
Vel R. Phillips Juvenile Justice System High School Fosters Opportunity and Hope
In the most recent edition of Vel’s Voice, a student-run newsletter from Vel R. Phillips Juvenile Justice System High School, students published TED talks about a value or belief that is important to them. Because of what brought them to Vel, these TED talks were anything but run-of-the mill.
“Pain is temporary. It won’t last forever if you don’t let it.” -TT.
“Sometimes I get upset very fast. But I’ve got to talk to someone to get myself under control. Sometimes I need to deal with people who get under my skin. It is hard, because growing up I didn’t know what to do.” -ZW
“No matter what, it’s up to me to change. I don’t want people to think I’m an angry person or a bad person. I’m going to prove that isn’t me.”-JG
In reflection after reflection, students used their own experiences to give advice to others as they think about what the past means and what the future can hold for them.
None of the students chose to be at Vel Phillips. But the program seeks to empower these youth to make better choices, develop their voices, and see themselves as agents of change– in their own lives, and in the lives of their communities.
On any given weekday, anywhere between 110-170 students attend classes at Vel Phillips. The school is part of the Wauwatosa School District and is supported by state and local funding. As a correctional institution, the school also receives federal Title I-D funding. Vel R. Phillips Juvenile Justice Center School serves all Milwaukee County children who are placed in secure detention by the Wisconsin Juvenile Court System.
Students attend classes with their living pods rather than by grade level. Detention and incarceration can be very isolating experiences for students involved in the justice system. That isolation can often compound the feelings of powerlessness and hopelessness and lack of resources that led them to be involved with the justice system in the first place.
Which is why the educational approaches used by the Vel Phillips staff and educators is solidly based in social emotional learning. In order to successfully move out of the system, students are encouraged to develop their emotional regulation tools; to find key things that motivate them (family, financial stability, friendships); and to take responsibility for their futures, while accepting and learning from their past.
That’s a tall order, especially when students are constantly in a state of flux. Teachers must meet kids where they are academically, emotionally, and socially. In order to set students up for better reintegration back into their outside educational environments, students work on all the basic academic subject areas so that they don’t lose ground. Math, literacy, science, and social studies are all still a required part of the curriculum, despite the unorthodox setting and circumstances.
The school’s educators have found that project-based learning and place-based learning have been powerful tools to allow students to integrate their personal circumstances into their school work, boosting their intrinsic motivation.
One project, “The Examined Life,” engaged students in self-reflection and empowerment by reading and discussing a book by Shaka Senghor, who wrote a book about his time incarcerated as a youth.
Another project called MKE ROOTS is brought into students’ social studies curriculum. This project (a collaboration with Marquette’s Center for Urban Research, Teaching, and Outreach (CURTO) centers around students learning about the history of their city and community, telling their own stories, and understanding how changing their own lives is meaningful not only to themselves, but in a greater context. Numerical and contextual literacy is developed through interaction with data representations (numbers, graphs, etc.) and learning how to decode important information, which is a key cognitive processing skill.
Finally, the program integrates academic and career planning tools to help students build a picture of their future and a path with next steps that they can build on. Dean Heus, Vel Phillips School Principal, says that the school wants students to, “look… past their present circumstances to develop educational and career goals and plans.”
Beyond their time at the school, educators reach out and collaborate with colleagues in students’ home schools to make sure that there is a reintegration plan in place that supports students’ academic and future goals.
Said Heus, “We want students to believe in education again regardless of what your previous experiences were. [At Phillips, students] work with caring adults and maybe that helps you believe and have a little bit more hope when you’re re-entering a different educational setting.”