A golf scramble in support of the Children’s Defense Fund’s (CDF) Freedom School will be held at Reid Park on Saturday, May 21. For information on the scramble or having a child registered for the Freedom School program, call Covenant United Methodist Church at 324-3501.
This summer, a South Side Springfield church will again help local children learn skills in order to help them combat some of the obstacles those growing up in disadvantaged and troubled neighborhoods face.
Covenant United Methodist Church will open its doors to host a six-week session of the Children’s Defense Fund’s (CDF) Freedom School. Created 21 years ago by the national child advocacy organization, the Freedom School name harkens back to the Freedom Summer of 1964, when college students traveled to a segregated Mississippi to hold voter registration drives and establish schools to improve literacy among African-Americans.
“I care a lot about children and about them being able to grow up well,” said the Rev. Diane Turner-Sharazz, pastor of the church at 529 W. State St. “And I worry about the disadvantages a lot of children have.”
It was program’s focus on literacy – and helping children to enjoy reading – that first attracted Sharazz. She worries that lagging reading skills among children in disadvantaged neighborhoods puts them at a lifelong disadvantage.
The immediate goal of the program, she said, “is to help children maintain their reading skills over the summer,” rather than seeing them tail off through lack of use.
Because it’s something so fundamental to their success in school, success in reading can also help to teach them an important lesson about themselves, she said: That they are capable of doing things well in their lives.
“It helps them know that they’re somebody, period,” she said, but also that “they are somebody who can make a difference.”
Mayor Warren Copeland, who has helped the church find money and other partners to support Freedom School – including linking it to support from the Hagen Center for Civic Engagement at Wittenberg University — said those same goals were part of Freedom Summer.
Copeland, who worked in Mississippi in 1965, said black people “were being taught they were second-class citizens.”
“I think there are a lot of kids growing up and thinking they are second class citizens in society (today),” he said.
He said it is his sense that those involved in community violence “do not think their lives are worth anything” or that, as second-class citizens, they have other legitimate paths to success.
The program has a theme of “something so strong inside.” It is meant to help children discover the self-confidence needed to succeed, then it tries to leverage lessons in self-confidence with lessons on conflict resolution so students have both the attitudes and skills needed to settle disagreements without resorting to violence.
The program also teaches students how to advocate for changes that will improve the lives of people in their neighborhoods, something that organizers hope may also lessen the likelihood of violence.
Freedom School will accommodate 30 students entering grades 1-6 and will run from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday from June 20 to July 29.
The church has distributed registration materials at Perrin Woods Elementary, with which it already works, and also will target Fulton Elementary, but the program is open to children from other schools as well.
The CDF approach requires parental involvement, calls on community members to read stories to the students each morning and relies on “servant leaders,” college students who attend Children’s Defense Fund training seminars in advance of the program, to work with the children. The servant leader program is designed to give college students a chance to develop leadership skills helpful in future advocacy work, teaching them at a higher level what the school also seeks to teach the children.
Because the program also is aimed at low-income students it also provides meals for the students.
The CDF web page on Freedom School say research has shown that students leave the program with better attitudes about themselves and their capabilities, and that those attending show improved reading skills, particularly if they attend multiple years. The reading benefits are most noticeable among middle school boys.
Created in part as a of model program that surrounds disadvantaged students with the support they need, the Freedom School budget is $40,000. That is generated through fundraisers and with the support of others, including Faith, Northridge and High Street United Methodist churches; the National Council for Negro Women; Security National Bank; and others.
Because of all the work involved, Sharazz added, “It’s taken us a while to get here.”
About the Author