Freedom School teaches reading and more – Greensboro News & Record

GREENSBORO As the music swelled, fourth-grader Floribert Kizumina squeezed his eyes shut.

Something inside so strong, he sang, before posing like a bodybuilder.

Fifty students are gathering five days a week at Hairston Middle in east Greensboro for the fifth-annual Childrens Defense Fund Freedom School run by Guilford County Schools. The session, which started June 19, ends July 28.

CDF Freedom School teaches reading with the promise that literacy is an important step toward power, in particular the power to do good. The camp starts with the theme, I can make a difference in myself, then shifts that theme outward week by week, to making a difference in family, then community, country and world.

Theres also a small advocacy or activism component. Campers and parents are participating in the Childrens Defense Funds National Day of Social Action asking lawmakers to keep funding for food stamps.

That ties into the agenda of the Childrens Defense Fund to promote policies and programs that lift children out of poverty; protect them from abuse and neglect; and ensure their access to health care, quality education and a moral and spiritual foundation.

One very crucial part about Freedom School is that we dont just sit in the classroom and read books, said site coordinator Brandin Bennett. We give our scholars and ourselves the opportunity to do something for our community.

The modern Freedom Schools were inspired by events in summer 1964 during the civil rights movement.

That summer, organizers with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and other groups rallied black people across the state of Mississippi to attempt to register to vote in defiance of laws and practices aimed at suppressing or eliminating black voting.

Civil rights activists and allies also set up Freedom Schools for black children and teenagers. These privately organized summer schools taught subjects such as literacy, math and humanities, as well as civil rights.

The Childrens Defense Fund began its first Freedom Schools summer camps in 1995, drawing its name from the Freedom School tradition made famous in the 60s.

The organization partners with sponsoring churches, schools, nonprofits and juvenile correction facilities and looks to serve students who might not otherwise have access to many books over the summer. Children of all races can participate.

Im pretty much jealous for myself that I never had this program when I was in school, said Thomas Moses, the Page High teacher who heads Guilford County Schools Freedom School.

Freedom School begins each day with breakfast, followed by Harambee time. Thats Swahili for all pull together. At Freedom School its a daily, half-hour assembly full of enthusiastic singing, chanting, announcements and acknowledgements.

In the middle of all that singing, chanting and dancing, a guest community leader reads a book aloud to the students and discusses it with them. Guests this year include everyone from Democratic County Commissioner Skip Alston to Republican school board member Anita Sharpe.

After the Harambee time, students head to their classes. On Tuesday, Kizumina and his classmates gathered in a circle of desks with their teacher to pass around a book on Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, each reading a section.

The book told of challenges she faced as a child, everything from anti-Jewish signs in shop windows at the time, to being told to write with her right hand when she was left-handed, or that she couldnt take certain classes in school because she was a girl.

As the students and teacher read the book together, they discussed such topics as which hands they use to what prejudice is. Ginsburg, by the way, refused to follow that right-hand requirement fitting in to a running theme in I Dissent: Ruth Bader Ginsburg Makes Her Mark, a picture book for young readers.

About 5 p.m. Wednesday, some parents, children and Freedom School staff members trickled into Hairstons media center for a parent meeting.

Moses and his staff wanted to share with parents what their children are doing at camp and also enlist some help with the National Day of Social Action project prescribed by the CDF.

They explained that this year the focus is on preventing child hunger, and that the action established by CDF involved writing messages on empty paper plates, symbolic of hungry children.

They passed out paper plates to the parents and suggested they write messages to federal lawmakers and local officials to oppose a proposed major cut to the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, otherwise known as food stamps.

Freedom School leaders collected the plates with plans to mail them to members of City Council and Congress. Students will also get an opportunity to write messages on plates, and those will also be sent, Moses said. He said they are planning a march with signs with the children this week, but not out and about, just at the school, to show students a little bit of what marching for a cause is like.

Parent Tonya Byrd said her daughter was crushed when it looked like Freedom School wasnt going to happen this year and ecstatic when the district changed course and pulled it together in just a few weeks.

Parents Amber Bennett and Darius Harper attended the meeting together.

Bennett, the sister of site coordinator Brandin Bennett, was busy writing a detailed message on her paper plate about her own experiences with SNAP.

When I first moved out of my parents house and I moved up here to Greensboro, I didnt have a job so SNAP was very beneficial to me, she said. It helped me get on my feet and feed my child until I could find a job and do it on my own, so thats what Im writing to help other young people or young adults to start off until they can get on their feet and make it on their own.

Bennett said her son, who will be in second-grade next year, was behind during the school year in reading. When she found out about the Freedom School program, she hoped it would be an opportunity for him to become more confident and less shy about reading.

I think he loves it, I see a big difference in him, she said, even in the space of just a couple of weeks. He seems like, I dont know how to put it ...

He comes home singing every day, Harper interjected.

... more energetic and brighter about actually learning and doing things, Bennett finished. I think its made a great impact on him thus far.

Contact Jessie Pounds at 336-373-7002 and follow @JessiePounds on Twitter.

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Freedom School teaches reading and more - Greensboro News & Record