Glassbrook Elementary School is a predominantly Latino School
WHY WOKE KINDERGARTEN?
“Take a look at some slides from our pitch deck to learn more.
Currently, we are the only abolitionist early childhood ecosystem of our kind.”
According to the Woke Kindergarten Website “LIBERATION is the goal. ABOLITION is the journey.” This is what the Hayward Unified School District has established for Kindergarten children 5 years old at Glassbrook Elementary School in Hayward
Welcome to Woke Kindergarten...
WOKE KINDERGARTEN IS…
WHO WE ARE.
We’re abolitionists building the liberatory future Black children deserve.
The Woke Kindergarten experience hit different.
This is what the ‘Woke Kindergarten Program is about according to their website “Akiea “Ki” Gross (they/them) is a Black, queer, nonbinary and trans abolitionist early
educator, coach, consultant and creative entrepreneur currently innovating ways to
unlearn, heal, liberate and create with their pedagogy, Woke Kindergarten. In the many
years they spent teaching in classrooms, their experiences spanned infancy to 6th
grade. Prior to leaving the school system, they served as a Kindergarten Teacher and
an Instructional Coach of Inquiry-Based Learning in Harlem. Recently, Ki was selected as one of Martha P. Johnson Institute’s 2021 Leaders of the New School and the
Early Childhood Education Assembly’s 2020 Social Justice Award Recipient. They have participated as a speaker, panelist, facilitator, consultant and moderator for many organizations including Harvard Graduate School of Education, Bank Street College, Georgetown Day School, San Diego Youth Services, SXSW EDU, Texas Association for the Gifted and Talented, Teachers for Social Justice, Montclair State, UMBC, NYPL,
Abolitionist Teaching Network, HUGE, Inc., Amplify Education, Wheelock College of Education, Camino Nuevo Charter School, NJPAC, Brooklyn Heights Montessori, The College of New Jersey, Bard College, AppleTree Institute for Education Innovation and more.
It was their experiences with the carceral state of schooling and the trauma enacted upon Black children in these systems, that galvanized them to create #BlackTeachersMatter, Black Teachers Mentor and Equitable Schools years ago. As their ideologies and experiences with abolition evolved, they dissolved Equitable Schools and created @WhyAbolition.”
“Their commitment to creating safe, inclusive and liberatory spaces for BIPOC queer & trans artists also led them to create Sisters Unsigned, an intimate concert series that amplifies the voices of independent queer, trans, gender and genre expansive BIPOC artists and creators.
Along with their partner Sonic and creative team, Womxyn Amplify, they’ve directed, curated and hosted many other creative pursuits including Sisters Unsigned presents: Women in Hip Hop, Archway Pride, and SEASONS: A Voyage Through Sound, their team’s 2020 artist residency at National Sawdust. They hold an M.A. in Developmental Psychology from Teachers College, an M.S. in Childhood Education/Special Education from the Progressive Education Institute/Touro College and two B.A.’s in Child Development and Family Studies and Psychology, respectively.”
“All workshops come with downloads of all Woke Word of the Day resources to distribute to staff and families. All entities we work with will all get a digital download copy of our zine when it is complete. For every institutional booking Woke Kindergarten receives, we organize a free community workshop for Black and brown families and educators. We also dedicate a
portion of our payments as mutual aid. All prices subject to change.”
WORKSHOP OFFERINGS:
Woke Kindergarten
20494 SummerSong Lane
Germantown, MD 20874
Tel 301.660.0337 www.wokekindergarten.org
Contact: wakeup@wokekindergarten.org | IG @WokeKindergarten | @BlackChildrenPlay
OVERVIEW
“Woke Kindergarten will partner with Glassbrook Elementary school to improve staff’s
capacity to implement healing-centered & liberatory learning practices made possible
by developing their understanding of teaching through an abolitionist lens. Glassbrook
ES requests a school-year long (8-10 month) partnership that incorporates a
combination of workshops, applicable practice, feedback and coaching.
Date: August 2021-May 2022 (December off)”
WHO WE ARE
“Woke Kindergarten is a global, abolitionist early learning community, creative
expanse and consultancy supporting children, families, educators and
organizations in their commitment to abolitionist early education and pro-Black,
queer and trans liberation.”
WHY US
“Glassbrook ES requires expert consulting services from an innovative, experienced and
trusted partner in early childhood & elementary education – capable of tackling
complex social challenges that disrupt white supremacy culture through an abolitionist
lens. We are a comprehensive entity, one that creates, curates and educates. The
resources that we facilitate with are our own, and we are able to provide them to our
clients as part of our consulting packages.”
OUR APPROACH
“Over the course of 8 months, Woke Kindergarten will facilitate 4 virtual workshops bi-monthly and host a total of 4 virtual coaching sessions with staff in off months. Each coaching session will last approximately 45 minutes to 1 hour, depending on the school’s capacity to meet. 2 coaching sessions will be to plan implementation and 2 coaching sessions will be feedback sessions. In workshop months, Ki will schedule 1 agreed upon day per month as a “drop-in” day for teachers to schedule a 20-minute, 1:1 coaching, feedback or Q/A session.
Expanded:
● 1 one-hour Introductory Community Meet & Greet
● 4 bi-monthly virtual 2-hour workshops + 30 mins of strategic next steps
○ Abolitionist Teaching in the Early Years”
■ Outcomes
● MAKING SENSE Framework completion→ understanding Woke
Kindergarten’s life affirming lenses within Glassbrook’s classroom
contexts
● Classroom Community Ecosystem Mapping
○ Using our remixed Social Change Ecosystem framework to
understand our students’ roles & shift the narrative.
○ Protecting Joy: The Art of Critical Conversations
■ Outcomes
● Critical conversation facilitation with students
○ It’s Lit: Early Literacy Through the Woke Kindergarten Lens (60 Sec
Texts)
■ Outcomes
● → Lesson Plan implementation
● → Kid-created 60 second texts
○ Woke Wonderings: Kids as Comrades in Building the Futures We
Deserve
■ Outcomes
● → Generate a wondering for implementation with students
● 4 virtual coaching sessions & 1 classroom observation per teaching team.
○ 2 planning
○ 2 feedback
○ 1 classroom observation per team
● 1 day per month for drop-in 1:1 coaching hours: with Ki & Ana respectively
● 4, bi-monthly, 1-hour creative sessions with staff to design resources for
implementation through Woke Kindergarten’s lens
OBJECTIVES
→ “To form an increased consciousness around abolition by understanding how the
prison industrial complex manifests in the early childhood & early elementary years.
→ To differentiate between anti-racism and abolition as it pertains to teaching and
learning practices.
→ To develop a plan of action for engaging in critical conversations with young
children, using Woke Kindergarten’s protecting joy frameworks.
→ To learn how to use Woke Kindergarten’s resources and pedagogical approaches in
practice as a way to disrupt whiteness, white dominant/settler colonial narratives and anti-Blackness in the Glassbrook community.
→ To develop Glassbrook’s own Woke Kindergarten resources, specific to their
community PROPOSED PERSONNEL…
This what another website said on Woke Kindergarten…
“A California school district paid a lofty price to further push critical race propaganda through a month-long educator training program.”
Hayward Unified School District located in the suburbs of San Francisco implemented “Woke Kindergarten,” an education consultancy organization emphasizing anti-racist and anti-bias curriculum.
Woke Kindergarten was created by Akiea “Ki” Gross, who identifies with the preferred pronouns of “they” and “them.” Ki considers herself an ”abolitionist early educator, cultural organizer and creator currently innovating ways to resist, heal, liberate and create.”
“The school district worked with Akiea Gross and the extremist curriculum last year.” The contract abstract for the previous workshops showed Gross was paid $50,000 to provide training in pedagogy and educational practices that would “disrupt whiteness” and “white dominant/settler colonial narratives” with an additional $7,000 to “implement learning practices thru an abolitionist lens”.
The district has predominantly minority and low-income students, most of whom are Hispanic/Latino. The students consistently score well below the state’s average on math and reading proficiency exams, and according to the U.S. News, the school has no full-time counselors on staff. In spite of these lapses, the district deemed it a priority to shell out $20,000 for Woke Kindergarten.
The parent activist group Parents Defending Education first discovered the contract. Erika Sanzi, the group’s director of outreach, called Woke Kindergarten “ideological indoctrination.”
She went on to say, “In a single month, 20,000 in public dollars are being spent on a consultant dedicated to abolitionist education that describes itself as pro-black and queer and trans liberation. The organization literally teaches 5-year-olds that they can identify as a boy or girl or neither or a tree.”
On the organization’s website, Gross lists some examples of “woke wonderings” the curriculum promotes, such as, “If we abolished the police, what else could we do to keep people safe,” and “If parents and caregivers didn’t have to work to survive, how might this impact the lives of their kids,” and “If schools were nonexistent, how might you learn?”
Societal peace-keeping organizations like the police and military are necessary in a fallen world because without them society would descend into chaos.
Her other questions, as with most critical race agendas, seek to remove responsibility from the individual by claiming historical oppression as the source for black and non-white individuals today struggling with fatherlessness, poverty, drug addiction, and so forth.
While it is important to question why bad things happen and how our country got to where it is today, it is interesting to note that the Woke Kindergarten curriculum does not seek to provide any concrete solutions, but rather just creates more chaos. (https://fism.tv/california-elementary-school-promotes-crt-with-woke-kindergarten/)