Mission and Vision Statement
Sankofa Freedom Academy Charter School will be a college preparatory culturally responsive K-12 freedom school, which will enable students to pursue the professions of their dreams while empowering and impassioning them to be life long teachers, learners, activists, and servant leaders. Sankofa Freedom Academy (SFA) will build on the Philadelphia Freedom School Junior Servant Leader model to establish a public charter school that will bring together high school servant leader scholars with elementary school scholar activists to increase literacy and numeracy levels throughout the community, promote respect for scholarship, servant leadership, conflict resolution, personal and social responsibility as well as cultural democracy.
By blending the standards driven School District of Philadelphia Core curriculum with the essential components of the Philadelphia Freedom School model, SFA will engender in its students, staff, and community a love for learning, respect for scholarship, pride in heritage and a commitment to personal and societal transformation. By operationalizing the adage, “each one / teach one”, Sankofa Freedom will build intergenerational learning communities in which each and every person is responsible to learn in order to teach, and teach in order to build a better world.
Just as the Freedom School movement has already influenced educational practice throughout the city of Philadelphia, SFA will serve as an intergenerational model for urban teaching and learning. Blending academic rigor, culturally responsive pedagogy, and constructivist / experiential instructional approaches will enable Sankofa Freedom Academy to greatly impact the way “school” is experienced by all its constituents. SFA will improve student performance, heighten student engagement, transform teacher practice, strengthen families, contribute to developing communities, and prepare young people and their elders to use scholarship, culture, and activism to address local and global concerns. Graduates of Sankofa will be prepared and motivated to be successful in the post secondary institutions of their choosing and committed to contributing to the various communities to which they belong. This all will be accomplished within the context of a loving, respectful community, which is guided by the Freedom School Way!
What’s In a Name?
The term Sankofa is an Akan expression that is translated “Reach back to move forward”. SFA believes children of African descent and other students of color have absolutely everything they need to achieve academically and live lives as fully actualized human beings who are able to build and maintain healthy communities and establish a just world. Academically applying the principle of Sankofa means SFA will not accept failure or mediocrity”. Remembering always the legacy of the great ones on whose shoulders we stand, students, staff, and cultural workers will be reminded to “reach within and back” in order to reconnect with the sources of knowledge and power that will insure academic success and enable scholars to contribute to the communities to which they belong. Thus, Sankofa Freedom Academy will use the history, cultural expressions, aesthetics, literature, orature, value systems, and worldview of African and Diasporan cultures to forge a reconnection between excellence in scholarship, identity, and purpose.
