Lauren Lefty

The Children’s Defense Fund’s Leave No Child Behind® mission is to ensure every child a Healthy Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start and a Moral Start in life and successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and communities. With the National Director of CDF Freedom Schools, the Leading Edge Fellow will organize a prospectus for the development of the CDF Freedom School Teacher Training Institute. The Fellow will engage education stakeholders in utilizing the CDF Freedom Schools model as a culturally relevant pedagogical practice for teachers and leaders in various school districts. They will be responsible for research, strategic planning, outlining hiring goals, developing digital teacher training toolkits, and publishing training materials. The Fellow’s work will contribute to the Children Defense Fund’s efforts to advance literacy learning grounded in culturally relevant and anti-racist pedagogies, provide spaces for affirming children and families’ histories and racial/ethnic affiliations, develop sociopolitical consciousness, engage in social action aimed at improving communities, and increase the cultural proficiency of the nation’s workforce.