About the Project
Across Pennsylvania, incarcerated people and their loved ones have been fighting for decades to build a more free world. Now, a group of educators, care-givers, and organizers from the movement to end mass incarceration are founding a school in Philadelphia for the children we love. At Freedom Side School, we teach love, learn freedom, and practice healing justice. Our goal is to nurture, strengthen and prepare our students to be future visionaries and organizers to create a better tomorrow.
We wonder:
What happens when we start from the beginning?
What happens when the wild, other-worldly ideas of young people are taken seriously?
What might they be able to imagine?
What happens when children are given the love, time, space, and resources they need to treat one another with compassion, care, and collective responsibility?
Who do those children become?
What does the world become?
we believe that:
Children learn by doing. Providing opportunities for hands-on learning and allowing children’s interests and curiosities to lead are essential aspects of our program.
Inquiry, imagination, and play are integral to children’s learning and development. Providing ample opportunities for children to freely play, explore, imagine, and wonder, allows educators to observe and understand each child more fully. Through understanding each child’s likes and dislikes, passions and beliefs, we find access points to support their learning and development.
Children have wisdom to teach grown-ups. As educators, we learn the most from the children in our care. Part of our role is to listen closely to children and take their ideas seriously.
Learning occurs in ways unique to each child. Our mission is to meet each child where they are at, and support learning in ways that are most developmentally appropriate for that child.
Children have their own standards. Our role as educators is not to impose the same standards of learning on every child. Rather, our role is to offer the support children need to identify and meet their own standards for learning and growing.
Children should be told the truth and supported to think critically about our world. Educators have a responsibility and obligation to teach about oppression and injustice honestly and with intention, and to care for students as they navigate difficult truths.
Children should be given the tools they need to build a more free world. Children are naturally oriented towards justice and fairness and are creative problem solvers. Educators can and should help them harness these talents so children can create the world they want to live in.
Classrooms should be spaces where we learn and practice collective care.