Enrichment Week 2017 – from El Barrio to El Yunque
Innovation High School’s students just spent a week riding Citibikes in New York City, doing environmental field work in Puerto Rico, studying history, culture and politics in Brazil, and examining social justice issues in New Orleans. This is Enrichment Week: 8 days of experiential learning around New York City and around the world.
Once a year Innovation suspends academic classes and students engage full-time in week-long enrichment activities; they take project-based learning to the streets of our city and beyond. NYC-based Enrichment Week projects have focused on fashion, film, music, ecology, coding, social justice issues, and the exploration of mythological themes in comic books, to name just a few programs. At the conclusion of each Enrichment Week, students prepare projects or presentations reflecting what they have learned and experienced.
This year, Innovation students branched out into the community, creating new partnerships with El Barrio’s Artspace, where they learned salsa dancing in a professional quality studio, and with Citibike, visiting the Citibike headquarters, learning bike safety, and riding Citibikes from Manhattan to Queens.
Our ever-expanding Culinary Arts program took our young chefs through a specialized CARTs Boot Camp led by master chefs of 5 different cuisines. Research Expedition: Puerto Rico ferried advanced science students to engage in environmental study and field research on climate change and the living environment in the seven distinct climate regions on the island of Puerto Rico. Take A Walk on the Art Side challenged students to view ‘alternative’ Americans in new ways through the intersection of protest art, propaganda and social justice issues. And, Discover Brazil 2017, took our students from el barrio in New York City (Innovation’s home) to the favelas of Rio de Janeiro to study grassroots, non-governmental supports for low-income communities and their residents.
