Edutopia - June/July 2008 - (Page 26)

Delta Dawn: The rural South provides a visceral background for the project’s lessons. unteers from civil rights organizations taught students black history, academics, citizenship, and physical ⇒tness. Today’s project participants, called Freedom Fellows, join the program as rising seventh graders. During the school year, they attend after-school sessions, Saturday classes, and tae kwon do training, and study at least ⇒ve books a year with their peers. In the summer, the Freedom Project holds a modern Freedom School in which ⇒rst-, second-, and third-year students study academics, media production, public speaking, and tae kwon do. The young fellows also spend a week at the University of Mississippi and go on thematic academic and leadership trips. The more advanced fellows (those who meet program requirements for attendance and participation during the school year) attend summer academic programs or intern with nonpro⇒t organizations or government of⇒ces out of the county, state, or country. The Freedom Project builds kids’ skills by looking deeply at Mississippi history and culture. Charles McLaurin, a major ⇒gure in Mississippi’s civil rights efforts and now a member of the Freedom Project’s board of advisers, explains, “We’re rooted in the past but preparing people to meet the challenges of today and tomorrow.” From Wrongs Come Rights In the ⇒rst two summers, fellows study Mississippians in the civil rights and Civil War eras. Each year, students rehearse and perform plays across the state and region that depict historic events from the Delta. A play created in 2001, A Boy Named Bobo, told the story of Emmitt Till, a black teenager brutally murdered by white racists in nearby Money in 1955. In 2005, students produced a documentary for which they interviewed Delta residents; some discovered previously unknown information about their own families’ involvement in the civil rights movement. McCoy says such work gives students power and motivation to look at their legacy and say, “Now I have the opportunity to continue that legacy by ⇒ghting against the norm of typical teenage behavior, of teen pregnancy, of low academic performance and graduation rates. That’s why we sing our freedom songs, and that’s why we talk about the Freedom Project in the sense that it’s a part of the civil rights history.” But along with paying homage to local heroes, the Freedom Project helps students look broadly to the world beyond the Delta. Fellows have college students as summer teachers, and they meet actors, politicians, and civil rights activists. They also travel to camp, perform plays, and go on study tours. Mildred Downey, the so-called grandmother of the Freedom Project, says these experiences are essential so that “more kids would live a life outside of what’s here in the Delta—poverty and food stamps and Medicaid and children—and live life, see what’s there. Then you have choice.” It is the outside trips that draw the youngest fellows. Mykia Clayton, a ⇒rst-year student hoping to be a doctor, is excited about her ⇒rst college visit, and about the group’s upcoming trip to Montgomery, Alabama, where they’ll tour Martin Luther King Jr. sites. “He was a very inspiring person, and if you just think about what he fought for, blacks’ rights, that’s really good.” Lukendric Washington, a 2007 graduate of the program, laughs when describing the group’s trip to Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. “There’s no trip with the Freedom Project where you’re actually on vacation and living it up like a star or whatever, but we were able to learn so much about the ancient Mayan ruins and see all those temples and pyramids we’d read about in my eighth-grade textbook.” He came back and told friends, “Those pictures we’re looking at now in this book? I’ve been there.” Washington, who had previously traveled only to Disney World with the Freedom Project and to the Bahamas with his church, has seen his world expand with the Freedom Project. “I’ve been able to do different things like intern in North Carolina, go to private schools in DC, perform shows in Texas and New York. God knows where else I’ll be able to go because of the connections I’ve made with the Freedom Project.” In fact, Washington credits the Freedom Project with helping him get into his top-choice college, the University of North Carolina, on a partial scholarship. Two classes of students have graduated from the Freedom Project—⇒ve students total—and all ⇒ve are in college, with three paying nothing. McCoy expects those numbers to grow; students graduating in the next years have been with the program since it transitioned from summer only to year-round, and the 2008 class will have six graduates from an initial class of thirteen. So far, Freedom Project graduates are doing well in college— Freedom Project alumni have grade-point averages of 3.1. Of these successes, McCoy says, “We’re not just ful⇒lling our mission; now we’re starting to establish a tradition. This is something that works, this is something that will produce results, and it’s something that will allow students to go to college.” McLaurin concurs, envisioning a Delta with Freedom Fellows as leaders. “The Freedom Project is taking all the good that came out of the civil rights movement—the need to educate young people, to make them aware of their history, the struggle that their parents and others went through to secure what they have—and it’s bringing these young people together, teaching them about that history,” he says. “And now they can build on that by getting a good education and doing things to improve the quality of life in their communities. So the Freedom Project is kind of like the movement’s baby developing and growing up.” e Lisa Morehouse, a former teacher, is now a public-radio journalist and education consultant. 26 EDUTOPIA JUNE/JULY 2008

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Edutopia - June/July 2008 Contents UpFront Feedback Dispatches Sage Advice Ask Ellen Head of Class Cool Schools Design Young Minds, Fast Times Wii Love Learning No More Pencils, No More Books Tech Without Support All the Right Moves Room to Learn Heart & Soul Pop Quiz: Jeff Corwin

Edutopia - June/July 2008

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