The Grown Ups

Ms Faith is a member of the Freedom Side School Vision Team. She worked at the school district of Philadelphia for many years as a supportive services teacher for K-3rd grade. She worked both in the school office and in the disciplinary room, creating space for children to feel loved in accountable ways. She's a member of CADBI (The Coalition to Abolish Death by Incarceration) and the Human Rights Coalition, who work avidly to get legislation passed, and to support lifers and those beyond prison walls who are being mistreated. 

Ms Faith loves small children, interacting with them, and making sure they're okay, especially considering the stigma directly impacted kids , who have lost a loved one to the system, hold. Her son was wrongfully committed and incarcerated for first degree murder. She watched her 2 year old granddaughter suffer due to the loss of her father's presence. 

She fights tirelessly for the liberation of directly impacted children's hearts, minds, and families. 

Ms Kalimah got her Bachelors from Drexel University and her Masters in Human Services with a concentration in addiction at Lincoln University. She has worked at St Joes hospital,  founded a basketball team at the Community Rec center, and has been working in criminal justice reform for the past 30 years. She’s an official visitor of the Pennsylvania Prison Society, advocating for the rights of incarcerated community members, and she’s a member of The Coalition to Abolish Death By Incarceration (CADBI) and Human Rights Coalition (HRC). Her proudest and greatest accomplishments are raising her children, her 15 grandchildren, and her 9 great-grand babies. When she was a kid, her favorite thing to do was read!

Mrs. Dee-Dee is an activist who advocates against mass incarceration. She organizes with CADBI, Free the Ballot, FAMM, HRC, SCI Phoenix Mann Up, Free Them to Heal Us, and Put People First. She loves football, reading Christian mysteries, and to fight for those who can’t fight for themselves. She grew up in North Philly with nine brothers and two sisters (she is number five out of the twelve!). She’s a mother to one son who is serving a Death By Incarceration sentence. As a kid, her favorite thing to do was play with her friends and going to the art museum and the zoo.

Ms. Marthea is passionate about being with people. She loves seeing the outcome of working with people. She won a Making a Difference award because of her compassionate care with patients at UPENN. She worked at the Peirce School as an NTA and won community awards for her youth work, and after school programming. She loves watching people be successful at what they do. She loves to watch people grow. When she walks into a room, she asks herself whether she’ll make someone smile. She thinks about how she can make that person feel comfortable. She loves studying children and reading their moods, so she can know what she can offer as support. Ms Marthea is a member of The Coalition to Abolish Death By Incarceration (CADBI) and is on the Participatory Defense team. As a kid, her favorite thing to do was to do math, play at recess, and going home for lunch. 

Christopher R. Rogers, Ph.D leads We Win From Within, LLC as an educator and cultural worker from Chester, PA with more than a decade of experience in supporting justice-oriented arts, culture, and community in the Greater Philadelphia area. He currently co-coordinates the Friends of The Tanner House, incubating a revitalized Henry Ossawa Tanner House at the intersection of Black heritage preservation and community cultural organizing. As a Facilitator with the W.E.B. Du Bois Movement School for Abolition & Reconstruction, he supports aspiring movement leaders serving communities most impacted by poverty, policing, and mass incarceration.

Clarice Brazas (she/her) holds an Ed. S. in Instructional Technology from the University of West Georgia. She is in her 18th  year of education and works as a high school administrator. Clarice has worked in educational organizing around the city of Philadelphia; she hopes her educational and organizing background will be an asset to Freedom Side School.

Emily Pfoutz has been involved with Freedom Side School since the summer of 2022, supporting infrastructure development and fundraising. She organizes with Resource Generation, a partner organization of FSS, as well as in other Philly movement spaces. She has been working in public schools and healthcare settings as a speech pathologist since finishing her master’s degree at Temple in 2021. She has worked predominantly with preschoolers, many of whom are directly impacted by incarceration and deportation of family members. She is honored to be part of the work to interrupt the school to prison pipeline and believes deeply in the urgency of creativity and visioning new futures.  

Bio coming soon…

Sonia M. Rosen is a longtime teacher educator and former middle and high school teacher. She has been a teacher in public and charter schools in New York City and Philadelphia, as well as at six Philadelphia area universities. She currently serves as an Associate Director of PennGSE’s Independent School Teaching Residency program. Sonia has an M.S. and a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, with a research focus on youth activism, teacher activism, urban education, and justice-centered reflective practice. She previously served on the Boards of Directors of Playgrounds for Palestine (8 years) and the Philadelphia Student Union (7 years). A lifelong Philadelphian with 3 kids, Sonia supports a range of important social justice organizing work across many issue areas and is a strong believer in prison abolition and restorative justice as inextricably tied to all liberation work.

Tamara is a Renaissance artist who works as an actor, educator, writer, and organizer. She is a proud member of AEA and SAG-AFTRA. Her company, The Gumbo Lab, features a virtual platform for Black female identifying and Black queer solo artists and an annual BIPOC ten-minute film festival (Radical Imaginings). Her BIPOC Database and Resource Guide connects BIPOC creatives to work in the industry. She is one of the founding steering committee members of the National Black Lives Matter Week of Action at Schools, a Teach Truth organizer with Zinn Education Project, a member of the Philadelphia Writing Project Advisory Board, and a member of the National Advisory Council for Teaching Artists Guild (TAG). She is a founding member of Racial Justice Organizing Committee and the Melanated Educators Collective. She is a 2023 art resident/fellow at Hermitage Artist Retreat. Her writing includes Erasure of Black Women (#CritEdPol: Journal of Critical Education Policy Studies at Swarthmore College. Jan 2021), Black Lives Matter Week of Action in Philadelphia Schools (Lapiz No 6 Hacer Escuela - Inventing School - 2021), Chapter 3: From Philly with Love: Black Lives Matter at School goes National (Black Lives Matter at School: An Uprising for Educational Justice - Dec 2020), Foreword: The Systemic Cycle of Brokenness (Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor No 26 - Jan 2016), #TeachTruth: Pushing Back Attacks on CRT (Convergence Magazine - Aug 2021), Sample Street (A full length play - 2023), and Anywhere (a 10 minute play). Newly elected At Large Councilor for the Eastern Region of Actors Equity Association.

Reem Rosenhaj (she/her) is a community organizer and educator from Philly, and a founding member of Freedom Side School. Before joining Freedom Side’s staff, Reem spent six years as an elementary school teacher in several independent schools in the Philadelphia area. As an educator, Reem’s work focuses on developing and implementing abolitionist practices in the elementary school classroom and supporting young children to learn concrete organizing skills so they can build a more free world. Outside of teaching, Reem has been a volunteer community organizer, primarily in The Coalition to Abolish Death By Incarceration (CADBI) and Decarcerate PA for almost a decade.

Katy is a learner first and always, and also an organizer, facilitator, educator, and worker in the social sector with over a decade of experience helping organizations align their operations and development with their vision and their values. Like many folks from Freedom Side School, Katy is a member of The Coalition to Abolish Death by Incarceration (CADBI). Katy’s background includes a BS in Psychology from the University of Pittsburgh and thousands of hours of specialized training in trauma-informed care and healing centered engagement for children and grown ups, anti-oppressive facilitation and group support, mediation and conflict transformation, and embodied practices. As a kid Katy loved reading, and they still do!