Independence Charter School
Lilah Gosman is a mental health counselor currently specializing in the treatment of OCD and anxiety disorders at the Mindful Stress & Anxiety Management Center, a position held since May 2020. Additionally, Lilah serves as a learning specialist at Independence Charter School and has held the same title at Growing Up Green Charter School from August 2014 to December 2015. As president of Music For Montauk since September 2014, Lilah also contributes to the arts community. Previous experience includes working as a special education teacher at Parkside School and in artist development and marketing at Elan Artists. Lilah holds a Master's in Mental Health Counseling from the University of Pennsylvania, a Master of Science in Education from Bank Street College of Education, and two music degrees from The Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University and the Manhattan School of Music.
Independence Charter School
Independence Charter School (ICS) is a community-oriented public K-8 charter school located in Center City Philadelphia. At Independence Charter we provide our students with an intellectually stimulating and internationally focused curriculum emphasizing the arts, languages, and world cultures. Recognized nationally for our innovative global studies program, we are the only Philadelphia school to deliver an integrated curriculum that uses world cultures and second language acquisition to introduce and connect content disciplines. We strive to develop a bilingual, interculturally competent, high-achieving student body. All students at ICS study Spanish within two distinct programs: the Spanish Enhanced program, which includes 30-40 minutes of Spanish language instruction daily; or the Spanish Immersion program, in which students begin Kindergarten with 90% of their day taught in Spanish and 10% in English. By fifth grade that balance is 50/50. By the time they graduate, ICS students are bilingual and biliterate in Spanish. Independence Charter serves over 800 students from almost every zip code in Philadelphia. Students are randomly chosen through an annual blind lottery. Independence Charter was founded in 2001 by a group of parents and community members devoted to raising their families in Philadelphia. These founding members developed ICS’s mission and program, and many remain instrumental today as parents of current students and in founder seats on our Board of Trustees. Teachers ICS could not achieve its results without our energetic, talented, and caring teachers. They bring to life our approach to cross-thematic teaching and they embody our international focus. Our teachers come from Venezuela, Colombia, Spain, Ecuador, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Argentina, Guatemala, and the United States, to name just a few represented countries.