As a young teacher, Destiny saw firsthand the disconnection between the way traditional humanities studies were taught and the real lives her students were living. Studying the works that dominated traditional canon of literature required students to check much of their experience and their own sense of relevance at the classroom door.

In 2014, she co-founded Humanities Amped with Dr. Anna West, and created a collaborative literacy approach to empower students to be more critical readers, writers and thinkers.  Her curriculum offers active learning strategies using culturally relevant materials, and develops classroom practices that extends far beyond the Common Core State Standards.

Humanities Amped students, most of whom come from backgrounds of generational poverty, connect to literature through their own experience, and use their reasoning skills to go out and explore and act on issues relevant to them – like racial justice, body image and love. To date, participants have a graduation rate of 94 percent, and 100 percent of its English as Second Language students have graduated.