Black children are BLACK GOLD. Black children are the future of Black liberation. This workshop urges us to understand, and embrace the revolutionary potential of Black children. It urges us to see the education of our children as sacred and to insist on self-determining the course of education for our children. As Malcom X said: “Only a fool would let his enemy teach his children!” Participants will look back at the history of transformative/revolutionary, self-determined education, including: hidey schools during the trans-Atlantic slave trade, Liberation Schools as part of the Black Liberation Movement, radical Black home-schooling and, Afro/Africentric Schools. This workshop will examine the creation of BLM schools as a necessary component of the BlackLivesMatter/modern Black Liberation Movement. We will discuss: how can we create BLM schools in our living rooms, our buildings, our community centers, our classrooms, and children’s hearts? How can we fill our children’s backpacks with tools for rebellion and revolution? Participants will look at some examples of revolutionary educational tasks that Grade 1 students at Toronto’s Africentric Alternative School engaged in in the 2015/2016 school year, such as: writing letters to political prisoners, exploring greenhouses at the Black Farmer’s Network Plot, creating ancestor masks of Aiyanna Jones and Tamar Rice, recording a music video for Esperenza Spalding’s “Black Gold”, writing mothers’ day cards to Renata Hill, and designing an “All Black Lives Matter” disabilities justice playground. Adults and children will engage in hands on learning tasks such as: reading transformative justice short stories written by and for children, and writing each other BLM love letters. **Hands on tasks will be scaffolded to be accessible to participants of all ages. Participants take away collectively brainstormed ideas/building blocks of a mini-curriculum for BLM focused education.
