District Introduces Fashion Technology Class

The Iowa City Community School District is currently piloting one of the most advanced high school fashion courses in the country. Offered in collaboration with Wright House of Fashion, students learn industry-standard tools and concepts from three community experts. 

The course was offered last year at City High and is back again this fall. Andre Wright, whose non-profit helps organize the class, hopes to grow the course moving forward. 

“It has been a great opportunity to work with the school district, the student body, and the administration to develop this class,” said Wright. “I hope we can use these trimesters together as a prototype for the future.” 

The class is taught by City High business teacher Joe Wilcox alongside three community experts. Wright, who is a fashion designer, lends his expertise. He also recruited instructors Robert Schafbuch, who has a career in IT and coding, and Kaelen Novak, who is a theatrical and experimental designer. 

Together, the group teaches about different aspects of the design process and the fashion industry. Key skills include creative design, fashion technology, and business strategy. 

“I loved the real-world expertise that our students were exposed to last trimester,” said Wilcox. “Being able to connect our classroom with successful people and leaders from our community is awesome for our students.”

For three weeks each, one expert instructor joins the class to direct lessons on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. At the end of the week, Wilcox helps review key ideas, provide work time, and synthesize learning from across instructors. 

At the end of the trimester, each expert returns for one more week to help students prepare a final project. 

“One of us couldn’t teach the entire class as well as we did together,” said Wright. “The format also gave the class some flavor and variety.”

Wright’s background is in design and community outreach. His organization, Wright House of Fashion, is a local non-profit that teaches young people leadership, civic engagement, and professional skills through fashion design. 

“This class allows students to learn from experts in our own community,” said Wright. “We want to help kids develop real fashion skills and also open their minds to the coding and graphic design process associated with that.”

Schafbuch teaches about technology and coding through the non-profit organization Know More. Novak’s teaching background has been at the collegiate level, including at Juilliard and the University of Iowa. His expertise ranges from theatre costuming to the motion capture technology used in Hollywood films. 

“Kaelen Novak is a creative and technical genius, and he works nationally in his industry,” said Wilcox. “Robert Schafbuch brings experience from the worlds of big-business IT, coding, and computing. We try to blend those areas into a ton of applicable skills and hands-on, project-based learning."

Together, they teach students industry-standard tools. These range from Adobe programs like Photoshop to Python coding software to the professional fashion design called CLO.

"Even at the university level, I have not heard of many programs incorporating CLO into their curriculum," said Novak. "In both design and marketing, it is becoming an industry standard tool. To learn those skills in high school is a tremendous opportunity for students." 

For the final project, students display their realistic designs in a 3D-animated fashion show. According to Novak, unique opportunities like these can show students new sides of their own creativity and passion. 

“Even if students learn that they don’t want to make clothing, they get to learn skills and be creative in this course,” said Novak. “Maybe by experimenting with 3D design tools, they will discover their true passion is for animation or another related technology.”

Schafbuch says the experiment has been mutually beneficial for the district and its community partners. 

“We feel really honored to partner with the school district,” said Schafbuch. “They have been really helpful in allowing us to expand the infrastructure we use to teach kids.”

For Schafbuch, partnering with Wilcox in a classroom setting has given extra reach to his community outreach. 

“It is really inspiring to see the lights turn on for a student,” said Schafbuch. “At the end of the term, they start to see how all these ideas are connected. It has been very rewarding.”

Wright hopes that introducing role models into the classroom will help students get interested in new kinds of learning. 

“This class is really about the workforce of the future,” said Wright. “These kids get to build entrepreneurial skills, learn engineering and math concepts, and be creative in a way.”