C.B. Community Schools, Philadelphia

Nominated by our Math Teacher Mr. Isom, our student spotlight this week is Julia! Mr. Isom said this about Julia: "Julia is my spotlight student for many reasons. Despite having past challenges with math, she works through her challenges to learn the material and complete her work. Her perseverance in the face of past adversity is an inspiration! She has completed all of the assignments, as well as worked independently to complete her work online." Congratulations Julia! We are proud of you and all of your hard work at CB!

Last day of our #BlackHistoryMonth takeover with Mr. Brown! Thanks to Mr. Brown for the creativity, passion and dedication that you bring to our students and our community!

Day 3 of our #BlackHistoryMonth social media takeover with original poetry from our History Teacher, Mr. Brown!

Day 2 of our #BlackHistoryMonth social media takeover with original poetry from our History Teacher, Mr. Brown!

For our final full week of #BlackHistoryMonth, our History Teacher, Mr. Brown is doing a social media takeover! Mr. Brown is a deeply intelligent, philosophical and critical thinker. He inspires and challenges our students to learn diverse versions of history, question how history has been written and embrace their own personal histories! All of the posts shared this week feature original poetry written by Mr. Brown and powerful images he has chosen to accompany his work. Thank you Mr. Brown!

C.B is looking for mentors! Please share widely and consider becoming a mentor for a C.B. student. The C.B. mentorship program connects our students to caring adults who support them in their journey to graduation and postsecondary success!

Check out CB on WURD Radio this Sunday at 5pm! Our Education Director, Amoreena Olaya, will be talking with Staci Scott from Health Partners Foundation about education in the time of #covid_19 and how our school has adapted to meet the needs of our students in the #childwelfare system. The show will also feature Cradles to Crayons Philadelphia. 900 AM or 96.1 FM or listen live at WURD Radio website!

Our students and team members are loving our new I Matter masks and now you can have them too! Check out the second photo in this post for how to purchase your masks and support our school. All donations from mask sales will directly benefit student scholarships for our students in the #childwelfare system. Our students matter! https://cbcommunityschools.org/donate/

As we start the new school year, we want to give a huge shoutout to our #classof2020! COVID-19 made this spring difficult for all of us, especially our grads who worried that they would not finish by June with all the adversity they were facing in their lives. Thanks to our awesome #competencybased model, our grads advocated for themselves and asked for more time to complete their final benchmarks over the summer! We pushed our graduation back two months to August and our dedicated teachers came to CB to offer socially-distanced academic support to our grads over the summer. On August 5th, 2020, CBCS held a small, masked and distanced graduation to celebrate our NINE graduates who made it to the finish line! We are so proud of all they accomplished!!

Thank you to @acmemarkets @albertsons and the #nourishingneighbors program for providing funding for our summer program!! Because of you we were able to ensure we had healthy meals and PPE supplies for 17 of our students in #fostercare to participate in our 6-week summer job program focusing on #mentalhealth during #covid19 and #blacklivesmatter. We appreciate you!

We want to give a huge shout out and THANK YOU to all the vendors at @CactusCollectivePhilly for donating a portion of their sidewalk sale funds to C.B. a few weeks ago!! We could not do this work without the incredible support of our community members and donors. We are so grateful to you all for amplifying the voices of our students in #fostercare and for your contribution. Thank you!!!

CB Teacher Spotlight - We want to shout out our incredible Art Teacher, Mr. Jones, who created and facilitated our amazing summer program for our students in #fostercare on caring for mental health during #covid19 and the #blacklivesmatter movement. Thank you for inspiring us through your creativity and dedication to our students!

Our final featured activity of the C.B. Summer Program is this amazing "Peace of Mind" mural created by our students! Our students planned the mural design throughout the entire 6 weeks of the summer program and worked together to complete it. The second half of the mural will be completed soon with quotes from students showing what "Peace of Mind" means to them. We are so proud of what our students have accomplished as they worked together to heal and support each other! Minding Your Mind Foundation

Our third featured activity from our summer program is Letters to a Stranger. Our C.B. Students wrote letters of support and advice to someone they had never met to help a them get through this tough time and know that they are not alone! We encourage you to share with anyone who might need a message of support! Minding Your Mind Foundation

Today is the second featured activity from our summer program Positive Propaganda! (Part 2) - More signs created by our students that they would like to see in the world to lift their spirits and inspire those who may be struggling with their own mental health to keep going, stay inspired and stay strong Minding Your Mind Foundation

Today is the second featured activity from our summer program Positive Propaganda! (Part 1) - Students created signs that they would like to see in the world to lift their spirits and inspire those who may be struggling with their own mental health to keep going, stay inspired and stay strong Minding Your Mind Foundation

C.B. had the amazing opportunity this summer to employ our students in a socially distanced summer project! We partnered with @mindingyourmind to talk about the importance of taking care of your mental health during #covid19 and the #blacklivesmatter movement. Our students in the #childwelfare system had deep conversations, created beautiful art and worked together to support each other. We will be featuring activities from the summer project all week! ...... The first featured activity is the Inside/Outside mask made by our students. These masks represent what our young people show to the world, and what they deal with on the inside that many people might not see. Check out their incredible designs and powerful experiences.

A huge thanks to Cactus Collective for partnering with CB to donate 20% of sales from their sidewalk sale this weekend 8/1 and 8/2 to our school! We are so grateful for your support. Check out their sale this weekend!