Patrick Leka
English & Student Services Teacher
Freire High
At five in the morning, before much of the city wakes and before his students shuffle into Freire High, Patrick Leka is already writing. A mug of coffee beside him, he builds worlds that contain crumbling dynasties and young protagonists who know, with unsettling certainty, that their days are numbered. Then, as the clock ticks toward six, he closes the laptop, shifts from novelist to teacher, and steps into another story: the real one, filled with teenagers chasing possibility and purpose.
Leka, an English teacher and Student Services Case Manager in his fourth year at Freire High, brings both depth and range to his work. And, he’s no stranger to being a student himself. He earned his bachelor’s in Anthropology from the University of Illinois at Chicago and later his Master of Arts in Education from the University of Phoenix before pursuing a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at Southern New Hampshire University. Leka is a lifelong learner at heart, noting “I would be a student for the rest of my life if I could.”
He started his career serving with City Year Los Angeles, a national AmeriCorps program focused on supporting students in urban schools, before transitioning into classroom teaching in San Diego. When he and his partner decided to move east to be closer to family, Leka began searching for a school that aligned with his values. That’s when he found Freire.
He applied online, interviewed over Zoom, and soon made his way cross-country. On July 4th, 2022, he arrived in Philadelphia. On July 5th, he was teaching summer school at Freire High. “Literally,” he laughs, “I got dropped off in the U-Haul at the front door.”
Leka speaks of Freire’s students with the kind of fondness that comes from proximity, not distance. “You always know how they’re feeling,” he says. “And I love that. There’s no guessing. They bring their whole selves.”
For Leka, that honesty is the core of good teaching. It’s also what he tries to nurture through creative writing. Long before Freire, long before his classroom, he entered his first-grade writing contest. “I remember every detail of the story I wrote,” he says. “That’s where it started.” The seed of authorship took root early, and never left.
That same curiosity drives his classroom. “There’s this quote that I love by David Hare: ‘The act of writing is the act of discovering what you believe.’ I think that’s so true. And even if your writing isn’t perfect, even if you don’t win the contest, the process of writing something new will teach you so much about yourself.”
It’s a philosophy that extends to his students, especially those who come to class saying, “I’m not a writer.”
“Confidence is the foundation of voice,” Leka says. “If they don’t feel good about what they write, they’ll never take risks. My job is to help them feel proud of what they’ve created. I try to make sure that every piece of feedback I give is really individualized and that I’m highlighting something that they did really well first before I give them anything to work on. I think one of the things that I’m best at as a teacher is helping students feel good about their writing, even if it’s not perfect.”
At Freire, those risks take the form of creative writing contests—network-wide opportunities for students to write freely, to imagine boldly, to say something that feels true. Freire’s fall writing contest, “Turning Leaves,” centered on change and transformation. “I love that theme because it can mean so many different things,” Leka reflected. “It could be literal, like the leaves changing, or it could be metaphorical, like changing as a person or letting go of something. And so I think having those kinds of opportunities where there’s no wrong answer really encourages students to take creative risks. And that’s really where true personal growth comes in.”
For Leka, the act of writing helps students make sense of the world. “It helps them process what they’re going through. And it also helps them imagine possibilities beyond their current reality. Writing is one of the few things that lets you explore your own thoughts and emotions in a really safe way. And I think that’s so important, especially for teenagers who are still figuring out who they are.”
He has seen it happen again and again. He recalled the story of a student he’s known since ninth grade, now a senior, who shared a personal piece on gender and identity that moved him to tears. “It was beautiful. It wasn’t something I could necessarily teach. But through writing, they were able to express something real.”
Leka’s work doesn’t end with writing and reading assignments. As a Student Services case manager, he also supports students with individualized needs, seeing firsthand the level of care underpinning every success story. “It’s been the most beautiful part of my career up to this point. It’s given me a whole new perspective on how much support our students receive behind the scenes. There’s so much that goes into making sure every student has what they need to succeed, and a lot of people don’t realize how many different people are involved in that process. It’s also helped me build stronger relationships with my students because I get to support them in a more individualized way.”
Outside the classroom, Leka is still chasing that early dream of authorship. His fiction, much like his teaching, is full of empathy, for the outcast, the dreamer, the kid who doesn’t quite fit. “I think about my students all the time when I write. Especially the ones who are kind of quirky or don’t always fit in. Because I see so much of myself in them. As a gay man, I didn’t grow up seeing myself represented in stories, and if I did, it was always a story about homophobia or trauma. So one of my goals as a writer is to create queer characters whose stories aren’t just about being queer. And I think that’s really powerful. And I think about my students a lot in that sense because I want them to see themselves represented in stories too.”
In Leka’s classroom, students are given the opportunity to bring their authentic selves to the table while grappling with real experiences, emotions, and ideas that shape who they are becoming. They also learn to exist more freely, in a place where imagination and identity coexist without apology. As for his hopes for when they leave, Leka says:
“I hope my students leave my class with a love of reading. Even if they don’t love every book we read, I want them to find at least one story that sticks with them, one story that they’ll remember years from now. And I also hope they leave feeling more confident as writers, feeling like they can express themselves clearly and that their voices matter.”