In 2009, Freedom Prep Academy started to prepare students in pre-K through 12th grade to excel in college and in life. That mission shows up in classrooms, in hallways, in after-school programs, and on graduation stages. It also shows up every morning at the front door of the Millbranch campus, where Brandon Watkins stands at the entrance offering good mornings and high fives to every FPA Eagle who walks in. It is a small gesture. For Watkins, it is everything.
Guided by core values that put the whole child at the center, Freedom Prep campuses across Memphis are each equipped with a full-time social worker. At Millbranch, that person is Mr. Watkins. And the story of how he got there is worth telling.
He was at Clark Atlanta in 2018, attending a professional convention, and he submitted applications to one hundred employers in a single day. Freedom Prep was the only one that called back. “Mrs. Auna Ingram, our Freedom Prep Social Work Program Manager, called my phone and said, ‘Hey, I really believe in the things you do as a social worker. Come to Memphis,'” he recalls. “I had never been to Memphis before. I’m from Huntsville, Alabama. I go to Nashville all the time, but Memphis? Never.” He came anyway. And the city surprised him. “I found out what it was about, how much soul was here. It reminded me of Montgomery, of Atlanta, of Petersburg, Virginia. It felt like home immediately.”
What also surprised him, looking back, is that social work was never the plan. Watkins played Division I football and genuinely believed he was headed to the NFL. Then he got a concussion, and everything shifted. In his undergraduate courses he was studying Freud and Skinner and the hierarchy of needs, and suddenly the material was personal. He started applying it to himself. He started to heal. “That’s when social work became my passion. I had to go through a crisis to figure out what my real calling was.” It helped that mental health was already in his bloodline. His mother is a psychologist, his father a counselor, and together they run a practice. Watkins just needed his own doorway in.
His role at Freedom Prep has stayed consistent across every chapter of his time here: ensure that every child learns to express their emotions using evidence-based practices like cognitive behavioral therapy and dialectical behavior therapy, while managing a caseload of IEP and 504 plans. He and his colleague, Mrs. Fair, share the campus, she covering kindergarten through second grade and he covering third through fifth. But the philosophy underneath the work goes deeper than any caseload. What Watkins is really after is teaching kids to know themselves.
He calls it regulation. “My biggest motto is don’t let someone put a battery in your back,” he says. “If you come in with great emotions and you’re happy, let’s keep that throughout the day. You don’t have to respond to everything.” The tools he teaches, things like square breathing, opposite-choice thinking, responding versus reacting, are practiced until they become second nature. For children who come to school carrying the weight of hard mornings and hard homes, that practice is everything.
The arts are part of that toolkit too. “The brain doesn’t operate in rigid structures alone,” he says. “Your most brilliant people are also very creative. If you don’t give a student time to decompress, with art, with music, with movement, the brain doesn’t function properly.” He points to the response that comes from coloring, from a favorite song playing low in a calm room, from the smell of a crayon. “Those experiences stick to the brain. The light, the sounds, the colors, that’s how learning gets retained.” One of his most meaningful practices is color journaling, meeting weekly with a student who, when they first started, could barely open up. He would step out, let them draw on their own, and return to ask what the colors meant. Six months later, that same student walks in ready to share. “Some kids don’t have the words for their emotions. But they can draw them. They can find a color.”
The moments that stay with Watkins are the ones where months of quiet, steady work suddenly become visible. He thinks of one student in particular, a third grader who struggled with expressing himself in a calm manner. He taught the student how to decompress when operating in a moment of stress or frustration.
A thread runs through everything Watkins does, it’s our Freedom Prep belief, and its name is Ubuntu. The Nguni Bantu philosophy, I am because you are, was something he first encountered at Freedom Prep. It took root immediately. “It resonates with me from a family standpoint, from a cultural standpoint, from just being in community as a professional. I don’t think I’m bigger than anyone.” He passes it to his students in language they can carry. He tells them that if they learn now how to control their thoughts and emotions, they will stand on his shoulders and go further than he has gone. “You will say, ‘Mr. Watkins taught me this without ever saying a word to me.'”
Watkins did leave Freedom Prep for a season, taking an opportunity to expand his experience across Memphis in recovery centers and senior leadership roles. He grew. And then, in 2024, he came back. “When I returned, the staff members I had known were still here. The culture, the love, it was exactly the same. Something about this place stays itself.” Mrs. Ingram once told him she admired his resiliency. He thinks about that often. “It’s only because we live vicariously through our students and their success. We build something real here, and it keeps you.”
When he looks ahead, Watkins thinks about families. He believes the next frontier is making sure the tools children learn inside these walls follow them home. “To finish the whole child, we have to do the work at home too. If we’re not moving those babies home, if we’re not moving the families forward, this is just a waste of time.” For anyone just joining the Freedom Prep family, he keeps his message simple. “It’s definitely a place you can grow. There’s a lot of vulnerability and transparency here. It’s a big family.” He smiles. “Freedom Prep gave me the landing pad. A lot of my growth from 25 to 30 happened right here.”
Every morning, he is back at the threshold. Good mornings. High fives. A child who might not know yet what it feels like to be seen, walking through the door. Brandon Watkins is there to make sure they do.
