The Lowline and New Design

Lowline from Mediastorm New Design on Vimeo.

New Design has a new partnership developing with the folks over at the Lowline Project.  The Lowline is a proposed underground park, inspired by the Highline, a block from school in the old Delancey Subway Station.  You can learn more about the project from their Kickstarter Campaign.  Students and staff from New Design and staff from the Lowline worked together during our recent intersession

What's next? Two 10th grade students in the intersession, Tiffany R. and Yeffrey E, have been asked to join the Lowline Team as Youth Ambassadors.  On Saturday, May 4th as part of the New Museum Streetfest.  Tiffany, Yeffrey and the Lowline folks will be setting up setting up an active green space for local artists and the community right above the proposed park space.  Visitors will be able to relax, ponder the possibilities of the pedestrian plaza, and provide ideas for the future Lowline park underground.  Ideas will be visually displayed to create a growing wall that beautifully displays the community's thoughts, views and opinions.  Check out a draft of the video made by New Design students from the intersession who were checking out local parks to help the Lowline project understand.  Be careful.  Teenagers have a hard time making choices so the video is 14 minutes so far.  Some cuts will need to be made to get it to under 5 minutes.  

Lady Liberty, NYCSALT and a Syracuse

Ashley V

Ashley V's photo Lady Liberty

Senior Ashley V. will be going to Syracuse University in July with a full four year HEOP scholarship.  Big thanks to the professional photographer Alicia Hansen and the NYCSALT Program.  Ashley joined SALT several years ago.  The program is predominately New Designers.  Check out New Design Class of 2012 graduates Christian and Devin with Alicia below.  Both are in their second year at SCAD.  

Alicia Hansen at Gel 2011 from Gel Conference on Vimeo.

Dr. Phil Joins Dr. Jody and Dr. Scott

Dr. Phil with Japheth Wood, Mathematics Faculty, Bard College

Phil D. is our original math teacher at New Design High.  He was one of our founders ten years ago when New Design opened.  He is also a Math for America Master Teacher.  Phil recently finished his doctorate at Columbia University in math.  It is not only impressive that he completed a doctoral program from Columbia University, but he did it while teaching full time.  Phil's dissertation focused on determining the extent to which the modeling of deductive reasoning and proof-type thinking occurs in a students first Algebra course in the United States.  There are many in the field that believe that proof is the “major distinguishing component” of mathematics and that its essence is the essence of math.  Alarmingly, Dr. Phil concluded from his research that students may have difficulty identifying, generating and comprehending proof and engaging in deductive reasoning because they do not have enough models and examples of such reasoning in their mathematics instruction.  

Dr. Jody of New Design and Hunter College

Dr. Phil is our third staff member to receive a doctorate degree joining Dr. Jody and founding principal Dr. Scott who graduated from Teachers College Columbia University.  Dr. Jody is our Literacy Intervention Specialist.  She is full time Assistant Professor in Adolescent Literacy at Hunter College.  Jody began her work with urban youth in 1994 when she was a counselor for runaway teenagers in Washington, D.C. In 1999, she received her Master’s degree in English education and worked as a high school reading and English teacher in a dropout prevention program. In 2002, she was awarded National Board Certification, and in 2003, she received a fellowship to New York University where she completed her doctoral degree in English education. Her research focuses on urban adolescents and their experiences in student-led book clubs, as well as culturally responsive instruction in English language arts classrooms.

Ramona, Copper Union and Design Your Future

Horse by Ramona

Strategospy Study 

Newspaper Study 

Cooper Union will be welcoming their second New Design student next year.  Senior Ramona G. just received notice that she was accepted into the school.  This is no ordinary feat.  US News and World Report ranked the school the seventh hardest school in the nation to get into.  Harder than Yale, Princeton, Brown, MIT and Dartmouth.  In fact, only 7.7% of applicants get accepted.  The school, located right up the street from New Design, was founded by inventor and philanthropist Peter Cooper in 1859.  Since it founding the college admits undergraduates solely on merit and awards full scholarships to all students.  Super proud of her and all the New Design seniors.  

All New Design graduates for the last two years have been accepted to one or more colleges.  How did we do it?  There are many reasons but one of the main is our partnership with our Community of Unity (CoU) to run our college and career programs.  The Design Your Future Program was founded at New Design High School and continues to evolve to make sure all New Design students are college and career ready.  See more below about CoU.  By the way, all the beautiful students in the video are New Designers.

Youth Design Revolution

 

Youth Design Revolution is a youth-design business where creative professional learn from urban teens. The program is a partnership between New Design High School, Urban Arts Partnership and Sweaty Equity Enterprise. The program is being funded by the good people at Operation Design who are sponsoring a pilot this spring, housed in UAP's Peapod Adobe Youth Academy, focused on 12 New Design students designing products for the New Design Pop-Up Shop in May.  

Shakesphere and his Posse

Marcus performing his Sonnet

 The English-Speaking Union of New York held the finals of its 31st annual Branch Shakespeare Competition this month at the Morgan Library and Museum. The event was part of the 2013 English-Speaking Union National Shakespeare Competition.  New Design's own Marcus Omowale of New Design High School placed 2nd in the competition; he received $250 from the Shakespeare Society and tickets to the Theatre for a New Audience’s Much Ado About Nothing.  He beat out students from some of the top theater high schools in the city.

Marcus has been on a role this month recently accepted to the Posse Program.  Posse is one of the most competitive, comprehensive and well-known college access and youth leadership development programs in the United States.  The program gives full scholarships to students at prestigious colleges and universities that host them.  Students receive support and leadership training with other "posse" students in the hopes that students will not only graduate from college  but also serve as a catalyst for increased individual and community development.

Marcus will be our first posse student but we expect many more to come in the following years.  100% of New Design graduates were accepted to colleges and universities from the class of 2012.  We will have similar numbers this year with the class of 2013.  Acceptances are still coming in but we have already had students accepted to a large number of schools including Beloit College, Ithaca College, City College, Sage College, Alfred State, Buffalo State, Baruch College, Queens College, Hunter College, Brooklyn College, Purchase College and SUNY Purchase, Geneseo, Oswego, and Cobleskill.  Our design interested students have also been accepted to a number of art and design based schools including Parsons, FIT, SVA and Pratt.  

Big Congrats to Kwan H. who became the first New Design student ever accepted to the Macaulay Hunters College program. The program is unbelievably competitive with less than 20% of applicants being accepted. Kwan will be receiving 100% free tuition, a new laptop and $7,500 a year stipend.

Kwan H is off to Hunter Next Year

Inocente, Rooftop Films and the Fledgling Fund

Inocente from Fine Films on Vimeo.

As part of New Designs' partnership with Rooftop Films, and in partnership with the Fledgling Fund, New Design will be premiering the Oscar winning short documentary film Inocente to its students.  The film is about a young teenage homeless artist from San Diego.  The story is about the transformative power of art, the courage of a young person and the face of teenage homelessness in America.  The Fledgling Fund has sponsored a Rooftop Films teaching artist to work with students in New Design's Mediastorm class in creating their media project logos.  Students in the course has chosen their own media projects for the year from documentary films to fashion blogs to DJ collectives.  Check out Arieyl's first attempt at a video fashion blog and Young Legendz Productions first draft of a trailer for their documentary film Rooftop Legends.

Rooftop Films will be presenting films on our rooftop space beginning May 10th with over 15 evening movies through July 19th.  You can see the summer schedule here.  We are excited a new partnership for the film series this year as Hester Street Fair will be providing food and drink vendors for all the films.  Both organizations donate funds and resources to sustain New Design's design programs.

Here is the logo designed as part of the project for the Mediastorm class:

Julie Z, Jaipur and the Cosmo Hotel

Design Teacher Julie Zenobi

Congrats to Fashion and Textile design teacher Julie who won the prestigious Boston Arts Academy National Artist Teacher Fellowship for 2013.  The award provides Julie with a stipend to expand her personal design experience.  Julie has selected to visit Jaipur, India this summer where she will learn centuries old textile printing techniques including hand block printing with local master artists at the Bagru Textiles Studio.  As part of the fellowship Julie will be teaching the 350 year old hand block process to her students starting in the 2013-2014 school year. 

Julie's fashion and textile class have teamed up with the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Tribeca, to assist in their new room renovations. Owner Gerald Barad proposed the need for a coordinating textile design that will be in each new room. New Design students have been studying textile design and submitted a series of their own interpretation of the new Cosmopolitan Hotel aesthetic. Twelve semi-finalists have been selected and will be visiting and revising their final designs this April. One talented student will have their final design selected to be manufactured into a pillow that will be in each room!"

 Cosmo Hotel owner Gerald B checking out students designs

NDHS Students at New York Fashion Week

New Designers at the Yuna Yang Fashion Show UAP Master Class with Yuna Yang Three New Design braved the blizzard to sit in the front row of their first New York Fashion Week presentation! They were invited by designer Yuna Yang, who met them and their classmates when she led a fashion illustration workshop. In the workshop, part of the Urban Arts Partnership Master Class series, Yuna discussed inspiration and theme with the students before demonstrating a pencil and watercolor sketch. The class then used a inspirational item or image that they were asked to bring to sketch their own original piece. Anthony, Nicolle, and Aneesa learned how a theme (in this case, Italian romance) is expressed through all the elements of the show, from the music to the models' hairstyles to the programs. We want to send a huge thank you to Yuna, UAP and her team for making it possible for us to attend, and congratulations on a gorgeous spring collection!

First Annual The Future is Now Family Day

Thank you students, staff, families and alumni for making the Future is Now a huge success!

On Saturday February 23, 2013 New Design High School held their first annual The Future is Now Family Day where students and families participated in workshops about college planning and preparation. 

Workshops facilitated by Urban Arts Partnership, Community of Unity and NDHS staff focused on financial aid, application preparation, graduation requirements, and benefits of getting a degree. Local community- based organizations including STRIDE, Black Male Iniative, Global Potential, Latino Justice, The LGBTQ Center, The Opportunity Network, University Settlement, Urban Arts Academy Program and YMCA tabled during lunch as an opportunity for students and parents to network with extracurricular programs. The day ended with a panel and Q&A session with 8 New Design Alumni who are current students at various colleges and universities throughout New York state.

See you next year!

Sisterhood Mentor Program

iDESIGN launched the Sisterhood Program in the Fall. The all girl peer mentoring program provides 11th and 12th grade "Big Sisters" with the opportunity to mentor incoming 9th grade girls ("Little Sisters"). This group of 25 dedicated Big Sisters support new students in navigating their first year of high school. Big Sisters do this through attending weekly lunch groups with younger girls to discuss college, academics and the social aspects of high school. Additionally, Big Sisters support iDESIGN through tutoring, organizing field trips, leading fundraising efforts and role modeling for the younger girls. Each Big Sister participated in a mentor training in the fall which focused on youth development, group theory and building trust with teens. The program is a space for upper class-men to reflect upon their high school journey and have a supportive network of young women in the school.