About Us
The concept Sankofa is taken from the West African symbol of a bird carrying an egg in its mouth, flying forward into the future while looking backward. It challenges us all to remember to reach back, to learn, and to reclaim the best of what our past has taught us while achieving our full potential as we move forward with the understanding of why and how we came to be who we are today.
Sankofa Education Alliance (SEA) is founded on this same principle and represents the quest for wisdom, knowledge, and preservation of a heritage of a people. Language is the heartbeat of our culture, a flash of the human spirit, while culture is the essences of who we are as individuals and as a collective group. They are both integral parts of one's identity and serve as the foundation for learning in school and success in life. By doing what we know works, and what research supports as it relates to the education of our children, we press toward the future taking with us, and carefully protecting, the best of our past - our language and our culture.
Mission: to help school districts, and civic, community and faith-based organizations operate from their strengths as they shape and reshape their educational practices and build capacity to eliminate disparities in educational outcomes for culturally and diverse students; thus, moving them to proficiency and beyond.
Goal: to transform education for culturally and linguistically diverse students through comprehensive, culturally proficient professional learning opportunities for administrators, teachers, instructional support staff, and parents that:
*deconstruct negative perceptions and beliefs about language, learning and culture while raising expectations about their learning capabilities;
*create healthy, caring, and communal environments that support meaningful learning and personal development.
If the historical and persistent educational access and opportunity gaps imposed upon African/African American children are to be eliminated, both educators and laypersons must make concerted efforts to see these issues as their issues and not those of the students, their parents, or the communities from which they come. In order to effectively address these gaps, we must look through the lens of cultural proficiency at language and culture.
Cultural proficiency is an inside-out approach for intentionally educating all students at high levels through knowing, valuing, and using their cultural referents – background, language, cognitive and learning style patterns – within the context of teaching. Because language serves as the foundation for learning, and academic or standard English is the language of instruction in most American schools, we must infuse these two constructs to ensure our students have equity in accessing rigorous standards-based, college preparatory curricula and career options.
Though Sankofa Education Alliance is results-driven, we believe in developing people and are committed to building a coalition between and among all stakeholders within the sphere of the lives of children. Operating from the belief that affect triggers cognition, SEA takes a holistic approach education In addition to addressing the academic needs of students, we also promote their social well-being and self-efficacy through a personal development program entitled DREAMS, and an interactive financial literacy comic book series entitled Mini-Moguls: Lessons in Money Management.
We are dedicated to assisting organizations in developing systemic and strategic approaches that build capacity for cultural responsiveness in order to change patterns of thinking and ways of doing that benefit children, families, and their communities.
Remember, we all have a stake ...
"...and so, as we fashion solutions which help Black children, we fashion solutions which help all children”, the Honorable August "Gus" Hawkins.
