On Mondays, Cayln Dolan, 23, walks her 12th grade English students through a goal setting exercise, asking each of them to write down a goal for the day, a goal for the week, and a goal for the month,

“A lot of my boys will say their goal for the day is to make it to tomorrow,” she said.

For teachers like Dolan on the South Side of Chicago, keeping students safe from the gang violence that permeates their everyday lives tops the already demanding list of responsibilities bequeathed to them as educators. Dolan estimates that in her school alone, 80% of kids have been directly affected by gang-related violence. Challenging enough to address alone, gang violence is not the only problem that plagues Chicago Public Schools. With nearly 400,000 enrolled, making it the 3rd largest public school district in the nation; only 66% of students are meeting or exceeding educational standards, and with new challenging Common Core guidelines introduced statewide this year, bringing already struggling students up to par with state requirements has become increasingly difficult.

VIOLENCE IN CHICAGO’S SOUTH SIDE STORIFY

Special education instructor Eliza Bryant, 23, at Roberto Clemente Community Academy, a high school in Chicago said Common Core is based on literacy which her students struggle with.

“In the long run this will be beneficial, but for our students where everything we do is to make up for a lack of literacy, we just don’t have the foundation to begin with.” Bryant said

Common Core is a national program that states may elect to adopt, establishing principles to be reached at each grade level in reading and math. The idea is to ensure that high school students are ready to pursue two-or four-year degrees post-graduation. Forty states have adopted the guidelines which are meant to bridge the achievement gap by creating across the board expectations measured each year by assessments. Unlike No Child Left Behind, which was a mandatory federal law, states can choose whether or not to implement Common Core, and may amend any standards to best fit their state’s needs.

While many educators agree this is a good idea in theory, it is complicated in practice. For elementary school aged children in high-needs urban areas, reaching these standards may be challenging, but not impossible, as they have not been in the school system long enough for major gaps in achievement to have formed. However, for older kids who have been struggling in urban schools for a longer period of time, the Common Core is difficult to execute; any gaps in their education have been in place for years. Bryant, believes that the Common Core is key to helping teachers understand what skills students need to be practicing, but enforcement is problematic.

“The rigor of [Common Core] standards can be difficult, sometimes we have kids who are so low that meeting them isn’t even possible. I mean, I have students who can’t read consonants next to each other,” she said.

As with any newly introduced educational standards, the adjustment period is expected to be rough, and in consideration of this, assessment for the Common Core will not be implemented until the 2014-2015 school year. However, for teachers, whose jobs depend on the ability of their students to succeed on standardized testing, this gives them only a small window of time to close large gaps in education.

“Right now it’s a shift, in time it will be great,” said Susie Stoner, 46, principal of Barack Obama K-8 School in Milwaukee, Wis., where the Common Core is also newly in place this year. With over 20 years of experience in the struggling Milwaukee Public School District, Stoner believes Common Core standards will help level the playing field for many struggling urban students in the future.

For now, though, the rigorous academics enforced by the standards are a challenge for students and educators alike in low performing schools.

“The Common Core is not written to students’ instructional levels, but their age level. I have 7th and 8th graders who are not reading, so this can be very frustrating,” said Tom Sheehan, 31, a middle school special education teacher at Leslie Lewis School of Excellence in Chicago.

Other educators find themselves grappling to remedy the confidence blow standardized testing delivers to students who are already floundering. Dolan feels that it’s important to track students’ progress, but when students see their scores, all she sees is the disappointment that they bring.

“My kids are already statistics in so many other ways,” she said. “This just reinforces that.”

At the heart of the achievement gap are gaps in funding, which play a major role in the ability of teachers to meet students’ diverse needs. Stoner sees many of the issues her students experience reaching standards in testing stemming from the simple lack of resources that most urban school districts face.

“There’s not enough hours, there isn’t enough money, and there aren’t enough resources,” Stoner said.

But where resources are lacking, teachers make up in resourcefulness. Despite the obvious hardships that come with teaching in urban areas, educators are finding ways to inspire, encourage, and bolster students’ learning and emotional growth, and their hard work is starting to pay off. Just last year Chicago Public Schools boasted its highest recorded graduation rate since 1999, and dropout rates have been steadily declining as ACT scores have been slowly but steadily increasing.

In ‘turn-around schools,’ (failing schools given a second chance after low standardized test scores, and performance have them slated for closure), teachers and staff are educated on the importance of using language that encourages learning. The idea is to frame the message that education is key to a student’s success in life.

“Before in a school you might hear a teacher say ‘If you finish this test you get free time on the computer,’ it was a behavioral management thing, but then kids would rush through standardized testing to play on the computers,” Sheehan said. “Instead teachers are being taught to say, ‘Let’s work as hard as we can to finish this test so you can get into the high school you want,’ its all about framing.”

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Writing still appears on the chalkboards at David Mackenzie High School. Photo by Dayna Clark

Pushing open a heavy side door, permanently propped open to allow easy access for intruders, urban explorer John gingerly stepped through tiny shards of glass that littered the now darkened hallways. The darkness, pierced with shafts of sunlight, broke through the gapping holes that once held windows. Bits of paper, wood splinters and broken lockers ripped from the walls completed the picture of what is now David Mackenzie High School.

John did not want to give his last name because this type or exploring, known as urban spelunking, is illegal and dangerous. But that does not stop John, a seasoned spelunker, and the many others who enjoy the thrill of stepping into the darkness and walking through Detroit’s once vibrant past.

Abandon buildings are a ubiquitous force that affects nearly every neighborhood in Detroit. Mayor David Bing has pledged to knock down 10,000 structures in his first term in an effort to downsize the enormous city down to a more manageable size.

But not every Detroiter sees these buildings as blights to be demolished.

Dan Austin, 30, works as a copy editor at the Detroit Free Press. Austin first became interested in urban exploration, particularly urban decay, when he started noticing an abandoned hotel on his daily commute to work. He started asking around to find out what the building once was and was amazed to find that no one knew anything about this impressive structure.

“Detroit tends to run from its history,” Austin said. “We seem to lack that historic pride that others have.”

The elusive building turned out to be the Statler hotel which Austin later discovered was the city’s first modern hotel. It was the first hotel in Detroit to have a bathroom in each bedroom and actual cold water that traveled through its pipes. The Statler was demolished in 2005 just in time for the Super Bowl XL, and 30 years after it had been abandoned.

“Blame it on the car culture,” Austin said. “Detroit has always been obsessed with the what’s shiny and new. But the whole does not improve unless you’re adding to it, not just reshuffling its parts.”

Austin’s book, “Lost Detroit,” published in 2010, chronicles the history of 12 of the city’s most historic buildings, showing in graphic detail the beauty that once was and the wasteland that now is.

“People like to categorize my work as ruin pornography, as capitalizing on what should be a source of embarrassment for our city, but I don’t see it that way,” Austin said. “Yes, we take photos of dilapidated buildings, but we also put the buildings in context giving people a history of what Detroit used to be. If there is a comparison to be made, I’d like to think that we are the Playboy of ruin porn, with the good articles, and not Hustler,” Austin said as he tried not to smile.

While the history may be important to some, for others it’s preserving the memory of what the buildings have become that some find most important.

John is a professional photographer but has taken to giving tours of these skeletal infrastructures. Mackenzie, once a school that housed 2,000 students, closed in 2007 with fewer than 1,100 students. Mackenzie High is just one of the many high schools that faced what has been called the worst enrollment crisis in the nation. The Detroit Free Press reported in 2010 that Detroit had lost more than 100,000 students since 1999.

Sy Ginsberg a Mackenzie graduate of 1962, remembered the once grand auditorium.

“Some of these new high schools have more all-purpose multi-functioning auditoriums, but we had a great theater with stadium seating and a stage. It was really quite nice. They don’t make those anymore.”

For now the school auditorium of 2011 remains intact, except for some minor water damage that has collected by the stage. Still, John fears destruction in the not too distant future.

A once grand auditorium, complete with stadium seating and stage now sits empty at David Mackenzie High School. Photo by Dayna Clark

“Scrappers will come and smash these seats to remove the copper finish around the edges,” John said. “You can tell how long a building has been vacant for by the amount of valuable equipment that remains.”

Scrappers are yet another group that sees opportunity amongst the ruins. John describes three tiers of scrappers that exist within the scrapping system. The first tier is usually made up of professionally licensed workers such as plumbers or carpenters.

“These scrappers come in first to get the good stuff,” John said, “usually stainless steel kitchen equipment, radiators, copper plumbing, anything with high street value.”

These scrappers often operate from 9 to 5 and work only with reputable scrap yards that insist on licensed workers. The second and third tier scrappers come in later peeling, pulling, and dragging anything they can get their hands on.

Despite his formidable size and massive beard, which John insisted protects him from scrappers and pretty girls, John prefers to avoid confrontation with police and scrappers alike.

As he crossed into what was once a science lab, now devoid of any actual equipment, John heard a noise outside and paused, mid-step to determine the origin of the sound. Three young girls with bright colored backpacks ran across the schoolyard, caught in the middle of a game of tag. John stayed quiet so as not to alarm the children.

“For them, [these buildings] just become part of their landscape,” John said.

In the past year alone 173 schools have closed, putting close to 40,000 children back into the school system, without a school.

“People think it’s easier to get rid of these buildings, some of which have been vacant for many years. People don’t see the potential here, all they see is blight,” John said. “They see an impossible task.”

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Gail Carr, assistant executive director of the non-profit Urban Gardening, picks peppers from a community garden in Detroit. Photo by Edna Ishayik

On the corner of Gladstone and Linwood Streets in Detroit, a garden grows where an empty, forgotten lot once sat. The neighborhood was among those affected by the race riots of 1967—burned out homes, smashed windows and boarded up storefronts still remain. But now, in harvest months, neighbors walk through neat rows of tomatoes, peppers and broccoli selecting fresh produce for their families’ dinner tables.

The garden belongs to the non-profit Urban Farming, one of the many organizations turning blight into bounty in a city with over 40,000 acres of abandoned property.

“Our neighbors say, ‘I want you to know you’re feeding my family,’ ” said Gail Carr, assistant executive director of Urban Farming. She filled a bag with produce to be delivered to an elderly neighbor who has a difficult time walking.

Urban agriculture took root in Detroit in the wave of economic distress caused by the financial crisis of 2008. It served as a way to feed a population deprived of fresh produce, to beautify the many tracts of littered, problematic land, and to save city government the $9 million per square mile it costs to do basic maintenance like lawn mowing each year.

Despite its benefits, the practice is not technically legal. Many of the 1350 small-scale farm sites are operating under the radar and owners can be ticketed for things like high vegetation.

But now, the possibility of a suite of city ordinances on the horizon means these kinds of urban farms could become even more prevalent. The Detroit City Council is working on legislation that will legalize gardening and farming in the Motor City. The measures would lay the groundwork for how urban farms are operated. They would provide guidance on the use of manure, pesticides, noise and other issues that come with running agricultural operations in close proximity of residential neighborhoods.

“There is a strong possibility you’ll see them approved and on the books by the spring,” said City Councilman Ken Cockrel Jr.

Michigan’s Right to Farm Act, passed in 1981 to shield farmers from nuisance lawsuits, has served as a barrier to the proliferating gardens and farms feathering into Detroit’s landscape. The Act prevents cities and towns from stipulating details of farming practices in the state, like what kinds of crops are permitted and what kinds of fertilizers can be used.

The law rendered the local government reticent to officially permit urban agriculture. City officials are concerned the safety and well being of residents will be at risk without more control over how urban farms are run, according to Cockrel.

Urban agriculture activists and entrepreneurs have long hoped to find a way around the problem. Some small, grassroots operations have struggled to expand because buying new lots from the city can be challenging—there are reams of forms to fill out and thickets of red tape to break through.

Carolyn Leadley, owner of Rising Pheasant Farms on the East Side of Detroit, with her son, Finn. Photo by Edna Ishayik

“It might only cost me $300, but it could take me eight months,” said Carolyn Leadley, a Michigan native and owner of Rising Pheasant Farms. “People think it’s easy, that they’re just giving them away.”

But it’s not so simple, she said.

She and her husband have been cultivating a plot since 2009. The location, just outside of Poletown on the Eastside is one of the lowest density neighborhoods in Detroit. It sits near a shuttered auto plant and emptied out due to the high volume of lost jobs. Abandoned lots are plentiful here, some of the grass grows shoulder height and illegally dumped tires abound.

The Leadley’s plot is well maintained, bordered on the east wall a thin hedge of delicate yellow and lavender flowers,the last of the season.

“I’m hoping what we’re doing is making the neighborhood better for the folks who are here and giving opportunities for better food access,” she said.

The couple was able to purchase another nearby lot from a private owner in February to plant tomatoes in addition to the leeks, scallion and head lettuce they were already growing. The expansion allowed them to hire a part-time employee. They’ve had their eye on the adjacent three plots, but purchasing more property has proven to be a difficult, time-consuming process.

The hope is that the forthcoming city ordinances will facilitate garden expansion in the future. Once the set of rules passes the City Council, it will be used to petition the state agricultural department for recognition of a local ordinance, a way of circumventing the Right to Farm Act.

Optimism runs high that the petition will be granted thanks to some signaling from the state agriculture officials. At a recent Hunger Summit held by United Way at Gleaners Community Food Bank in Detroit on October 3rd, the deputy director of Michigan’s Department of Agriculture announced that the agency would not let Right to Farm stand in the way of urban farming in the city. That’s according to Oran Hesterman, founder of the nonprofit Fair Food Network, who was present at the event.

That’s big news for people like Mike Score, the president of Hantz Farms. His company has been endeavoring for three years to install a 200-acre farm in the eastern neighborhood of Indian Village.

“Detroit is too big and too empty,” Score said. “Basic services are not in place and there are big tracts of abandoned land. What can you do in those spaces that lowers the cost of caretaking for the city and makes them more beautiful?”

His answer is to put derelict properties into the hands of businesses like his that will maintain and beautify the lots, where previously the city was on the hook for upkeep, and pay taxes on top of that. Once the city’s urban agriculture ordinances are in place they will be able to proceed with plans to purchase about a third of a square mile of city-owned land to plant stands of hardwood and Christmas trees.

Planting is already beginning on the small plot the company currently owns. Rows of deep holes have been dug to accommodate semi-mature oak trees. Across the street are four small homes-two are abandoned, one, the victim of arson, is doorless, blackened, and littered with ash and crushed glass.

The company hopes to purchase the properties, demolish the structures and plant more trees in their place.

In taking the major steps of passing ordinances and petitioning the state, Detroit will be stepping into uncharted waters.

Allowing urban farming promises to be an “important component in revitalizing the city,” said Cockrel but there is no template for how best to structure the rules.

“We are pioneers, he said. “There is going to be quite a bit of trial and error. It’s not like there’s a dozen examples, not a lot of reference points here.”

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