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.

Congress could create tens of thousands of new childcare programs by improving the bipartisan-supported Employer-Provided Child Care Credit (EPCCC).

Congress could create tens of thousands of new childcare programs by improving the bipartisan-supported Employer-Provided Child Care Credit (EPCCC).

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.