Towards Collective Work and Responsibility: Sources of Support within a Freedom School Teacher Community
“This article was published in Teaching and Teacher Education, Vol 25 number 8, Author: Tambra O. Jackson, " Towards Collective Work and Responsibility: Sources of Support within a Freedom School Teacher Community", Pages 1141-1149, Copyright Elsevier (November 2009)”.
Alternative and parallel schooling contexts such as the Children's Defense Fund Freedom Schools provide educational experiences for U.S. K–12 students grounded in notions of social justice and culturally responsive teaching. College-aged young adults known as “servant-leader interns” are the teachers in this context.
In this article, the author examines the nature of the various ways in which servant-leader interns were supported in their development as teachers both at the national training institute and at their local site.
This discussion gives explicit attention to the kinds of deliberate support intended by the Freedom Schools program and the kinds of support that the servant-leader interns created or initiated on their own. Implications for teacher support that occur in alternative and parallel schooling contexts are discussed.