A 5-Ingredient Recipe for 5 Weeks of Freedom Schools
Have you ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes at WA-BLOC? What bits and pieces go into creating a Freedom Schools Summer? What makes our program strong, joyful, and all-around dope? Well you’re in luck–we’ve put together a Buzzfeed-inspired list-icle to lay out some of the most important components of our preparation. Read on!
INGREDIENT #1: Content, Curriculum, and our Brilliant Books
Our staff spends countless hours intentionally curating joyful, exciting, and academically enriching experiences for our scholars. Our summer program is centered around the tenets of critical literacy, meaning we are concerned with ideas around perspectives, positionality, and power. This means that our lessons are filled with opportunities for scholars to ask questions and to make meaning in a variety of different ways. We aim to expand the definition of literacy - we want for scholars to not only read books while at Freedom Schools (FS), but we want them to read their neighborhoods by going on a walk, learn from community leaders by listening to their stories, and expand their thinking by engaging in discussion with each other. We also deeply believe that criticality does not only mean to dislike or problematize. We believe that criticality also means to synthesize, to respond, and to build connections to different topics so that scholars can ultimately make their own choices and opinions about the world around them. Our curriculum is centered around affirming our scholars and their community so that they can build a strong foundation of who they are and where they come from so that they can feel empowered to make a difference, all done while improving and sustaining their literacy skills :). (CLICK HERE for our 2024 Book list!)
INGREDIENT #2: Gathering All the Right People
Freedom Schools (FS) would not be what it is without the brilliant educators and scholars we get to learn with. This is why we start our hiring process several months in advance; going out into the community, posting our Educator applications, and recruiting. Each educator goes through an interview process and tells us about their experiences, values, and why they want to be part of FS. They even practice leading part of Harambee! We look for people who relate to our scholars, understand the power of literacy, and are ready to dig deeper and engage with new ways of teaching and learning from one another. Our team this year is going to be AMAZING- you can check out their bios here.
INGREDIENT #3: Cultivating Joyful Experiences
Is it really a Freedom Schools summer if we don’t center joy and excitement? Each year we connect with other spaces, places, and people in the South End who can help us create opportunities for fun on a daily and weekly basis. We partner with other community organizations to offer afternoon enrichment sessions like bike riding (shout out to Cascade Bicycle Club and Bike Works!), music workshops (what up KEXP and South End Stories!), natural dye and food preservation workshops (hey Braided Seeds!), and more. Our fun doesn’t end there, though–we also take field trips to spots around the city. This year our field trips will take us to Saltwater State Park, El Centro Skate Rink, and MoPOP! Follow along with our journey on Instagram!
INGREDIENT #4: The Nuts and Bolts
Coordinating the logistics for our summer program takes a lot of time, energy, and money. We need a safe, clean, and temperature-regulated building for our site, food and transportation for our scholars, supplies for both instruction and out-of-class time, and so much more. We won’t sugarcoat it; securing all of those things is really, really hard. Between January (yes, we start planning that early!) and June every puzzle piece has to come together. We depend on collaboration from Seattle Publich Schools, the city, and independent contractors for buses and classrooms and custodial support, and we depend on grants and donations to fund these operations pieces (which alone cost upwards of $50,000). Though the act of ensuring our kids’ needs are met is a fight year after year, it is a fight that is always worthwhile. If you’d like to support us, we are still raising funds for this summer’s program!
INGREDIENT #5: Getting Creative; Dreaming, Visioning, Co-Creating
A LOT of intention goes into building out our FS program. This year especially we wanted to focus on creating systems and routines for our program that are fun, joyful, and centered in liberation. We committed to experimenting a lot this year. We are challenging ourselves to venture away from traditional structures, and ways educators and kids are “expected” to act like in traditional school environments. We’re talking: games in the hallways, cheers and chants throughout the day, restorative practices infused into everything we do, and rules/agreements created by and for FS scholars in every space. To all our teaching nerds out there, stay tuned for our more detailed report-back on how the summer went and routine/transition tools and tricks we can all try in our classrooms and schools.
It’s going to be a brilliant summer, we can’t wait to keep learning, growing and expanding with our scholars this year!
