Lea Community School

LEA COMMUNITY SCHOOL

Lea Community School’s mission and vision is to build a foundation of mutual respect within a safe community of independent learners and to collaborate with families and teachers to hone life skills, encourage creativity, promote wellness and health, and supplement academic and entrepreneurial growth, thus providing a learning bridge which complete a circle of unity among our scholars, the University of Pennsylvania, and the greater West Philadelphia community.

Academically Based Community Service courses and Community School Student Partnerships (CSSP) provide Lea students with additonal academic support and mentorship throughout the school day. The Netter Center's Agatston Urban Nutrition Initiative (AUNI) brings nutrition lessons to Lea students as well as runs an after-school fruit stand. A team of Penn students from Wharton's Management 100 class help run Black Wall Street, engaging Lea students in entrepreneurship.

The Recess Initiative aims to promote fun and fitness at the Lea School. Co-sponsored by the Fox Leadership Program and the Netter Center, the Recess Initiative employs undergraduate students and public school staff to promote a more pleasant lunchroom environment and encourage interactive play and fitness opportunities for children during recess.

The Lea After-School Program has multiple components: read aloud, affirmation, homework, and enrichment. The program offers a number of different enrichment activities including art, basketball, football, soccer, dance programs (ballet, hip hop, etc), cooking, musical theater, newspaper, poetry, financial literacy, music production, stepping, and choir. In spring 2013, Lea began a partnership with Penn's We Can Swim! program, which works in partnership with the USA Swimming sanctioned national child focused water safety initiative, Make A Splash!, to decrease the incidence of drowning among children who live in urban areas. Swim lessons for Lea 2nd-4th graders will be held at the Pottruck Health and Fitness Center on Penn's campus and will be taught by Penn students who are CPR and Lifeguard certified.

The summer program at the Lea School follows the Philadelphia Freedom School curriculum. The Philadelphia Freedom School’s vision and mission is to create an excellent, physically and emotionally safe learning environment where children, youth and adults integrate a love for reading and math with the need for cultural democracy and the strategies of intergenerational community inclusion and family alliances. Enrichment activities offered are: basketball, healthy cooking (in partnership with AUNI), dance, computer animation, Italian, Improv/Acting, water color painting, furniture restoration, singing, stepping, and musical theater.

Sterling Baltimore, Director

Christian Edge, Assistant Director