About the Founder
In addition to being an auntie, organizer, spiritualist, writer, “find-the-ease” yogi, and forever student, at her heart, Sarah Cole is an abolitionist educator — one who seeks to co-create in student-centered community the conditions that support holistic thriving for both students and staff. Sarah was proudly born and raised in Kansas City, MO. In her hometown, her values were cultivated, along with an early commitment to help transform the education system she witnessed so often failing Black adolescents.
Through hard work and community support, Sarah eventually made it to Harvard College, where she maintained her commitment and designed her own major: Education and American Society. At Harvard, she began her journey as an organizer connecting and coordinating groups of low-income Harvard students of color to advocate for institutional changes. Simultaneously, her passion for education transformation blossomed as she felt a call to teach.
After obtaining a Master of Education Degree through Harvard Graduate School of Education, Sarah began her career as a project-based learning educator. A fierce believer in an asset-based approach to youth work, she uses this model to hold a mirror up to her students, showing them through community-based projects that they are already changemakers in a world that desperately needs their molding. Her successful work as both a project-based learning educator and a literacy instructor has garnered her numerous awards and invitations to share her expertise across the globe.
Sarah has supported schools and universities in other roles over time: as an equity coordinator, instructional technology coordinator, assistant principal, curriculum writer, consultant, and workshop facilitator. Outside of schools, Sarah has dedicated time advocating for shifts in D.C. policy to create a more equitable landscape for students, families, and educators. She also frequently supports the work of other organizers working toward more just possibilities. Sarah has received training and/or certifications in liberatory design for equity, racial equity facilitation, mind-body wellness and SEL facilitation, and equity-centered school leadership.
In response to consistent requests from various education leaders for her services and support, Sarah is excited to present Rooted Liberation as a platform to leverage her tools and expertise. Through Rooted Liberation, she hopes to help transform the education landscape one collaborative partnership at a time— she would be honored to do this work with your community.
The mission of Rooted Liberation is to nurture the capacity of schools and education organizations to design and engage in cultures, curricula, and community partnerships that cultivate the conditions for all community members to thrive.
Values
Interdependence
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Honesty
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Agency
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Hope
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Love
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Joy
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Interdependence • Honesty • Agency • Hope • Love • Joy •
Uplifting Students. We live in an ageist society that frequently disregards the gifts, perspectives, and ways of being of children and adolescents. As a result, their needs and voices are often ignored. Increasingly, schools are resisting this harmful norm by centering students, their needs, and perspectives. Rooted Liberations builds on the student-centered approach by actively incorporating students as co-designers of the solutions you seek for your school or organization. Liberatory schools can only exist when students are empowered, respected, and trusted to contribute to the transformation work that is needed.
Abolition. Abolition is a commitment both to destroying systems, practices, and mindsets that perpetuate harm and to designing and implementing systems, practices, and mindsets that set the conditions for all to thrive. From slavery abolitionists to modern-day prison and police abolitionists, throughout U.S. history, abolitionists have worked faithfully towards liberatory ends that others have considered impossibilities. Rooted Liberation takes abolitionist theory and makes it practical for schools and education organizations through digestible frameworks and tools.
Collaboration. You are the experts on your community, and so much wisdom already exists within your school or organization’s community. The Rooted Liberation approach takes this wisdom and expertise and applies them to liberatory frameworks to co-create solutions that are unique to your community. Through this collaborative approach, the leaders and community members of your school/organization will experience and internalize these frameworks, thereby building the capacity of your community to continue designing liberatory solutions that meet their needs.
Ancestral Wisdom. Rooted Liberation’s pursuit of liberatory culture, curriculum, and community engagement is rooted in the ancestral wisdom of Black and Indigenous people. As a result, this work remains grounded in the truths of our interconnectedness, purpose, and inherent worthiness, as well as the difficult and inspiring lessons of the past. Many of the tools, values, and processes leveraged across our services are gratefully inherited from the founder’s recent and distant ancestors, along with the ancestral guardians of this land.
Approach
