, a squirrel, a grizzly bear, and a chicken.

A group of second graders sit and listen.

In the end, the three talking animals form a band and the students get a lesson on friendship and belonging.

- We make our own music.

We have nothing to prove.

We do our own thing and find our own proof.

- [Eleanore] Hartman is a STEM and drama teacher at Detroit Prep.

When she isn't teaching, she's on a mission to grow the next generation of readers as school librarians and school libraries have begun to disappear.

- There are a lack of books in the schools.

- [Eleanore] Hartman launched her popup literacy initiative, Birdie's Bookmobile two years ago, and hopes to fill a resource gap.

She hits the road and delivers hundreds of books to schools, afterschool programs, and non-profit organizations across Detroit.

- The books that are distributed, the children get to keep.

They're taking them home, sharing them with their families.

- Since Birdie's Bookmobile was born, Hartman said she's given away more than 16,000 books.

Today she makes a trip to Voyageur Academy, a K-12 charter school in Southwest Detroit.

The school doesn't have a library.

Hartman spent the morning hauling books into the school and gave over 500 to Voyageur.

Where does your passion come from to do this work?

- I was an early reader and an avid reader.

My mother was a kindergarten teacher, so I was always surrounded by books.

I had a large collection of books.

As a child, I loved reading and those books really opened these avenues of creativity for me.

And so I would always imagine that I was a character.

I would add dialogue and just really pretend, you know, to be in the story.

And I want children here in the city to really enjoy reading as much as I did.

- [Eleanore] At Voyageur, Hartman set up a book fair for the students.

There are books about Kamala Harris and Nelson Mandela, a book called "Soul Food Sunday" by Black children's author, Winsome Bingham.

Graphic novels are popular among high school students.

Many of the books Hartman curates include Black and Brown characters or books written by authors of color.

- I think I'm really drawn to getting these books into the hands of children so that they can then explore, you know, different career paths and learn more about what other cultures are doing and other characters.

You know, and the stories might differ from the experiences that they've had.

- [Eleanore] Hartman serves schools and nonprofits across the city.

- They're looking for books that reflect the community and that's what we're providing.

- [Eleanore] Literacy experts say children of color are still overlooked in mainstream culture.

Diverse books can teach students to be compassionate toward people who are different from them and toward themselves.

When a student sees themselves reflected in a story, their confidence can blossom.

Just ask 13-year-old Kai Fee.

- As Black girls, we don't get very much attention.

- [Eleanore] Kai is an eighth grader at Voyageur.

She picked up the young adult fantasy novel, "The Gilded Ones," written by Namina Forna, an author who grew up in Sierra Leon.

When she saw the cover, she said to herself, "Black girl magic."

- I feel like this book will talk about some things that we have in common maybe, 'cause we're both two Black girls and she seems like she's a young girl like me.

So I feel like this could help me, like, believe more in myself.

- [Eleanore] High school senior Tyler McKinnon picked up two books wrestling with the themes of war.

Sometimes McKinnon can't find books that entice him, so he appreciates the variety Birdie's Bookmobile provides.

- I feel like reading, you know, even like news articles, it helped me like not be ignorant and like, you know, expand my knowledge because I like to educate myself.

- [Eleanore] In the afternoon, Hartman heads to 27th Letter Books in Southwest Detroit.

The bookstore carries historically underrepresented authors.

Erin Pineda, the bookstore's co-owner helps Hartman shop.

She recommends a picture book about body positivity.

- "Bodies Are Cool."

- [Eleanore] Pineda's dog Chai watches the fun.

- The work that like Alyce is doing is so, so critical in getting books into kids' hands so that they can develop a love for literature and for learning, and like letting them know that they deserve those things because they do, you know.

- Thank you.

- [Erin] And like, that's really important.

- [Eleanore] The bookstore supports Hartman's mission by helping her save money on books.

- An ongoing program that we have here at 27th Letter Books is called Roundup for Reading.

And when folks come into our store and purchase something, they are given the option of rounding the purchase up to the nearest dollar.

And that difference helps fund a fund that allows us to give books to Birdie's Bookmobile.

So we are able to give them the books at cost and just, you know, keep that perpetual cycle of like books coming in and being able to go out into the hands of kids in Detroit.

(kids chattering) - [Eleanore] Last year, a fire destroyed Hartman's old ride, a bus.

In the meantime, she's using a van, still spreading the joy of reading to the children of Detroit, a joy she hopes will last a lifetime.

- I hope to grow lifelong readers and raise storytellers and have a generation of children who are interested in reading and really find joy in it and who are able to just get lost in a book every now and then.

Raise your hand if you liked it.

- [Announcer] Now let's turn to our "Destination Detroit" series, which explores the region's rich history and the people who helped shape it.

Detroit resident, Sharon Sexton, talks about how her grandmother migrated to Detroit from Natchez, Mississippi to pursue the American dream.

- We are Detroiters, you know, because of the fact that she came here on that train by herself and, you know, willing to do whatever it took to achieve the American dream.

(light music) And my family came to Detroit via my grandmother, who at the time was Consuela Duncan.

And she came from Natchez, Mississippi in 1919-1920.

And she came as a basically a teenager.

She came through this facility.

So I kind of get goosebumps thinking, "Hey, I'm walking in my grandmother's footsteps literally," you know.

My other grandmother who was Viola Adams, she always took the trains and she would come and visit us from New Jersey.

And she was on one of the last trains that left from here before it closed down.

So I have both ends when somebody immigrant came here and then also one of the last trains that left going east.

And when my grandmother came here, then she, you know, got her two sisters to come and then she had my father who went to Detroit Public Schools, and joined the Army, went to fight in World War II, and also, you know, Korea.

And he ended up marrying my mom who was from New Jersey and she came here to live, you know, after he retired from the Army.

And so basically we are Detroiters, you know, because of the fact that she came here on that train by herself and, you know, willing to do whatever it took to achieve the American dream.

(light music) - [Announcer] For more "Destination Detroit" stories, go to OneDetroitpbs.org/DestinationDe.

That'll do it for this week's "One Detroit."

Thanks for watching.

Head to the "One Detroit" website for all the stories we're working on.

Follow us on social media and sign up for our weekly newsletter.

(light upbeat music) - [Narrator 1] From Delta faucets to Behr paint, Masco Corporation is proud to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world experience and enjoy their living spaces.

Masco, serving Michigan communities since 1929.

Support also provided by the Cynthia & Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit PBS.

- [Narrator 2] The DTE Foundation is a proud sponsor of Detroit PBS.

Through our giving, we are committed to meeting the needs of the communities we serve statewide, to help ensure a bright and thriving future for all.

Learn more at DTEFoundation.com.

- [Narrator 1] Nissan Foundation, Michigan Central, and viewers like you.

(light upbeat music) (light piano music)