Indianapolis Freedom School Partnership

Services Offered

Skills & Teaching Methods

We have been serving central Indiana’s youth with educational/reading support through the CDF Freedom Schools program since 2015. Providing educational success, IFSP currently offers a six-week summer program that assists in overcoming the learning loss that occurs during summer break. The CDF Freedom Schools® model empowers scholars to excel and believe in their ability to make a difference in themselves, their families, communities, country and world with hope, education and action. Rooted in the Mississippi Freedom Summer project of 1964, the CDF Freedom Schools program is a literacy and cultural enrichment program designed to serve children and youth in communities where quality academic enrichment programming is limited, too expensive, or nonexistent.

CDF Freedom Schools empowers scholars to maintain and build upon the skills they learn during the school year through exposure to the Integrated Reading Curriculum (IRC). Meeting the common core standards, lessons in the IRC consist of project-based learning activities and include opportunities for civic engagement, conflict resolution, and social action skill development. IRC books feature heroes, heroines, and settings that reflect the scholars’ cultural images and history. The CDF Freedom Schools IRC books boost scholars’ motivation to read, foster positive feelings about learning, increase social-emotional learning and academic achievement. In addition, scholars enrolled in CDF Freedom Schools receive weekly distributions of books to build home libraries.

By providing our scholars with rich, culturally relevant pedagogy and high quality books that deepen scholars’ understanding of themselves and all they have in common with others in a multiracial, multicultural democratic society, CDF Freedom Schools programs further empowers scholars to believe in their ability and responsibility to make a difference while instilling in them a love of reading to help them avoid summer learning loss.