Tacoma Freedom School
A 21st Century Freedom School
Leader
Petra Perkins
Location
2106 S Cushman Ave Tacoma, WA 98405
About the project
We will pilot a Freedom School activity with the goal of gauging the interest and feasibility of creating a longer-term, sustainable program. Our target audience for this project is a multicultural, multi-ethnic group of up to 30 young people in the 7th-12 grades.
For this pilot, we aim to bring young people together to collectively interrogate the meaning and goals of education in a free society. We will guide them to, for example:
- Interrogate the meaning of education and learning versus schooling
- Learn about the history of schooling in US
- Uncover and interrogate the structural racism in schooling
- Uncover and interrogate the militarism in schooling
- Learn about examples of activism and movements for social change that have employed them
The Steps
- Recruit 6 young adult facilitators.
- Recruit 3-5 adult hosts
- Create publicity campaign and register youth participants
- Run pilot program and debrief session
- Recruit co-facilitators for next iteration of Freedom School from first cohort of participants
Why we‘re doing it
The focus on the achievement gap is only focusing on test scores and the metrics by which school administrations are judged, but too many of our children are disengaged in their education. Too many of them are coming out of school with no understanding of the historical context for their day-to-day experiences.