Pratt Institute’s Creative Outreach Initiative With a Brooklyn Public School Is Changing Both of Them

Nestled in a corner of the borough where construction cranes still seem to be a part of the skyline, the new building is located in Downtown Brooklyn. On September 7, a group of ninth graders arrived for their first day, passing hallways that had yet to accumulate the scuff marks that all schools eventually acquire. They were the first students to attend Design Works High School, a public institution that appears to be like any other on paper but behaves completely differently in reality.

The school is the result of a lengthy, somewhat unlikely partnership between Bank Street College of Education and Pratt Institute, which was put together under New York City’s Imagine NYC Schools Initiative. It is supported by NYC Public Schools, the XQ Institute, and the NewSchools Venture Fund. It has the kind of aspirations that are typically found in brochures for private schools rather than the city’s public system. When you walk around the place, you get the impression that the people who built it weren’t attempting to copy anything. They were attempting a fresh start.

Pratt plays a unique part in this. The messy work of K–12 public education is usually avoided by art and design schools. However, Pratt’s president, Frances Bronet, discusses Design Works as if the experiment were just as important to her school as it is to the students. “The Design Works High School will develop the next generation of thoughtful experimenters, creative citizens, and critical thinkers,” she declared at the school’s opening, a statement that could easily sound formal coming from a college president. It doesn’t in context. Faculty, students, and staff from Pratt’s School of Design, School of Art, Center for Art, Design, and Community Engagement K–12, and Provost’s Office worked together to design the school. Pratt design students collaborated with adjunct professor Diego Kolsky to create the school’s website.

The interesting part of Design Works is what students actually do. One class could meet with an architect to consider expanding the neighborhood’s supply of affordable housing. Investigating dance as a trauma recovery tool could be another. Studying how a Brooklyn block could fairly adjust to a hotter, wetter future could be a third. The curriculum is based on what the school refers to as pathways, which include housing equity, tech equity, and art equity. The framework is largely based on Bank Street’s developmental-interaction framework, which has been quietly influencing progressive education for almost a century.

Here on Bank Street, it’s worth stopping. Even though it runs quietly, the college has been around long enough that its presence tends to carry weight in education circles. Its president, Shael Polakow-Suransky, puts the partnership simply: students learn best when they are actively involved with people, ideas, and materials. It’s fairly easy. Implementing it in a public high school, however, is a completely different story given the staffing demands, financial limitations, and political climate of New York City schools.

The Imagine NYC Schools competition, which started in 2019 and attracted over 230 pre-proposals, gave rise to the school. There were ninety semifinalists, including Pratt and Bank Street. Over the course of several years, the selection process involved listening sessions where parents and students expressed their clear preferences for an education that would prepare their children for a challenging future and that would treat social justice seriously rather than as a catchphrase.

The project director for the school, Corinth Hunter, has worked as a teacher, administrator, and consultant for New York City Public Schools throughout her career. She uses the language of someone who has witnessed reform initiatives come and go when discussing the school. “I know that the culture of learning, exploration, collaboration, and care that we’re building at Design Works will allow each student to thrive inside and out of the classroom,” she stated.

The experiment’s long-term viability is still up for debate. Since the first ninth graders won’t graduate until 2029, a number of things could change in the interim, including funding cycles, political support for nontraditional schools, and the tedious bureaucracy. As the school gains stability, Pratt and Bank Street will eventually return to advisory positions. For now, however, Downtown Brooklyn is experiencing something subtly out of the ordinary. It’s difficult to ignore it.⁖※⃻⃹⃎