From listening to student and families:
“This scholarship should not be competitive. We want to support our students and families, not put them against each other.”
“It should not be based on test scores. Those are biased against us.”
“And not on sports and extracurriculars. Our kids are responsible. After school they came right home to pick up their brothers and sisters from elementary school and watched them while we were working or going to school. Some of them work to help the family pay bills. They didn’t have that privilege to do extra things.”
“Let’s not wait. Let’s start right now.”
Since co-founding Families with Power (FWP) with two caregivers and another educator in 2007, the most important thing I’ve learned in more than two decades of teaching is to listen.
Families with Power is a voluntary grassroots organization of families who have historically been marginalized in schools. At the start, we learned from Myles Horton, founder of the Highlander Folk School, who, in conversation with Brazilian educator and philosopher Paulo Freire, said, “Most people don’t allow themselves to experiment with ideas, because they assume they have to fit into the system… the socially approved ways of doing things and consequently don’t open up their minds to making any kind of discoveries.”
FWP engages in social education experiments outside the system, in what Horton calls “out-of-school learning.” In 2007, that looked like family reading parties in the living rooms of apartments, and family writing projects in community rooms. By 2010, it looked like Morning Math Club at Jackson Street School, organized by FWP caregivers to support their children’s learning and their own understanding of how math was being taught to their children.
It has included a financial literacy project, self-protection programs and increasing access to healthy food.
Last spring, I published “Families with Power: Centering Students by Engaging with Families and Community” (available at Broadside Books or online at Teachers College Press). It shares the stories of 15 years of FWP organizing. FWP students and caregivers decided to use a portion of the future book royalties and speaking honorariums to start a scholarship for students and caregivers who had participated in Families with Power programs, who had financial need and were continuing their education.
The quotes above were from that first conversation as FWP students and caregivers imagined a scholarship that was accessible and equitable for all of our members, including people who are multilingual, whose education may have been interrupted, who may have anxiety or learning disabilities, who juggle the stress of poverty and caregiving, or who may not have the documentation to complete federal financial aid forms.
At the book launch in May 2022, members set up a table with information about how to apply for the new scholarship, how to donate, and a coffee can for donations. An anonymous donor pledged a matching grant.
Last summer, FWP awarded its first six scholarships of $500 each to graduating high school seniors and current college students, including a caregiver; they are studying computer science, pre-med, business, concrete masonry and education. This spring, many of those scholarship recipients reflected on the benefit of the financial as well as the emotional support of the scholarship, the community affirmation of their effort.
FWP has pledged to provide support for last year’s scholarship recipients who are continuing their educations, as well as new applicants. Scholarships will be awarded at a community celebration at Florence Civic Center on June 12 at 5:30 p.m. An anonymous donor will match contributions up to $2,000. If you are interested in applying for the FWP scholarship or donating to support it, email familieswithpower@gmail.com.
Mary Cowhey was an elementary public school teacher for 22 years in Northampton, teaching first and second grade. She is a cofounder of Families with Power/Familias con Poder and has also written “Black Ants and Buddhists: Thinking Critically and Teaching Differently in the Primary Grades,” winner of the 2008 National Association for Multicultural Education Philip C. Chinn Multicultural Book Award. Cowhey lives with her spouse, Bill Blatner, and chickens in Northampton.