This week’s #fofcpod is a sweet blend of liberation-focused invitations and an insightful conversation with Amelia Allen Sherwood, a Black Montessori educator who currently serves as the Anti-bias and Anti-racism Director at Elm City Montessori School. Amelia joins us to talk about how the Montessori method has impacted and inspired her to dream and develop communal spaces like Sankofa Learning Center. Stay tuned ‘cause Amelia will be also joining us in a couple of weeks on a Feel Trip episode. Make sure you don’t miss any of our Feel Trip invitations by joining our podcast village.
What brings Amelia joy:
- Being outside and biking with her kids
- Watching Carmeon Hamilton win Design Stars and following more Black interior designers on the gram
- Spending time with her partner and finding moments to love each other
- Visioning out Sankofa Learning Center with her incredible Advisory Collective
What has been growing Amelia:
- Learning from people she loves and that continue to challenge her and hold her accountable
- Reading anything by Alexis Pauline Gumbs (right now she is reading Dub and just finished M Archived)
- Meet the Mother: Amelia Allen Sherwood
- The Embracing Equity Leadership Cohort
- Anything that Joy tells her to do, she listens!
- And of course catching up with the episodes of Fare of the Free Child!
Amelia’ recommendations of dope Black Montessori folks to follow on Instagram:
- Afrocentric Montessori
- Montessori Madre
- Jenile Brooks
- Jamila Mapp
- Lyric
- Nicole, M.Ed
- Ahoefa| Montessori inspired
- School at Home and Beyond™️
- Mothering and Montessori
- What Dad Did
LIBERATION WALK
- Follow Sankofa Learning Center on Instagram and turn on your notifications from May 4-5 to learn about the Great Give, where Amelia will be asking for support from the community to help seed the vision of an African-Centered Montessori program in New Haven, Connecticut
- Shout out to Ashley Causey-Golden an early childhood educator and disruptor who has been in educational spaces for 10 years. She recently co-created along with fellow educator Shelby Stone-Steel Gather: A Learning Community for Families, a Montessori program for young people
- Press that “Leave a Voice Message” button on the right side of the site and speak up!
- Subscribe to Akilah’s Youtube Channel!
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Awww, loving song and singing from Mother and child, beautiful voices!!
This is so amazing, heaven sent, I swear the stars have just perfectly aligned some things for me right now!!! Great shout out to Amelia, your awareness, your cosmic vision and the birthing of this vision, I’m over here, wayyy up North Canada cheering you on in every way!! And of course thank you Akilah for connecting with geniuses like yourself and stay dropping gems for the community. This is so very interesting to me and I’m in a state of “I WANT TO KNOW MORE, I WANT MORE, GIVE ME MORE”…I came across Montessori online, through Facebook groups ran by yte folks, that didn’t sit well with me but I realized it reinforced most of the concepts and practices my newborn and I were already cultivating. I watched from a distance, the cost associated with it was a MAJOR deterent because I struggled financially. Intrinsically, I knew there was more to this fucking idea that linked right back to my people, it was ours, another thing that yte folks have taken and is now capitalizing from that I cannot afford, and that angered me. I eventually paid less and less attention to it because I was just not okay with these yte ppl informing when I knew intuitively this belong to my ancestors. Besides, I am very spontaneous, nomadic, wild, less rigid (which I’m now seeing it’s unschooly, at the time I didn’t know this), so I couldn’t keep up with all the pressure to structure. Thank you folks for bringing this confirmation to me, I have taken notes of the names in history that you have shared and will be doing more reading on, I WILL be sliding into your DM, as I am in the process of starting my dayhome solely for black children.
For Akilah, earlier in the chat, you mentioned that you didn’t see Montessori as a form of self-directed learning, I would love for you to elaborate a bit more on that.
For Amelia, I too noticed from the groups that these yte folks didn’t seem to have a structure/plan for Montessori beyond age 6 and I did questioned, so what after that? Have you come across a model (or probably designing your own) beyond age 6? Talk to me a bit more about what that would look like.
Also, I should say that I did enroll my 2 year old briefly in a Montessori school when we lived in Jamaica…my child fucked with their flow and medz because she very seldom took talk from anyone and did what SHE wanted to do lol…she was not sitting on chairs around dem desk when she was told to at all lol, play was her life (still is).
Anyhow, I look forward to the reasoning.
Give thanks,