Pensacola summer program teaches reading, writing and how 'one determined person' makes a difference

The cafeteria of the Global Learning Academy was filled with the sounds of children clapping, dancing and jumping alongside teachers who made sure every child was seen and never left out.

The entrance to the room was lined with books like "When we say Black Lives Matter" and "Granddaddy's Turn: A Journey to the Ballot Box." The shapes of countries like Japan and Russia decorated the walls, and the sound of gospel music rang out through the space.

That's the scene each morning at the Children's Defense Fund Freedom School's Harambee session, a daily event where a guest reads a book to the program's approximately 50 K-5 students, followed by dancing and fun afterward.

Wednesday morning's reader was Pensacola Police Department Deputy Chief Kevin Christman, who read "Change Sings: A Children's Anthem" by Amanda Gorman. It was Christman's first time at the event and he said he was excited for the opportunity to interact with the children and allow them to learn that they can be a force for change in their communities.

"It's important for us to interact with kids, especially at this age, and I think the story in the book was good about how each one of us can make a difference," Christman said to the News Journal. "It doesn't take 1,000 people to make a difference in the world. It just takes one determined person, and I'm sure that in that room, there's some little minds and little souls in here that are ready to grow into those roles to help make change."

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The Central Gulf Coast Children's Defense Fund Freedom School is a free, six-week summer literacy and cultural enrichment initiative that serves children in communities where quality academic enrichment programming is limited, too expensive or non-existent. It targets elementary school children living in areas of concentrated poverty and who attend consistently low performing elementary schools in Escambia County.

Its goal is to encourage a love of reading, give the kids a sense of empowerment and help maintain and even improve their reading scores during the summer. The students are split up in small classroom sizes of about 10 students and have a daily schedule of reading activities that mixes in time to have fun.

Freedom Schools are rooted in the Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964, where college students around the country traveled to Mississippi to secure justice and voting rights for Black citizens. These Freedom Schools worked to engage and educate Black children on Black history and teach them about overlooked figures and events while introducing Black authors and writers of color.

Freedom Schools now start the day off with Harambee, a Swahili word meaning "all pull together," which allows students to get energized for the day and become excited to read and learn, said Jasmine Pollard, an Ella Baker trainer for CDF Freedom School.

Titled after Ella Josephine Baker, a human rights activist who inspired and guided emerging leaders in the Civil Rights era, trainers work to make sure the program runs smoothly and that children are engaged in the curriculum.

"Getting them excited about reading and really excited about learning and also just giving them some cultural reflection, letting them know who they are," is how Pollard described the work. "We've got books with Black and brown faces, with social and political issues, and past issues of civil rights, slavery and current issues of books on Black Lives Matter."

More on the Freedom School: Children’s Defense Fund Freedom Schools offer hope for education challenges | Guestview

Photos: The Children's Defense Fund hosts a summer reading program

Marcus Washington, the site coordinator for the local CDF Freedom Schools program, is currently the dean at Workman Middle School. Washington has spent the last few years as a football coach, athletic director and operating a nonprofit and teaching in Louisiana and Alabama, all to make sure he could help as many students as possible.

Whether he is helping out during Harambee or with other classes, he stresses reading is more than just reading a word, but comprehending what a sentence is saying and being able to think independently about what it means.

Washington has typically worked with older students, is now focusing more on setting younger students on a path to future success.

"If you can get them here, these kids that are going to be here for kindergarten until fifth grade, all we're doing is pushing positivity. All we're doing is pushing how important reading and literature is to you," Washington said. "So if we get them there, by the time they get to middle school, it's already correlated. They want to work, they want to read, they want to do literature, they want to do math, they want to do science because we've put that in their mind every day, every summer, for the five years and then once you get to middle school, it's like 'OK, I am who I am.'"

More information on the Central Gulf Coast CDF Freedom Schools is available at cgcfreedomschools.org.

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Pensacola Children's Defense Fund Freedom School encourages reading