Wildflower Schools

How do we bring Montessori’s holistic, child-centered approach to the communities that need it most in Puerto Rico? How do we provide students who have experienced significant trauma a nurturing, safe educational environment where they can blossom and transform? These are the questions that catalyzed Mariposa Montessori. This innovative Montessori microschool operates in partnership with a shelter and care center for women and children who have survived domestic violence.

Wildflower was recently selected as a quarterfinalist for the Yass Prize, a $1 million award given each year to a promising educational innovation. The quarterfinalist selection comes with a $100,000 grant.

Winners are chosen based on alignment with four criteria: Transformational, Outstanding, Permissionless, and Sustainable.

While Montessori education is highly valued and sought after in Puerto Rico, residents have experienced significant disparities in access: Wealthier families historically have been able to choose and afford a high-quality Montessori education for their children, while families who earn lower and middle incomes have not.

Over the past eight years, a group of Puerto Rican Montessori educators, parents and community leaders have led a grassroots campaign to repair this inequity – growing what is now Wildflower’s second largest region of open schools.

Wildflower is proud to introduce Black Wildflowers Fund, a sister organization of Wildflower committed to combating systemic racism in education. Founded by Co-CEOs Maia Blankenship and Dr. Erika McDowell, Black Wildflowers Fund has launched a groundbreaking $10 million initiative to invest in Black educators across the country and help close the leadership gap.

Every year, a new group of Wildflower schools peeks through the soil for the first time. Each new school is the culmination of a lifetime of learning and dreaming for its founders; collectively, they are a remarkable and diverse group of educators with visions for a more beautiful world. In the following pages, you will read the stories of 16 Teacher Leaders whose skills, passions, and life experiences sparked the creation of beautiful, community-embedded Wildflower schools.

Wildflower Schools – Minnesota hosted a virtual town hall with a panel of Black and Indigenous education leaders and institution-builders from around the United States. The panelists shared the life experiences, spiritual preparation, and practical skills they build upon to use Montessori education as a tool for racial justice and liberation.

We hold the Uvalde community in our hearts as we mourn the devastating loss of 19 children and 2 teachers – so soon after 10 people in Buffalo were viciously gunned down in an act of racial terror, another person was killed in a house of worship, and after so many others have died due to gun violence.

How do you bring an affordable Montessori education to communities that historically haven’t had access to it? 

It’s a question at the heart of Wildflower, and one that innovative Teacher Leaders grapple with regularly. Through the years, Wildflower schools have addressed the tension by embracing strategies such as city and state-subsidized tuition vouchers, creating tuition-free public charter schools, and pursuing school district partnerships. But recently, various teachers across the network have unlocked a piece of the puzzle that they hope will pave the way for an even greater number of students to access a Wildflower education. They are co-locating their schools in the epicenters of the communities that need them most: affordable housing complexes, shelters for women and children, and transitional housing. 

Every year, a new group of Wildflower schools peeks through the soil for the first time. But what a year this has been. In the best of times, the challenges, uncertainty, and personal growth of designing and launching a new school are immensely demanding. Yet Wildflower Teacher Leaders rose to meet the storm of challenges this year with resiliency, grounded in purpose, experience, and love for the families they serve.