Film overview
The ADAPT Narrative: Southeastern follows two Detroit high school seniors through the 2024–2025 school year, highlighting their perseverance and the families, educators, and community partners who support them. Through their journeys, the film challenges harmful narratives and celebrates the genius, growth, and achievement of Detroit’s young people and communities.
The film offers examples and discussion material; it is not a comprehensive treatment of every aspect of culturally relevant pedagogy.
Learning objectives
- Examine how selective storytelling shapes perceptions of young people and expectations for their futures.
- Explore how historical representations help explain recurring stereotypes and their consequences.
- Recognize student strengths and the relationships that support belonging and achievement.
- Identify ways community connections and student dialogue can support meaningful academic participation.
- Examine how personal experiences can inform academic inquiry, career interests, and future planning.
- Interpret student performance through growth, context, and relationships.
- Recognize family relationships and student interests as resources for engagement and future planning.
- Explore how storytelling can challenge stereotypes and affirm students’ understandings of themselves and their communities.
- Recognize literacy practices, curiosity, emotional support, and affirmation within families.
- Examine how lasting relationships and community partnerships expand support and opportunity.
- Explore how students contribute to one another’s belonging, accountability, and success.
- Connect affirmation, honest guidance, and community investment to continued growth.
Two pathways
Full film: watch continuously or choose “Pause for chapter reflections.” Bookmark moments and take notes. Guided chapters: work one chapter at a time. Both share saved responses on this website.
Before watching
- What stories have shaped your understanding of Detroit students and schools?
- What do you hope to learn about students, families, and communities?
- What current challenge in your practice would you like to examine?
Chapter activities
Chapter 1 — Beyond the Headlines: Challenging Incomplete Narratives
0:00–6:08
- Objective:
- Examine how selective storytelling shapes perceptions of young people and expectations for their futures.
- Before watching:
- What assumptions can a headline or short video clip invite us to make about a young person?
- Watch for:
- How restoring omitted context changes the meaning of the opening news story, and how the film distinguishes students from the systems surrounding them.
- Reflect:
- What changes when the young person’s full aspiration is heard?
- Where might incomplete information influence expectations or decisions in your setting?
- Apply:
- Identify one process—such as a referral, student profile, or team discussion—where you could seek fuller context and include student voice.
Chapter 2 — Historical Roots of Racial Stereotypes in Media
6:08–9:56
- Objective:
- Explore how historical representations help explain recurring stereotypes and their consequences.
- Before watching:
- What recurring images or stories have shaped public perceptions of Black communities?
- Watch for:
- Connections the film makes between historical entertainment, racial stereotypes, and public attitudes.
- Reflect:
- What patterns of representation does the film ask viewers to recognize?
- How might inherited narratives influence what educators notice, expect, or overlook?
- Apply:
- Select a classroom resource or school communication and examine whose perspectives it includes, excludes, or simplifies.
Chapter 3 — Meet KrisTiana: Student Voice, Belonging, and Support
9:56–14:15
- Objective:
- Recognize student strengths and the relationships that support belonging and achievement.
- Before watching:
- What can you learn about a student that grades and test scores cannot show?
- Watch for:
- How KrisTiana describes her experiences, relationships, opportunities, and growth.
- Reflect:
- What strengths and sources of support become visible through her story?
- How do students in your setting describe whether they feel known and supported?
- Apply:
- Create three student interview questions that invite discussion of strengths, relationships, and aspirations.
Chapter 4 — Culturally Relevant Teaching and Student Agency
14:15–17:20
- Objective:
- Identify ways community connections and student dialogue can support meaningful academic participation.
- Before watching:
- Where do students’ lives and communities enter your lessons?
- Watch for:
- Connections between academic content and community, along with opportunities for students to reason and talk with one another.
- Reflect:
- What specific teaching practices connect learning to students’ experiences?
- Who does most of the explaining, questioning, and meaning-making in your classroom or learning setting?
- Apply:
- Revise one lesson to include a meaningful community connection and a structured opportunity for student reasoning or dialogue.
Chapter 5 — Connecting Lived Experience to Purpose and Possibility
17:20–23:03
- Objective:
- Examine how personal experiences can inform academic inquiry, career interests, and future planning.
- Before watching:
- How do students’ experiences influence the questions they want to investigate?
- Watch for:
- How KrisTiana connects her family’s experience to scientific interests and how adults support students’ individual choices.
- Reflect:
- How does her story connect personal meaning with academic ambition?
- How can adults support a student’s goals while leaving room for the student to define their own direction?
- Apply:
- Design an optional prompt connecting a student’s interests, observations, or experiences to a research question or career exploration activity. Do not require disclosure of painful experiences.
Chapter 6 — Miles’s Turnaround: Growth, Family Engagement, and Resilience
23:03–28:51
- Objective:
- Interpret student performance through growth, context, and relationships.
- Before watching:
- What might you assume about a student whose transcript includes repeated failing grades?
- Watch for:
- How Miles and his father describe setbacks, changing circumstances, growth, and support.
- Reflect:
- What evidence challenges a fixed judgment about Miles’s ability or motivation?
- How might school records or adult conversations preserve an outdated story about a student?
- Apply:
- Identify one way your team could document current strengths and growth alongside academic concerns.
Chapter 7 — Connecting Home, Culture, and Student Aspirations
28:51–33:46
- Objective:
- Recognize family relationships and student interests as resources for engagement and future planning.
- Before watching:
- How do you learn about what students and families value beyond school?
- Watch for:
- Shared activities, communication, advocacy, career interests, and respect for a student’s individual journey.
- Reflect:
- What knowledge and support do family relationships contribute to Miles’s development?
- How can schools invite family expertise while protecting student ownership of future choices?
- Apply:
- Draft a family conversation starter that invites strengths, interests, hopes, and knowledge about the student.
Chapter 8 — Counter-Storytelling: Identity, Place, and Belonging
33:46–35:36
- Objective:
- Explore how storytelling can challenge stereotypes and affirm students’ understandings of themselves and their communities.
- Before watching:
- Who usually gets to tell the story of your students or their neighborhood?
- Watch for:
- The discussion of telling one’s story and the students’ descriptions of Detroit, friendship, and shared memories.
- Reflect:
- What becomes visible when students describe their own lives and places?
- What would it mean to listen without requiring students to prove their worth or represent an entire community?
- Apply:
- Plan a student storytelling opportunity with choices about format, topic, audience, and whether to share.
Chapter 9 — Foundations of Success: Family Literacy and Affirmation
35:36–40:27
- Objective:
- Recognize literacy practices, curiosity, emotional support, and affirmation within families.
- Before watching:
- What forms of learning and care might schools overlook in students’ homes?
- Watch for:
- Reading routines, library visits, family conversations, emotional expression, and affirmations.
- Reflect:
- What family strengths and learning practices are visible in these stories?
- How can your school recognize those strengths without assuming all families have the same resources, schedules, or practices?
- Apply:
- Develop one way to invite families to share their knowledge and learning practices in a format that works for them.
Chapter 10 — The Village in Action: Educators, Community, and Mentorship
40:27–48:53
- Objective:
- Examine how lasting relationships and community partnerships expand support and opportunity.
- Before watching:
- Who contributes to student success beyond the classroom?
- Watch for:
- Relationships across years, community organizations, college preparation, mentorship, practical assistance, and emotional support.
- Reflect:
- What makes the support in this chapter feel sustained and personal?
- Which students in your setting can readily access similar networks, and who may face barriers?
- Apply:
- Map existing school and community supports, identify an access gap, and name a realistic step toward addressing it.
Chapter 11 — Collective Achievement: Agency and Positive Peer Networks
48:53–53:21
- Objective:
- Explore how students contribute to one another’s belonging, accountability, and success.
- Before watching:
- How do peers support learning and well-being in your setting?
- Watch for:
- Descriptions of shared achievement, educational agency, friendship, encouragement, and peer accountability.
- Reflect:
- What do students provide for one another that adults may not immediately see?
- How can educators support productive peer connections without controlling every relationship?
- Apply:
- Design a peer learning, mentoring, or check-in routine with meaningful student input.
Chapter 12 — Celebrating Growth and Sustaining Support Beyond Graduation
53:21–end
- Objective:
- Connect affirmation, honest guidance, and community investment to continued growth.
- Before watching:
- What support should continue as students move into a new stage of life?
- Watch for:
- Celebrations, expressions of care, guidance about choosing supporters, and reflections on community responsibility.
- Reflect:
- How does the film distinguish unconditional support from simply agreeing with every choice?
- What would sustained support look like during transitions in your setting?
- Apply:
- Complete your final action plan and choose a date to review what happened.
Note-taking template
| Time | What I saw or heard (observation) | What I think it means (interpretation) |
|---|---|---|
Support-network map
List supports in each circle, then note who can access them and where gaps exist.
School
Family
Community organizations
Peers & mentors
Access gaps & next step
Storytelling planning worksheet
Purpose
Format choices offered to students
Topic choices
Audience options
How students can choose whether to share
Supports and timeline
Final synthesis
- What assumption did you reconsider?
- Which moment in the film influenced you most, and why?
- What strengths or perspectives will you look for more intentionally?
- What will you change in your practice?
Action plan template
My role and setting
Practice or assumption I want to examine
Evidence or moment from the film
Student, family, or community perspectives I need
One specific action
People I will involve
Resources or support needed
First-step date
Evidence I will look for
Follow-up date
Follow-up reflection: What happened, and what will I adjust?
Glossary
- Counter-narrative
- A story told from the perspective of people whose experiences are often left out or misrepresented, offering a fuller account than the dominant story.
- Deficit narrative
- A story that explains outcomes mainly by what individuals or communities are assumed to lack, rather than by their strengths or the conditions around them.
- Culturally relevant pedagogy
- Teaching that supports academic success, affirms students’ cultural identities, and helps students think critically about the world around them.
- Student agency
- Students’ capacity to make meaningful choices, voice ideas, and take ownership of their learning and direction.
- Family engagement
- Two-way partnership in which schools and families share knowledge and responsibility for a student’s learning and well-being.
- Community assets
- The people, organizations, places, traditions, and knowledge within a community that can support learning and growth.
- Stereotype threat
- The concern of being judged through a negative stereotype about one’s group, which can affect how a person experiences a task or setting.