- Coming up on a special episode of One Detroit, we're focusing on education.

We'll hear from a group of students from Detroit High Schools about their learning experiences, thoughts on AI, and preferred teaching methods.

Plus, the teens talk about how schools can help support young people's mental wellness, and they give their ideas for the future of education.

It's all coming up next on One Detroit.

- [Narrator] Across our Masco family of companies, our goal is to deliver better living possibilities and make positive changes in the neighborhoods where we live, work, and do business.

Masco, a Michigan company since 1929.

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

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.

Nissan Foundation.

And viewers like you.

(upbeat ambient music) - Hello, I'm Zosette Guir.

Just ahead on this special episode of One Detroit, we're taking a look at education through the voices of teenagers who are currently in Detroit high schools, along with one who recently graduated.

It's part of our ongoing coverage on stories from Detroit's education front lines.

Today, we hear from the young people about the current state of education and what they would change for the future.

The students took part in a round table at the Skillman Foundation offices this summer.

The conversation was led by Dr.

Omar Hakim, Vice President of Education at Detroit PBS.

(pulsing ambient music) - At Detroit PBS, we believe improving education starts with listening to youth.

Every day, students experience our education system in ways that adults simply can't.

Their perspectives give us important insight into what's working, what's not, and what they need to thrive.

In this conversation, you'll hear directly from students across Detroit.

They'll share their experiences, their challenges, and their hopes for the future of learning.

As you listen, I hope you'll hear what we heard.

Thoughtful ideas, resilience, and optimism.

Most importantly, I hope you'll come away reminded of something simple.

If we're shaping the future of education, students need to be at the center of the conversation.

We're having a conversation about all things related to school and the future of education.

I want to start the conversation by asking you about a time in school that you had an assignment, or an experience, a project perhaps, that you completed that was meaningful to you.

And so tell us a little bit about what that project was like, what that experience or assignment was like, and what made it meaningful or memorable.

- A experience in school that I felt was meaningful to me was my seventh grade extra credit project, which was a book review.

And the book that I did a review on was "The Virgin Suicides."

And I think that that assignment and also the encouragement from my seventh grade English teacher is really what sparked my passion for classic literature and just literature in general.

So I feel like that made a very significant impact on me as a student.

- That's cool.

What did you do?

What was your project?

- So, it was essentially to a book of your choice and then rate it and then write a review about why you rated it the way that you did.

Pretty much the same thing as like the Good Reads process.

- All right.

So it got you into that critic mindset or mode.

All right.

- Yeah, a meaningful experience I remember was being in second grade actually.

I remember my teacher, Ms.

McCormick, and every day we did a word of the day.

So, I remember she taught us integrity, that word.

And I remember I rose my hand, I was like, "What does that mean?"

And she looked at me, the way she looked at me in the eye, she was like, "It's who you are when no one's around."

And that kind of just stuck with me till today.

- I would say an experience that I had that kind of shaped me to who I am today is eighth grade.

I had this counselor and she was really passionate about her work and passionate about helping the students and making sure that they felt heard.

Every time I went to her office or had a conversation with her, it felt like I was talking to a friend, not an adult.

She always listened to me and heard what I have to say.

- I would like to talk about this one experience.

It was last year I was able to participate in a youth panel, a youth-led panel.

We basically were given an opportunity to talk to both of the mayoral candidates, Mary Sheffield and Pastor Solomon Kinloch Jr.

It impacted me because it was kind of my first time doing public speaking mainly.

And after everything got done, I got so much like, "You did so good and you spoke so well, your topics were so interesting."

I was like, "Oh, wow.

I didn't know it was really that impactful."

And so I guess it led me to what I would mainly like to do today, be a youth activist and speak for the youth of the city of Detroit.

- Let's talk about things that happen in school generally, or I'll predict, right?

In class, the structure of activities, sometimes a teacher does things that are more interactive where you're working in groups, right?

Sometimes you do things more individually.

Sometimes teachers give tests.

Sometimes they're papers or projects.

What do you think about some of those structures in school?

Do you think they're valuable?

Is there anything that kind of feels outdated?

- Personally, when we can work with a group of people, I think an important lesson is you learn how to accept each other's opinion respectfully and maybe come up with ideas together.

So, you learn how to collaborate with others, versus if you were doing it independently, it's just you're mind.

So, I do appreciate when we do group work because when you leave school, you're working with others.

So, it's important to develop those skills while you're still in school so that it could be easier when you graduate.

- I definitely agree with Analeise's point.

As much as an individual as I am, I also see the value within doing group work just because it teaches you real life skills that are applicable in the workforce, in the real world.

But from my experience in school, something that I feel is outdated, I don't feel like a lot of educators do a lot of adaptive learning.

I feel like we have such a strict curriculum and things that we stick to because it's been the traditional way to do things in the past, and to set the precedent for what we're going to do in the future, I feel like we need to adapt the curriculum to things that may be more contemporary or just get student input about what they feel is relevant or something that's imperative to discuss within the classroom.

So, that's just something I feel is a little outdated.

- So the topics that you're learning in school or the methods that are connected with how they're being taught?

- I feel like definitely it's both, but I feel like it's more relevant when we're talking about history and stuff like that.

Although, it is important to talk about things that happened in the past, the things that happened in the past shape our future.

So, it's also very important to talk about current events because a lot of students, we're so focused on other things we don't even know to engage in that type of thing.

- I actually like lecture-based learning, but only when it's done right.

I feel like when a teacher is passionate about a subject and knows a lot about the subject, if they do lecture-based learning, that's probably when I learn the best.

But I feel if the teacher is maybe a bit lazy or tired when they're doing lecture-based learning, it just feels dull and I just can't focus on the content that I'm learning.

- So, do you have any classes where it's just you're listening to the teacher and you're taking notes the whole time?

- Yeah, I had a class like that first semester of my sophomore year.

- Does anybody not like that type of structure for classroom learning?

- Like just sitting down and just taking notes?

- Yes.

- It depends.

So if it's interactive, so the notes, you hear also from the students' ideas on that, so not just from the teacher.

So they could just, you write whatever they say, but what are the students saying also that goes with that same idea?

And that's the best part about it.

- So when it's more collaborative.

- Yeah.

- So, even though it's direct instruction, you're still getting other people to participate and be connected to it.

- Yeah.

- I wanted to add on to, you was talking about teachers being kind of lazy in a way.

I feel like it comes with a passion.

When the teacher does not have passion, you can tell.

And for me, it has impacted how I want to stay attentive on the coursework because I love a passionate teacher.

It makes me want to get up and do stuff.

It wants me want to collaborate and work with my classmate.

- So how do you know that a teacher is passionate about their work?

- I had a teacher and he was also my academic games coach and he was very passionate.

He would come in every day happy, joyous, but he was strict.

He did not play.

He gave homework at least three times a week, but it was adaptive.

Any questions we had, he would make sure that we understood it.

He would get on us, but he would make sure that we understood what was he teaching and he would give examples and he was a great teacher overall.

- You can really tell just by the way the teacher is just talking their passion for what they're teaching to you and making that welcoming space for kids to be able to ask questions or stay engaged is something really important.

- Have you had an experience where technology was integrated into your classroom where it worked really well, and maybe had an opposite experience where maybe technology was integrated where it didn't work as well for you or for your peers?

- So for me, before I was at my current school, I was at a school where pretty much all of our assignments and curriculum were on the computer.

And for me, I didn't really retain any information.

I feel like it's so easy to just go on the internet, look stuff up.

I'm not really engaged when it's online.

That's just my personal learning style.

I feel like I am more productive and I benefit more from having a person come and physically talk to me and give me a physical assignment that forces me to think critically about what I want to say.

So, I just feel like in school, I'm not going to deny that technology is beneficial in some ways because in some ways we don't want to sit and write a 10-page essay by hand.

However, I don't feel like computers and technology and things should replace learning practical skills, being able to do basic things and also just replace that human interaction, because I feel like we're heading towards a future where teaching, like having a physical teacher in the classroom, is going to become obsolete.

And I feel like to combat that, we need to start putting more of an emphasis on straying away from technology essentially, yeah.

- Interesting.

- I would say an example in my own classes that technology was of great use, biomedical science because, well, with that specific subject, you're going to need to use tech a good amount of times.

And on the computer you have to look at certain types of data or results that you get from a type of experiment.

And I guess those are the types of, technology is what you're going to need in order to get those types of results.

But even not with technology, there's some components in that class that you don't use technology, like medical tech that you actually use physically, like a stethoscope.

It depends on what type of class you're in and if technology is really actually useful in that class or something.

- I would say I've had a positive use of AI in my AP Lang class.

We use Khan Academy for our, it's like the end of the year test.

And they used certain formats and themes that we can use.

And so I typed in my essay and the AI actually told me how I can dumb this down or how I can switch the topics around to put in a certain format.

And so it was really helpful because when I write essays, I tend to go all over the place.

My hook will be on top and my conclusion will be somewhere in the middle.

And so it told me like, oh, maybe this should go this way.

And I think that AI, it could be good, but I feel like it makes us as human a little lazy.

Now, we don't want to do a quick research.

I mean, as soon as you type in Google, AI is there.

You can't even scroll down no more because they tell you the direct answer.

And I will say I miss that, you know?

But I think that it's good for some reasons.

- Have your schools adopted policies around AI so that you know when you can use it and when you can't?

- My school doesn't have a policy, but obviously plagiarism.

But it depends right now on the teacher.

So, some teachers are for AI and they'll say, "I agree, you can use this to help you in these ways."

But then there's some teachers that are like, "Not at all."

So, you walk into one classroom where it's acceptable and another where it's not.

So, how do you find the balance with your work as a whole?

- So what about some people who say that, well, the purpose of school is to prepare students for what life is like outside of school, right?

In particular, if careers and jobs are going to require the workforce to start using AI, then we have a responsibility to start teaching students how to use AI.

What do you think about that?

Do you agree?

Do you disagree?

- I feel like some jobs in this day and age definitely requires AI in some type of way.

Like in the medical field, for example, radiology, or in music, that's definitely another way.

And I guess schools, I guess they're aware of the fact that some jobs are using AI to a certain extent because AI is a component that needs to get that job done.

But I guess schools just don't want students to use AI in the type of way that the work is done for you all the way.

It's definitely a way for you to get more, to elaborate on your own ideas.

- School is supposed to prepare you for the world that you're going to enter once you graduate.

So, if that world consists of AI and new things, schools should stay up to date with that.

- When you go to school, should we be focusing on building strong character traits, like empathy and integrity?

Are those skills as important as the academic learning that you're doing in your classes?

- Yeah, those skills are definitely important, because, well, those are basic human traits.

In order to have empathy, you have to be in someone else's shoes and a robot can't replace that.

A robot can't feel what a human feel because a person had made that, that's a robot.

They don't have no brain, they don't have a real heart.

But when you have a system where people have empathy or have those heart-to-heart feelings or have those same experiences or same environment as you, that's better than just having a robot talk to you.

Because there is people that actually have, ChatGPT, if something happened to them, they talk to an AI about it.

But what are you getting from that?

You're just getting from what a robot thinks in your situation instead of what somebody else has from that same experience if they had it.

- When we talk about AI integration, especially like he brought up the point, people go through things and they go to AI, at what extent do they become so isolated that they can't even talk to real people?

As he said, when something happens, they're going to AI and they stray further away from real people with real experiences.

And just, I feel like it diminishes mental health and things like that.

And that's just a whole nother issue, which is why we need more AI literacy programs, and then more policy as well that puts regulation on the things like ChatGPT and Gemini and all those things, what they can tell you and what they can say to you.

Because then, again, people misconstrue things, messages get misconstrued and we have instances of a bunch of kids harming themselves due to believing what an AI chatbot says.

- So, you bring up the topic of mental health and I think that's something that came up several times in terms of wanting to talk about what role schools have in supporting students and mental health.

What are some things either that you think schools can do or that schools have done to help support students' mental health?

- At my school, they have this club called Big Brother, Big Sister.

It's essentially having a senior and basically have a freshman companion, because freshmen, it's the first time coming to the school.

They don't really know what's going on and they're just fresh to high school.

And essentially it's basically just a way to encourage cooperation between students.

- So, like peer-to-peer in that sense, like building structures in school where students have the opportunity to form connections or strong relationships with the other peers that are part of the community.

Do you all agree that that's something that is valuable, that helps support mental health or?

- Yeah, especially with extracurricular activities, like sports, that's a really good way as being an incoming freshman to make friends and stuff.

And you have seniors on the team and you're bonding.

And I feel like, even music class, any extracurricular I feel like where it connects people who maybe you wouldn't usually cross paths with, encourages that space to interact with each other, help develop people skills because that's very important.

- As somebody that goes to an admission school and you have to maintain a certain GPA to stay there, I feel like there's a lot of pressure.

And a lot of people that go to those selective schools, they also have a foundation at home where it's very strict and it's very tough.

So at home it's strict, you go to school, it's strict, and you really have no time to play.

And that will really take a toll on your mental health.

I feel like having sports, and especially something that people don't really emphasize as much is like performance arts.

Performance arts and sports are things that are imperative to have within schools because they allow kids to have a break.

- I would say something that helps mitigate the stress of a strict school is really having someone who cares about you and having someone to talk to.

For me, a lot of the times, that's my teachers.

Sometimes I'll have a bad day and they'll see that I'm not to my best performance and they'll try to check up on me or say something that might make my day.

And I feel like that really helps and something that's not really talked about is there's people at school who definitely care about you, whether it be your teachers, your friends, or anybody.

- So, if you were to redesign high school today, what would it look like?

Would it be the same sort of like, you go class to class, different teachers?

What are some things that you think could look differently about how we do school today?

- Something that comes to the top of my mind that sounds really exciting is what if we spent the first three years of high school, that's when you do your learning, but it's tailored to your interests.

And then what if senior year, you did a study abroad or a lot of cool field trips to get you excited about kind of stepping into the world and maybe you have a big project that lasts the whole year that you have to go out into the world to actually come to a conclusion.

I feel like that would be really cool.

- What other ideas?

- I think when it comes to real world application, I know we have field trips and stuff, but maybe taking our kids to the rural areas or helping them understand that either, there's not just one or two options that you can be in life, giving that encouragement, helping them find out what is their why, like, why do you want to get up every day?

I've read somewhere that the academics that we learn in school, it doesn't really apply to the real world.

And as we talk about AI and how the world is changing so fast, it's like how much is this curricular really impacting our lives today?

- I would say that my ideal learning space would, number one, have kind of a curriculum tailored to an individual student.

So, say I'm advanced in reading, so I can take a 12th grade reading class, but I'm still on my grade level in math.

I feel like that's something that could be explored.

And I also feel like, to Zyana's point, I feel like we should have mandatory service projects and things like that.

I heard a quote from one of my mentors and he said, "Touch the world, but touch the hood first."

And I feel like that emphasizes prioritizing where you came from.

So, having mandatory service projects where people can give back to their community, I feel like is very, very important.

- Even me, being a part of other rooms, like me being a part of the Detroit Pistons Youth Council, we participate and even plan different community service activities.

So, the last thing we just did, we cooked and fed for the Ronald McDonald House, if y'all know what that is.

And that was something huge for everybody, because I mean, that's something I've never done, especially even giving back to the sick kids that go through stuff like that.

Even this past Thanksgiving, we did a Thanksgiving food drive at the Pistons Practice Facility, and being able to help those unfortunate families, it actually touched me and actually touched many of the members that's also on the council.

- Well, this was quite an exceptional conversation, and I really appreciate all of your thoughts and ideas.

And you all give me hope about what the future looks like.

And this is exactly why we need more young people like you at the table having these conversations so that we can start thinking about how school shifts so that we can make it better for everyone who's part of it.

Thank you so much for sharing that.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

- You guys did great.

- Thank you.

- That'll do it for this week's show.

Thank you for watching.

In the coming months, One Detroit plans to tell more stories about education from the perspective of the people who are shaping its future.

Head to the One Detroit website for all the stories we're working on, follow us on social media, and check us out on the PBS app.

(upbeat ambient music) - [Narrator] This program is made possible in part by the Skillman Foundation.

Across our Masco family of companies, our goal is to deliver better living possibilities and make positive changes in the neighborhoods where we live, work, and do business.

Masco, a Michigan company since 1929.

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

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.

Nissan Foundation.

And viewers like you.

(upbeat ambient music) (bright piano jingle)