Families with Power

"What if...? That's the question that began Families with Power/Familias con Poder, a grass-roots organization of low-income students and caregivers in Northampton, MA in 2007. What if the families of students most impacted by the "opportunity gap" somehow had the power to organize whatever activities they felt would best help their children succeed? Mary Cowhey, a teacher who co-founded FWP, shares these stories and the voices of her fellow FWP organizers through vignettes and interviews, weaving in the lessons learned along the way. Inspired by Paulo Freire's popular education and the radical tradition of the Highlander Folk School, some Latina and African mothers, a great-grandmother and a couple of teachers founded Families with Power (FWP). Organizing Family Reading Parties in each other's living rooms (instead of meetings at school) to recruit additional families and identify potential leaders, FWP created a Highlander-style residential retreat that employed Freirean culture circles to pose problems and design programs to address them. Readers will get an inside look at the benefits, successes and challenges of more than a dozen years of student and family engagement in the community and school, tackling issues from academics, race and class to immigration and public health"--