Dear Freedom School Literacy Team 2020, Across the nation, we started the summer of 2020, lighting up the streets with rage. We rage for George Floyd’s senseless strangulation. We rage for Ahmaud Arbery, who was hunted...
Author - Sharif El-Mekki
Courage, commitment, and foresight are consistently needed when you work in schools, districts, and organizations that claim to be doing the work of anti-racism. There are too many organizations and school/district leaders today...
The pandemic of 2020 is rocking our world and throwing our country’s school system into shutdown mode. While educators are trying to mitigate the unprecedented impact by quickly forming makeshift online learning, this, often...
But what of black women?… I most sincerely doubt if any other race of women could have brought its fineness up through so devilish a fire. – W.E.B DuBois Two of the dopest Black women I know decided to merge Black...
I reminisce a lot about my childhood. I think about the trajectory that was established for me and my schoolmates by a group of Black families who decided that they were going to take ownership of their Black children’s...
There are few things as searing as losing a loved one. When that person is one of your community’s most impactful teachers, it hurts. Baba Juhudi was that person for us. His memorial was an opportunity to reflect and...
Life is very short and what we have to do must be done in the now. –Audre Lorde This evening, the Philadelphia Board of Education will face a critical decision that will impact the lives of hundreds of young people who...
Pennsylvania’s teacher roster is the least diverse in the nation; less than 5 percent of Pennsylvania’s teachers are people of color, according to the state Department of Education. Yet evidence regularly points to the...
I will never forget the time I attended a teaching job expo in Valley Forge, PA. Districts from around the state had laid out the welcome mat, eager to attract the newest and brightest teachers into their ranks. I stood...
I’ve had the chance to travel a lot in my work as an educator and activist, and frequently I find myself in what I call the “too-expensive-for-Black folks” cities. You know, those cities that present themselves as...