Educating inner-city black youth has been an endless battle in this nation. Fifth-grade teacher Karanja Crews put himself on the frontline.
At Champions Barbershop in Portland last Saturday, the 34-year-old stood in front of a room filled with African-American community members, students and leaders.
Five braided rows of dreadlocks rest proudly on his scalp, reflecting a coolness seldom found in the world of teaching. As he spoke, laughter often erupted from the whispering-yet-attentive audience.
On that freezing night in Portland, Crews was busy warming hearts with the story of how he came up with the idea for his nonprofit organization dedicated to teaching black youth the importance of academics.
He calls it The Journey to Freedom Project.
“I wanted to have this launch in a barbershop because the barbershop was one of the first professions that we had,” Crews said.
The Journey to Freedom Project began when Crews taught at Portland’s Jefferson High School. If you know anything about Jefferson, you know it isn’t necessarily what one would call a beacon of academics — considering its less-than-spectacular 52 percent graduation rate.
“That was a battlefield,” Crews said. “We had a lot of kids that weren’t motivated at all.” Crews attributed this to the struggles inner-city black youth often face, including minimal guidance, malnutrition and various social pressures.
Crews remembers trying so many different things and coming up with so many different lesson plans, only to get the same poor classroom results.
He remembers going home and venting about how difficult it is to educate in that environment and how frustrating the whole situation was.
He was dealing with students who simply didn’t understand the value of education. With no guidance at home and no stability in their lives, many students were more concerned with daily living than with their futures.
He needed those kids to understand their potential, the opportunities they didn’t see and the sacrifices their ancestors made for them to even have the right to an education.
On a plane ride from Mount Bachelor to Portland, Crews figured out a way to do just that: He would make those kids relive the experience of slavery.
Don’t worry — it’s not as bad as it sounds.
When Crews’ students arrived to their classroom the next day, all of their desks, chairs, pencils and paper were gone. Crews told them they had lost all rights and had to sit on the floor. Several Jefferson High School seniors were arranged to act as “slave drivers” (obviously they were excited to do that), and they led the rest of the students to the cafeteria with blindfolds on. In the cafeteria, Crews arranged the cooks to make the each student a cup full of mushy, unflavored grits.
By the time the students were escorted back, several of them were crying. They had experienced a walk in their ancestors’ shoes.
They had a powerful discussion about what that walk meant, and Crews informed the students that if they were to earn their freedom, they would have to read several books and answer questions correctly to display comprehension.
Since then, Crews has assembled a team of like-minded teachers and community members to create an entire nonprofit organization, complete with a board game, a website and its very own soundtrack of progressive black music. The Journey to Freedom Project has received donations and support from Michael Jordan’s Jordan Fundamental Foundation, hip-hop duo Dead Prez and many local businessmen.
Crews and his team will spend the next few years rallying to tutor students, teach active learning and conduct various assemblies to unify the African-American community in the pursuit of a better education for children.
“This is my mission,” Crews said. “This is something that God gave me.”
At this point in our educational system, where funding and support seem to be dwindling, community movements as such this will be more and more essential to the future success of students. We need to be active and passionate about teaching one another in these trying times, because there are people who want to restrain what we learn and how we learn it (hello, Texas).
Whether you’re a philosopher, entrepreneur-in-training or a budding English major, take some time out of your day to reach out to someone who needs your help. You don’t have to start an entire movement or have a master’s degree to educate someone — all you need is a big heart.
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Harris: Teacher creates a journey to freedom
Daily Emerald
March 2, 2011
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