Description
What is the The Freedom Community School?
We are a mixed age school for children ages 5-8.
We are a small school with very low student to teacher ratios.
The school is tuition free.
Who is the The Freedom Community School for?
For children who don’t feel safe, seen, or cared for in more traditional schools.
For families interested in a liberation education for their young children.
What makes us unique?
We are unique because of how we are combining different practices. The practices themselves have long legacies we are honored to be continuing.
We reject the idea that any human being is disposable. We are committed to processes that bring to light the root causes of conflict within the community and center healing and humanity over punishment and exclusion. Traditional discipline systems of incentives and punishment will be replaced with systems that center transformative justice* and relationships. (Another wonderful read about transformative justice here.)
We will explicitly teach about how systems of oppression operate, and how they historically and currently have and can be resisted. Each year, our curriculum will follow the sequence of Bree Picower's Six Elements of Social Justice which include: self love and knowledge, respect for others, issues of social injustice, social movements and social change, awareness raising, and social action.
Each student will participate each day in child-led exploration. Each child will have individual projects they are working on, that will be led by their interests and inquiries.
We acknowledge the hurt that children carry, and will use trauma informed practice to respond to children’s behavioral needs.
*defined by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha as “any way of creating safety, justice, and healing for survivors of violence that does not rely on the state…a movement created by Black, Indigenous, and People of Color feminist revolutionaries to free our people.”
How are we distinct from publicly funded schools?
Vision
Mission
We want to organize a diverse community towards our dreams of freedom. We want to build a collective of people with shared vision, values, and skills that enable us to more effectively work toward the re-creation of this society. We want to build power with young people armed with deep love and deep imagination to attempt to answer the question: what does what the future look like for young people of color in DC and beyond? We believe that the true north of that work should be placed in the hands of young people, equipped with the fierce power that comes with understanding what this world expects of them, and how they can resist those expectations.
At The Freedom Community School, our mission is to provide a free education that invites children’s whole imaginations, their whole minds, and all of their feelings, curiosities, and questions into school. We were founded on a fundamental idea and humble attempt to co-create freedom-based education with a mixed age, multi-racial group of people and to expand educational choices for families in DC regardless of access to wealth.
Our goal is to incorporate practices of social and restorative justice into all aspects of our curriculum and learning, and are committed to processes that bring to light the root causes of conflict within the community and center healing and humanity over punishment and exclusion. In order to do this, we are committed to low student:teacher ratios, we invite students to lead curriculum and decision making, and we teach explicitly about how systems of oppression both operate and exist.
Acknowledgements and Commitments
Racism was created to protect and enrich white people and control and under resource Black and Indigenous people. Therefore, we attempt to make decisions that give up white control; and resource Black, Indigenous and other groups of people targeted by racism and genocide.
Hierarchy is deeply connected to racism, sexism and capitalism and is damaging to trust and relationships. Therefore, we attempt to make decisions and hold power horizontally.
Young people are oppressed in our society. Therefore, we attempt to create an environment that supports their freedom, leadership and ideas.
Punishment is deeply connected to white supremacy, policing, and prisons. Therefore when harm or hurt is done, we use restorative practices instead of punitive disciplines in response.
Most schools are designed to educate children to follow instructions and become workers, not healthy joyful humans. Therefore, we attempt to center joy, imagination and play for everyone involved.