• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Freedom School: Reading Program: It's Free, Fun and Fundamental: Black Culture, Literacy Freedom School's Focus

Posted on: Monday, 26 June 2006, 09:00 CDT

By Tom Droege, Tulsa World, Okla.

Jun. 26--Wound up on cheers and chants, a gym filled with children shook the sleep from their eyes early Tuesday at Freedom School, a five-week academy in Tulsa focused on literacy and black culture.

"This is about teaching kids how to love reading. It's not about teaching them how to read," said Jessica Criswell, one of the student interns leading the school. "It's also about cultural empowerment."

Children's Defense Fund Freedom Schools are taking place in more than 40 cities around the nation this summer. The program is a first for Tulsa, where it is sponsored locally by the Greenwood Community Development Corp.

"It's not regular school," said Kortnie Napier, a college student at Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Mo., and a Freedom School staff member. "We're trying to put a twist to it."

And twist they do. The animated, college-age staff greets the kids as they arrive in the morning with whooping, dancing and a human tunnel.

After a quick breakfast the kids gather in the gym for a boisterous rally called "Harambee," which is a Swahili word meaning "let's pull together."

They shout songs with self-motivating refrains like "something inside so strong" and play call-and-response oratory games.

A book is read aloud and a few kids volunteer to act out the characters in front of the group.

The story is about a boy who has a busy day. His father is an architect. His mother is an accountant. And the boy is a student. They are all black -- just like nearly every child at Freedom School.

The free academy attracted roughly 230 in kindergarten through fifth grade and grades 9-12. The younger group meets at Greeley Elementary School, 105 E. 63rd Street North, while the older students meet at Oklahoma State University-Tulsa.

"Many of them come from low-income households," Napier said. "Some kids come wearing the same clothes they wore yesterday."

But the academy attempts to build self-esteem and self-worth in the students. The activity-based curriculum with relay races, chess and other games promotes social, cultural, and historical awareness, the staff says.

The kids divide in groups of 10 and smaller and spend much of the day in classrooms with a teacher who gets to know the children individually. On a typical morning the teacher reads a book and then the class does a variety of comprehension exercises.

If reading is the first lesson, it comes with a heavy dose of empowerment.

The Freedom Schools program originated with the American Civil Rights Movement and in 1993 was reintroduced by Children's Defense Fund founder Marian Wright Edelman.

Getting kids to open a book by choice not by force is the key purpose of the academy, said Greenwood Community Development Corp. Executive Director Reuben Gant.

"Once you plant that seed of motivation to want to read, it opens a plethora of learning opportunities," Gant said. "It's all about building self-esteem and building self-confidence and making it fun."

Outside Greeley Elementary, a group of kids clutching notebooks walks around the playground. Their assignment is to write down what they hear, see, feel and smell. They just finished reading "Wonderful Nature, Wonderful You" by Karin Ireland.

Nine-year-old Tiffani Davis wrote about the sounds of a bird singing and the hot sand around the slide. As she scribbled in her notebook she compared Freedom School to "regular" school.

"You get to have more fun," Davis said. "They don't have homework. You're free."

-----

Copyright (c) 2006, Tulsa World, Okla.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.

Source: Tulsa World

More News in this Category