Delilah ~ Delilah is a 15 year old who has been unschooling since she was in kindergarten. Her interests lie in math, psychology, art and music. She is a current student at PLC and is hoping to get a degree in engineering from a four year college.

Gabbie ~ Gabbie is a 15 year old who has many interests, including art, music, history, psychology.

She is interested in veterinary medicine as a future career path. She is a current student at Princeton Learning Cooperative and has been unschooling since she was little.

Dr. Consuela Ward ~ Dr. Consuela Ward 'Iya Olorunferanmi Onifade' is an author, speaker, and educator. She holds an earned Doctorate in Education and is an initiated Ifa priestess in the Yoruba traditional system in Southwestern, Nigeria.

She has over 20 years of experience as a speaker, facilitator, consultant, and coach on diversity & inclusion topics and has served Colleges and Universities, School Systems, Human Resources, Professional Conferences, Youth Groups, and Community Groups. She has spent the last few years traveling the country with her book, adapted from her, dissertation entitled, On Healing Black Girl Pain, while speaking on the intersections of race, class, and gender. Over time, her diversity talks shifted, encompassing more breadth with her increased knowledge and practice of Ifa and the study of other African traditions as they brought a missing vantage point in the role of healing intergenerational trauma among Black people across the diaspora. This is also evident in her newest book (in progress), Biojela’s Return to Peace: A Journey with the Ancestors.

She is a visionary and an activist for healing from issues related to systemic discrimination and marginalization and has the ability to educate, empower, and excite audiences. Today, Dr. Consuela Ward ‘Iya Olorunferanmi Onidfade’ is committed to changing the world, one conversation at a time!

Blake Boles ~ Blake Boles is the founder and director of Unschool Adventures and the author of The Art of Self-Directed Learning, Better Than College, and College Without High School. He hosts the Off-Trail Learning podcast, speaks for alternative schools, writes for The Alliance for Self-Directed Education, and has keynoted multiple homeschooling conferences.

Blake lives without a permanent home base. He enjoys working from coffee shops in foreign lands, following summers in the southern hemisphere, and going on long adventures in the mountains.

He and his work have appeared on The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, BBC Travel, Psychology Today, Fox Business, TEDx, The Huffington Post, USA Today, NPR affiliate radio, and the blogs of Wired and The Wall Street Journal.

In 2003 Blake was studying astrophysics at UC Berkeley when he stumbled upon the works of John Taylor Gatto, Grace Llewellyn, and other alternative education pioneers. Deeply inspired by the philosophy of unschooling, Blake custom-designed his final two years of college to study education full-time. After graduating he joined the Not Back to School Camp community and began writing and speaking widely on the subject of self-directed learning.

In his previous lives, Blake worked as a high-volume cook, delivery truck driver, summer camp director, Aurora Borealis research assistant, math tutor, outdoor science teacher, camp medic, ski resort market researcher, web designer, and windsurfing and tree climbing instructor. His biggest passion is sharing his enthusiasm and experience with young adults who are blazing their own trails through life. He was born in 1982.

You can read more about him here .

Molly ~ Molly is a 13-year-old unschooler from Cambridge, Massachusetts. She has many interests but her top passions include baking, crafting, acting, reading fantasy books, writing fan fiction, and doing math. She is also more than halfway on her path to a first-degree black belt in martial arts, in which she takes classes three times a week. Molly’s interest in martial arts led to a curiosity about Korean language and culture, and she learns with a native Korean language tutor several times a week. She also attends a self-directed learning center for unschoolers twice a week where she does computer programming, drawing, theatre, and hangs out with friends. Follow her on Instagram @mollys_makery.

Dr. Sundiata Soon-Jahta ~ Dr. Sundiata Soon-Jahta is an Independent Educator/Anti-Oppression & Social Sustainability Facilitator. Sundiata is the co-creator of GROW, a network of people and initiatives designed to promote and create social, economic, and political systems centered on Liberation, Sustainability, and Unconditional Love. You can also listen to his podcast Theory of Indivisibility

Scott Stubbe and Ndindi Kitonga, PhD ~ Scott Stubbe and Ndindi Kitonga, PhD are the husband-and-wife founders of Angeles Workshop School, a revolutionary independent school in West Los Angeles that incorporates role-playing games and social justice into a democratic learning model, providing a truly authentic education for inquisitive teens. Both Scott and Ndindi are award-winning educators with decades of experience, as well as artists and activists.

Scott, a Los Angeles native, is also a filmmaker and designer of over a dozen educational RPGs. He has led his students to six California Student Media Fest wins, and two Supporting Emotional Needs of the Gifted film awards. Scott has spoken on RPG-based socio-emotional learning for students on the spectrum at San Diego Comic Con and Wonder Con.

Ndindi is a Kenyan-American revolutionary educator. She is an organizer and activist with the International Marxist Humanist Organization and the Association of Raza Educators. Ndindi is also a published scholar in the areas of critical pedagogy, and democratic education.

Dr. Anika T. Prather ~ Dr. Anika T. Prather earned her B.A. from Howard University in elementary education. She also has earned several graduate degrees in education from New York University and Howard University. She has a Masters in liberal arts from St. John’s College (Annapolis) and a PhD in English, Theatre and Literacy Education from the University of Maryland (College Park).

Her research focus is on building literacy with African American students through engagement in the books of the Canon. She has served as a teacher, supervisor for student teachers (University of MD), director of education and Head of School. Currently she is the founder of The Living Water School, located in Southern Maryland. The Living Water School is a unique faith-based school for independent learners, inspired by the Sudbury Model.

She is married to Damon M. Prather who is a chemical engineer and they have three young children. One unique thing about Anika and her family is that they also have an urban farm where they raise angora rabbits to use for spinning wool to make yarn and for selling to other fiber artists. They reside in the DC metropolitan area.

Peter Gray ~ Peter Gray is a Research Professor of Psychology at Boston College. He has conducted and published research in neuroendocrinology, developmental psychology, anthropology, and education. He is author of an internationally acclaimed introductory psychology textbook (now in its 8^th edition), which views all of psychology from an evolutionary perspective. His current research focuses on the role of play in human evolution and how children educate themselves, through play and exploration, when they are free to do so. He has expanded on these ideas in his book, Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life as well as in academic articles. He also authors a regular blog called Freedom to Learn, for Psychology Today magazine.

Erika Strauss Chavarria ~ Erika Strauss Chavarria teaches high school Spanish in Howard County, Maryland. An advocate for racial and social justice, she became a practitioner and trainer of Restorative Justice in an effort to end the School- to-Prison Pipeline. She is currently keeps a restorative classroom. Additionally, she served on the NEA Task Force on the School-to-Prison Pipeline and School Discipline and is now a National Education Association Director representing Maryland, a Director for the Maryland State Education Association, and a Board Member of the organization Racial Justice NOW!.

Cassidy Younghans ~ Cassidy Younghans taught 7th grade English in a public school for 5 years before shifting her path towards Self-Directed Education. She spent the 2018-2019 year interning at multiple alternative educational spaces, including North Star (with 23 years of history) and Houston Sudbury School, as well as visiting many others. She also spent 3 months working at Makarios Community School and Inspired Learning Academy. This September, along with 3 partners, Cassidy is opening EPIC Life Learning Community in the Dallas area. EPIC will be incorporating aspects of many strong Self-Directed Education models, including use of Agile Tools and Liberated Learners practices.

Find more about EPIC at epiclifelearningcommunity.com

Read articles by Cassidy at cassidyyounghans.com

Ken Danford ~ Kenneth Danford is the Co-Founder and Executive of North Star: Self-Directed Learning for Teens. His new book Learning is Natural, School is Optional: The North Star approach to offering teens a head start on life shares his journey from being a public school loyalist and reformer to building a program that supports young people to opt out of school to pursue self-directed learning.

Since 1996, Kenneth has coached more than 800 teens and their families to explore living and learning without school. Kenneth’s vision and commitment include welcoming all interested teens to North Star, making the approach accessible for every family in his community. He has been attending and presenting at AERO conferences since 2007.

Crystal Byrd Farmer ~ Crystal Byrd Farmer is an engineer turned educator in North Carolina. She opened Gastonia Freedom School in 2018 based on her experience of being both a parent and a facilitator in the Agile Learning Network. Gastonia Freedom School is an ALC whose mission is to empower marginalized children in embracing their passions and flip the script on their expected life stories.

Her autistic seven year old daughter attends the school. Crystal is passionate about encouraging people to change their perspectives on diversity, relationships, and the world through her speaking and writing. www.bigsisterteams.com

Tracy Hanson ~ Tracy Hanson is the founder and CEO of Next Generation Global Education. Over her 38 years in education, she has worked in both the private and public sector as a teacher, director, consultant, and administrator. She has worked with elementary students, medically fragile multi-handicapped children, gifted learners, adults recovering from a break-down, birth to 3 year olds just to name a few.

One of the greatest ironies of her life was that she ended up in the field of education, given her own struggles through a system that she was unable to fit into as a learner.

Throughout her educational career, her goal was to insure all her learners were successful. Unfortunately there were and still are, too many obstacles (such as bureaucratic control and perpetual testing of arbitrary standards) and not enough support to accomplish those goals.

Tracy then had the opportunity to develop a middle school curriculum for a special middle school. Open Educational Resources (OER) were just becoming recognized and I used them to develop and monitor an individualized program for each of the learners. The success of this approach was astonishing. Behavior problems melted away, students became motivated and excited about their learning which lead to being successful, something none of them had experienced in their previous school years.

Tracy replicated this program into a K-8 private school called “Mistacres”. Her students attended virtually including a group of 15 from Nairobi, Kenya. She realized we could develop this concept further and use it to build a global learning environment where learners from around the world would have the opportunity to learn with and from each other.

Thus, Next Generation Global Education (NGGE) was born. At its foundation is a new model for education called “The Matrix of a Learner” which puts each of us in charge of our learning with the support and coaching of mentors; parents, peers, teachers, community and global members. Together we are creating a global educational environment where learners can learn with and from each other.

Tracy says ~ "I feel so lucky to have this opportunity to travel to NGGE members in other countries so together we can create positive change in education. Education is the gateway to creating a better understanding of each other, more responsible and collaborative society opening the doors for a more peaceful world."

Jerry Mintz ~ Jerry Mintz has been a leading voice in the alternative school movement for over 30 years. In addition to his seventeen years as a public and independent alternative school principal and teacher, he has also helped found more than fifty public and private alternative schools and organizations. He has lectured and consulted in more than twenty-five countries around the world.

In 1989, he founded the Alternative Education Resource Organization and since then has served as it’s Director. Jerry was the first executive director of the National Coalition of Alternative Community Schools (NCACS), and was a founding member of the International Democratic Education Conference (IDEC).

In addition to several appearances on national radio and TV shows, Jerry’s essays, commentaries, and reviews have appeared in numerous newspapers, journals, and magazines including The New York Times, Newsday, Paths of Learning, Green Money Journal, Communities, Saturday Review, Holistic Education Review as well as the anthology Creating Learning Communities (Foundation for Educational Renewal, 2000).

Jerry was Editor-in-Chief for the Handbook of Alternative Education (Macmillan, 1994), and the Almanac of Education Choices (Macmillan/Simon & Schuster, 1995). He is the author of No Homework and Recess All Day: How to Have Freedom and Democracy in Education (AERO, 2003) and is editor of Turning Points: 35 Visionaries in Education Tell Their Own Story (AERO, 2010).