The reality of Los Angeles is as disparate and fractured as the suburban web that comprises it.
At the heart of this sprawling metropolis lies a sobering truth: The number of homeless students is growing, and their working parents are finding it increasingly difficult to secure affordable housing. There were 62,931 homeless students across 80 districts and 270 charter schools in the county — including about 11,500 in LA, according to 2015-2016 data from the Los Angeles County Office of Education.
Crete Academy, near South L.A.’s Leimert Park neighborhood, is changing this trajectory of homelessness by providing L.A.’s kids and families with top notch education and a variety of social services to ease them into the workforce and away from the streets.
Hattie Mitchell, Crete’s founder, believes that “the housing scarcity is not only real in general, it’s very real for families, we want to keep families together as much as we can. To do that we have to provide services not just at the school for the kids, but services that extend beyond the school day to our parents and our families.”
Students affected by homelessness have critical thinking skills but may not have the critical thinking disposition or the habits or mindsets needed to consistently apply critical thinking throughout their life, career, and academics due to the instability that comes with being homeless.
thinkLaw is proud to partner with Crete Academy to address the charter’s mission based on three tenets of mind, body, and soul with a belief that if all three are addressed, a child can succeed regardless of their circumstances. All three tenets are the bedrock of thinkLaw’s mission and what we do on a daily basis.
Through a powerful instructional program, thinkLaw is providing Crete students with higher order learning strategies used by lawyers to solve hypothetical and real-life problems; the type of critical thinking and life skills that are paramount to students success at home, in school, and in the workplace. Colin Seale, thinkLaw’s Founder/CEO and Board Chair for the Nevada Partnership for Homeless Youth, is proud to partner with Crete on the “mind” piece of Crete’s powerful “mind, body and soul” framework. He says, “Crete is serving students who most educators never expose to critical thinking instruction. So we are excited to partner with Crete to ensure that this essential 21st-century skill is no longer a luxury good.”
For more information about Crete Academy’s transformative model and how to help, please visit here: https://edsource.org/2017/inspired-by-skid-row-educator-opens-charter-to-help-las-homeless-children-and-families/585872
To learn how your school or organization can adopt thinkLaw’s standards-aligned program that helps educators teach critical thinking to all students, please click here to schedule a time to speak with someone on the thinkLaw team, call us now at (702) 318-7512 or join us on our next webinar; Thinking Like a Lawyer: Powerful Strategies to Teach Critical Thinking to All Students
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