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Education Justice
All children deserve equitable opportunities to learn, grow, and thrive. We envision a world where all children have access to vibrant, community-centered, academically challenging, and culturally relevant public education systems that are safe, supportive, and inclusive.
DECOLONIZING EDUCATION FOR AFRO-INDIGENOUS YOUTH
The Freedom School launched in 2019 as an interdisciplinary, research-based curriculum built on an ethic of decolonization and humanizing education while building literacy skills for students in early childhood education through high school. The curriculum is focused on providing space for families (youth and parents) to develop a criticality and ability to identify and call-out the inequities and injustices that often exist inside of systems and institutions that as a society we often come to accept as the norm or status quo.
Freedom School operates monthly during the school year, with special programs throughout the summer. Topics covered include the history of Black excellence, creation, and entrepreneurship, and the ways that those stories have been erased and rewritten to undermine those values and maintain a racial hierarchy. Through Family Freedom Schools, students will be able to differentiate between propaganda and fact, and learn to question things with a critical lens. They also receive healing services and supports that help heal from the toxicity of living and growing up inside these systems that were not designed for them to thrive, including introduction to practices such as meditation, tai chi, yoga, acupuncture, and art therapy.
HEALING SPACES FOR EDUCATORS
Black Educators Heal
RRI has also launched a series called Black Educators Heal, which provides healing spaces specifically for afro-indigenous educators who have often faced discrimination, dehumanization, and trauma inside of education systems, both as children and as employees. These healing spaces are catalysts for teachers to build a community for healing with other educators, as a first step towards addressing the barriers and challenges that get in the way of standing in ones power and creating the change inside of education that we wish to see as a community. Black Educators Heal was piloted with a group of 30 Black educators, and is expanding to serve more educators across a broader range of racial and ethnic backgrounds.
