LIBERATORY EDUCATION

School Services

Education for Liberation


School Services was originally launched in 1969 to “increase and improve teaching about Africa” in U.S. schools, and from 1972 to 1976 it flourished under the leadership of Evelyn Jones Rich, an activist and former New York City educator. Today the program employs pedagogical approaches inspired by the work of transformative scholars Gholdy Muhammad and Zaretta Hammond. AAI partners with primary and secondary schools in Southeast Michigan using:

  • Pedagogical training that draws on results-oriented research about teaching, learning, and the brain. Each training session equips teachers to transform students, especially those who are disadvantaged by structural racism, into cognitively independent, high-achieving, life-long learners.

  • Curriculum development and classroom instruction that exposes students to rigorously researched knowledge about the centrality of Africa and its global Diaspora in the creation of the United States and the modern world.

  • Needs-based Resources for partner schools to strengthen school climate with mechanisms to elevate, encourage, and learn from student voice. Provided resources may include but are not limited to classroom libraries, teacher assistants, academic coaches/deans, and funding for culturally relevant materials or programming.

  • Coaching and skills-building designed to strengthen principals’ and administrators’ capacity to demonstrate culturally-responsive leadership. This includes cultivating the active support and engagement of all stakeholders - students, parents, teachers, administrators, and community members.

Among AAI’s principal co-founders were Horace Mann Bond and William Leo Hansberry, two pioneering scholars, educators, and activists whose work straddled the divide between African, African Diaspora, and Black studies. AAI continues to embrace the philosophy of education for liberation that Bond and Hansberry espoused—a philosophy that affirms the humanity and cultivates the intellectual aspirations and excellence of all people.