ABSTRACT
Empowering children to expand their understanding of the world around them begins with new pathways of academic achievement. Literacy is not only essential to children’s personal achievement but it is also necessary for school and community success. Bricolage Academy is a K–5 urban public charter elementary school located in the Bayou St. John near mid-city New Orleans, Louisiana. As a public charter school, families have the option to choose Bricolage Academy through a unified application processes put in place by the Orleans Parish School Board and Recovery School District. Bricolage is a word of French entomology that means “to tinker.” For centuries, around the world, tinkerers used resources at hand to fix things, solve problems, and create. Levi-Strauss used the word bricolage to describe how different cultures, craft traditions, and ordinary people used tools and materials at hand to experiment and tinker and solve problems within cultural contexts.
