“as a parent, I walked the grounds of both colonizer and colonized, using the ways colonization had affected the adults who raised me to now attempt to raise my children. . .This is when I began to realize that, as unschoolers, my children’s resistance is often my roadmap, not only to parenting but also to my own decolonization efforts, my own liberation work.”
Akilah S. Richards. Raising Free People: Unschooling as Liberation and Healing Work
There are many BIPOC unschooling and disability writers, speakers, and communities to help support you on your journey.
On facebook we have an Unschooling Every Family subgroup for BIPOC families to find each other, get support, and talk to other folks who understand the intersections of race, culture, and disability.
Below is a list of BIPOC unschooling thinkers that might be useful in your own family’s deschooling and unschooling process.
Tiffany Hammond at Fidgets and Fries
“Sharing stories to challenge the perception of disability as a lifelong burden, cultivating a community that explores Intersectionality, and inspiring thought leadership through storytelling, education, and critical discourse.”
“Dr. Bayo Akomolafe considers his most sacred work to be learning how to be with his daughter and son, Alethea Aanya and Kyah Jayden – and their mother, his wife and “life-nectar”, Ijeoma. “To learn the importance of insignificance” is the way he frames a desire to reacquaint himself with a world that is irretrievably entangled, preposterously alive and completely partial.”
Crystal Byrd Farmer at Gastonia Freedom School
“Gastonia Freedom School offers real-life education in an environment that encourages creativity and independence. Our center serves homeschool students with autism, ADHD, and intellectual disabilities. We use self-directed learning to empower children to learn academics and life skills at their own pace.”
Iris Chen at Untigering
“I am a deconstructing tiger mother who is trying to become a gentle parent.”
Jules Edwards at Autistic, Typing
“Jules Edwards is an Anishinaabe writer, gardener, accountant, and disability justice advocate. She is a neurodivergent parent of neurodivergent children. Experiencing disability through multiple lenses has helped her to help others. She writes as “Autistic, Typing” on her website and social media. Her first book, I Will Die On This Hill: Autistic Adults, Autism Parents, and the Children Who Deserve a Better World, was co-written with Meghan Ashburn.”
Akilah S. Richards at Raising Free People Network
“This work examines the ways that we have accepted coercive, emotionally and physically damaging habits as a normal part of adult-child relationships. We focus on self-inquiry, deschooling, and most importantly, decolonization. Our intention is to expose the world to people who, like us, are working to migrate from the coercion and fear shrapnel of colonization. Akilah is called to be among the many who contribute to the collective walk toward ways of living with children that center community, address civil rights issues, and believe in trusting and respecting children.”
Noleca Radway at Raising Rebels
“Raising Rebels is a parenting podcast featuring courageous conversations with real parents. Parenting can be so lonely. Our work is to encourage children to be fully themselves in a society that doesn’t always celebrate them. This season, we tackle everything from sexuality and race, to co-parenting and money, all with the goal of liberating our children.”
Maleka Diggs at Ecclectic Learning Network
“Maleka Diggs, “Disruptor of Monoliths” and owner of Eclectic Learning Network is an unschooling advocate and equity-centered organizational strategist. With a focus on serving BIPOC communities, Maleka provides consultancy, coaching, and advisory services for families, self-directed learning spaces, schools (public and private), and other organizations rooted in belonging, culture, trust, and identity. She is also co-founder of the Philly Children’s Movement, a “multi-racial and multi-generational collective of families talking, playing, and raising up for racial justice!””
“I tweet for the Black married moms who homeschool. We outchea. Unschooler. Gentle parenting.”
“Working in a classroom with small children changed my mind about schooling.”
“Zakiyya Ismail is an advocate for freedom in education. Her three children have always been unschooling. She has been supporting and has been consistently sharing her reflections on the intersections of unschooling with decolonisation, social change and unschooling’s foundational role in social justice.”
Andrea Landry at Indigenous Motherhood
“Andrea Landry believes that the route to healing from colonialism comes from the heart work that most people avoid in our communities and through how one chooses to raise their children. Through forgiveness, overcoming colonial systems being seen as a means for solutions, and prioritizing indigenous ways of being over colonial ways of being, Andrea believes our communities can become as healthy as they were prior to colonization. For our nations to thrive, we must thrive as parents, families, and communities.”
Tony Kryptonian/Anthony Galloway
“One day I thought to myself, I could not have been the first African American who entered the field with a desire to revolutionize schools and save the youth. After some independent reading and research about the history of the American education system backed up with some knowledge of psychology, it dawned on me that the system wasn’t broken, that it was working as intended. I quickly decided that school psychology was not the avenue for me. What I wanted to do, as it related to children and education, was opposite of the very premise of the traditional model.”
Chemay Morales, My Reflection Matters Village
“Chemay is a Social Liberation Coach and Parent Organizer with over 17 years of experience working as a social justice educator. After teaching in public schools, her work took a turn when she served nearly a decade as an equity coach for NYU’s Metro Center on Research for Equity and the Transformation of Schools. While inspired by the culturally responsive curriculum work she led and developed at NYU, she was frustrated with the lack of culturally relevant educational tools, and left in 2016 to build My Reflection Matters, LLC (MRM). MRM is an online space where parents and educators can easily find resources, services and trainings that center the lived experiences of children of color.. .Chemay provides support for non-profits, educational institutions, family and youth service providers, and un/homeschoolers of color. In the winter of 2018, she started CT’s first self-directed un/homeschooling co-op in Waterbury for families raising liberated Black and Brown and/or socially conscious kids. Chemay unschools her two boys, five and seven.”
“So here I am, blogging about my Chicanx family’s quest, to reclaim the power and tradition of our ancestral self directed education. I’m a self directed life long learner by necessity, travel writer by passion and activist by conviction and need. We are learning to run our family life from the intersection of reclamation of ancestral traditions, practices and values, while prioritizing the achievement of social justice for our family and those around us.”
“The Fund practices redistributive justice and mutual aid by returning and sharing money directly to and with autistic people of color. We provide microgrants to Black, Brown, Native, Asian, and mixed-race people in the autistic community for survival, organizing, leisure, and pleasure.”
Unschooling Every Family 