DPS Center Built for Life Lessons (MI)
February 7, 2011
Scores of business transactions are under way inside two Detroit Public School buildings where special education students are training for life.
Writing checks to pay bills, selecting coins to wash clothes at a laundromat and purchasing a week’s worth of groceries are skills being taught to students ages 20-26 who are spending their last years in the public education system before they leave for outside life full-time.
Soon, a new set of experiences will open up to these students after they move to the new Detroit Transition Center, a first-of-its-kind immersive special education center where students will work on practical skills that transfer into the real world.
By March 1, about 500 DPS students will move to the facility on Wyoming Street. The district is spending $5 million to renovate the former Drew Academy into a 21st-century environment of real-life learning experiences.
Those experiences include a Main Street where students learn to navigate common daily tasks such as using a bank, making purchases at the post office or going to see a doctor.
The 140,000-square-foot building will house work labs where students learn employable skills so they can work at pet shops, movie theaters or day care centers as well as a life skills lab where students learn to care for their homes and their bodies.
Patrick Calhoun, an architect who merged the academic plan with building needs, said the new facility provides a tremendous amount of space for students, including those in wheelchairs or using aides, to get around. It also has more than a dozen simulated work environments.
To make it work, Calhoun used large photographs of businesses, which are placed along a streetscape. Doors are cut into these blown-up photos and every room is outfitted like a local business.
District officials said students — whose disabili ties range from mild physical or cognitive impairments to those with multiple severe disabilities, including autism spectrum disorders — will work with teachers to make real-world connections.
"So once they leave, they will have experienced everything here," DTC principal Rita Footman said.
Students will leave behind their old facilities — DTC West on Collingwood Street and DTC East on Dequindre Street — which are cramped, antiquated and lack elevators. That leaves many wheelchair-bound students unable to use classrooms and labs on second floors.
Jeffery Jones, program director for DTC, said the Drew building received a new roof and updated heating and cooling systems. The renovation work is funded from the district’s $1.5 million bond issue passed in 1994. Officials hope to add an urban garden later this year so students working in the center’s kitchen can grow their own food.
"This one-story building meets all their needs and it’s an ideal location to merge the populations and services," Jones said.
Cheryl Sykes, the center’s special education/transition consultant, said if these students don’t get real-life skills before they leave school, many of them will end up incarcerated.
Training in table manners and proper grooming are tackled, Sykes said, because mastering those abilities builds self-esteem. The focus is survival in the real world, one lesson at a time.
"Teach it here, practice it here and live on it the rest of your life," Sykes said as she stood in a classroom set up as a bank, where students learned how to fill out deposit slips, write checks and balance their accounts.