Fawaaz Fields, 25, who worked as a Sankofa facilitator at Edison High, said Sankofa was a space where boys could talk freely without judgment
“If a young man is expressing a story, whether his goldfish died or he just watched his best friend get shot, we sit in a circle and are attentive whether it takes seconds or 15 minutes,” Fields said. “We’re showing the value of listening. The public schooling process is missing these basic things that help people be successful.”
Delgado, whose focus as an administrator is getting students to graduate, said Sankofa touches on what never gets taught in a classroom.
“A healthy mind definitely has healthy results and when they come in with an unhealthy mind, how can you even begin to teach algebra?” he said. “How do you begin to focus on biology when their focus is on what happened last night?”
Sankofa facilitators also taught life skills like hygiene, how to tie a tie, how to interact with the police and how to treat women.
McKinney, a facilitator at Philadelphia Learning Academy South, an alternative school in the Belmont section of West Philly, recalled a student who had an intense crush on a hall monitor.
“He was coming at her aggressively, so that became a topic for the group. We talked about harassment and we talked about how and why you can’t come at women like that,” he said.