About Humanities Amped
Humanities Amped is an innovative curricular program at McKinley Senior High School in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It is a collection of English Language Arts, Social Studies, and elective classes based in critical participatory action research and culturally sustaining pedagogies.
Humanities Amped is currently is its fifth year, with 250 eleventh grade, twelfth grade, and ELL students. Humanities Amped is based on the belief that every person in the classroom contributes to learning and teaching, and that learning happens all around us, inside and outside of the classroom. We bring the community into our classroom by working with research and writing mentors, and we involve our students with the community through collaborative projects.
We teach students to analyze dominant structures and hone the ability to inquire, research, and take action on their less desirable effects. We believe that teachers are guides who set up a series of learning experiences for students that gradually build toward the independence of each learner, and toward their shared curriculum. We structure our democratic classrooms with Critical Participatory Action Research, dialogic processes, social-emotional learning including restorative justice, multi-year student cohorts, multiple teachers, interdisciplinary blocked classes, and intergenerational teaching and learning. We share these structures through professional development for current and pre-service teachers through our partnership with Louisiana State University's English Secondary Education concentration.
Humanities Amped provides opportunities for students, teachers, families, and community members to imagine and perform alternative possibilities to education by bringing together critical research, community involvement, creative writing, and performance in an extended class with high school, university, and community-based collaborators.
Humanities Amped is an innovative curricular program at McKinley Senior High School in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It is a collection of English Language Arts, Social Studies, and elective classes based in critical participatory action research and culturally sustaining pedagogies.
Humanities Amped is currently is its fifth year, with 250 eleventh grade, twelfth grade, and ELL students. Humanities Amped is based on the belief that every person in the classroom contributes to learning and teaching, and that learning happens all around us, inside and outside of the classroom. We bring the community into our classroom by working with research and writing mentors, and we involve our students with the community through collaborative projects.
We teach students to analyze dominant structures and hone the ability to inquire, research, and take action on their less desirable effects. We believe that teachers are guides who set up a series of learning experiences for students that gradually build toward the independence of each learner, and toward their shared curriculum. We structure our democratic classrooms with Critical Participatory Action Research, dialogic processes, social-emotional learning including restorative justice, multi-year student cohorts, multiple teachers, interdisciplinary blocked classes, and intergenerational teaching and learning. We share these structures through professional development for current and pre-service teachers through our partnership with Louisiana State University's English Secondary Education concentration.
Humanities Amped provides opportunities for students, teachers, families, and community members to imagine and perform alternative possibilities to education by bringing together critical research, community involvement, creative writing, and performance in an extended class with high school, university, and community-based collaborators.
Humanities Amped in the News
Humanities Amped Alumni Feature
Promising Humanities Focused Program
English Class as Lab
LSU Tackles African-American Male Achievement at Summit
Promising Humanities Focused Program
English Class as Lab
LSU Tackles African-American Male Achievement at Summit