2019 AYA’s Community Building Love Awardee (Back Story Below)
It gives us so much pleasure to lift our Community Building Love Award to Queen Taese. She’s the epitome of loving our people by how she builds people, relationships, and institutions. Please let her know how much you appreciate her building-love. Comment below, share and join us tonight - Saturday, Feb. 9th, 2019
She is known in the Atlanta area and nationally for more than a few such as Roots to Fruits Homeschool & Cultural Collective, The Children's Afrikan Ball, The Children of The Sun Fun Fest, The Watoto Kwanzaa Jamboree, and her signature gathering, The Liberated Minds Black Homeschool and Education Expo.
When asked about her vision for children and parents:
“I want to see our children thrive. I want them to know who they are; to know their divine purpose and mission within their culture. I want parents and educators to have a safe place and process to heal and transform from past wounds and them not knowing our way - the Afrikan way.”
The Back Story:
As much as we love her in the ATL, and benefit from her building, it didn’t start here. Her love for our people, her educating our people, and her building for our people began a long time ago in a place far away-- Springfield MA.
Let’s go back there.
“Stand there, no - over a little bit.” “Now you - stand over here, no here.” While she was the little-est thing out there, she was telling everybody what to do. Young Taese's mother, Margaret, was concerned. “Walter, she is so bossy!” Walter, her husband, disagreed. “No, Margaret, she’s a leader." Queen Taese remembers, “My dad has always supported me; he is a visionary and always thought out of the box and taught me that there are many different ways to do anything. Walter punctuated his comments to Margaret by adding: “ Just leave her alone.”
But Margaret didn’t leave her alone - not by a long shot.
“I was always interested in education and children, says Taese. When I was 12 years old, somehow I found out about a 4-H babysitting certification course - out in the “burbs.” I didn’t want to be an ordinary babysitter - plopping the children down in front of the television. I wanted to be the best.”
She asked her mother if she could take the course? It was also a question of “Will you take me.” They lived in Springfield, and this was way out. Mom said, “It’s so dark and dangerous.” This journey would have to occur once a week for six weeks. When they got to the first class Taese noticed that all the others seeking certification were older - fifteen to seventeen and everybody was white. Over the bumpy dark and curving roads, and without fail, her mother drove her to class and waited until the 3-hour class ended.
“Mom would sit on the edges of the classes and listen. On the way home, we would talk. It was such an intimate setting, and we had so much to talk about. When I look back on it, I see how much of a sacrifice and blessing it was. She was venturing beyond her comfort zone to support my twelve-year-old vision and my desire to be the best.”
It wouldn’t be the last time.
Of course, this determined pre-teen did earn her 4-H certification and started a babysitting service. Her quest continued when the family moved to the Bronx. 1996, babysitting would give way to her first real business - Black Butterfly.
She said, “It was pro-Black on the journey to becoming an African-centered preschool. I had started studying with Queen Afua, visiting the Asur-Aset Temple, listening to Dr. Ben at the African cultural center and was reading voraciously.”
Taese poured all of that into her next educational program - Earth Roots. “It was a full-time cultural arts program where we did arts, poetry, and theatre,” she said.
This wasn’t an easy journey. “I remember standing in my living room pregnant with Tayvon and also wanting to birth a community cultural center. I wanted to serve other children, but I was determined not to neglect my own in the process. I’d seen it happen too many times. There, standing in that room, I had the desire, the vision, the caution, but I realized that I had no idea how or where to start.”
“My mother heard me ‘cause I was speaking out loud.
Start from where you are,” she said.
Must have looked like I didn’t understand, so my mother repeated it.
“Just start from where you are.”
“From where I am?”
“Yes, where are you?”
“Mom, I’m just sitting in the chair.”
“Then start from there!”
Start from where you are,” she said.
Must have looked like I didn’t understand, so my mother repeated it.
“Just start from where you are.”
“From where I am?”
“Yes, where are you?”
“Mom, I’m just sitting in the chair.”
“Then start from there!”
And that’s where I started - from that chair. It was so in line with her way. If she hadn’t said that to me at that time, I just don’t know. It gave me permission and confidence, so I began Black Butterfly from there.
“I’m a ‘passionpreneur,’ and when I encourage parents who want to educate their children for the first time or encourage others to live their passion, I see myself in that living room when I hear them say, “but Queen Taese, I don’t even know where to start.” My mother comes through me when I say to them - “Just start from where you are.”
After Earth Roots was up and running, Taese was attracted to another learning opportunity. She found it in the South Bronx. “I was still running Earth Roots full time when I met someone who ran that school and they had funding for an afterschool program. They asked me to work with the older - most challenging class. With a smile, I agreed but was terrified of working with 8th and 9th graders in the South Bronx.”
Never to disappoint; the students were challenging. She remembers an early one: “Why you wear that head wrap?” By the 2nd week, her fears had dissipated, and she had bonded with the children. It turns out the administration was more of a challenge than the children. “They wrote me up every week because I wasn’t following the curriculum to the letter and they were afraid of losing funding. I was following the children. They were supposed to be the worst class, and they were doing so well! At the ending program when they spit the words of Malcolm X over the latest hip-hop track, the crowd went wild!”
Taese had conquered another fear, brought out the divine genius in more of our youth, and learned some of the perils of aliens controlling our curriculum and education process. It may have been some of her Dad coming through. While he supervised many with advanced academic degrees, he was a mostly self-educated quality control engineer. He had studied on his own and took qualifying exams, then started his private consulting company. Taese remembers how one company was forced to dump millions of dollars of product because her father found one spec of dust!
Is it any wonder that today Queen Taese teaches that “Obstacles are Obsolete, that they are not boulders, but opportunities to grow and create new ways and to open new doors.”
It’s it any wonder why she councils parents that their low expectations for their children become ceilings limiting their children’s potential.
Though she was always supportive, she’s only now fully appreciating his systems approach. “It’s been a challenge finding the system and order to match the magnitude of my vision. That I’m looking for one is huge. That’s all my Dad, and growing up, I couldn’t understand his insistence on systems and order. Whatever went wrong - even if I were just burnt out, he would suggest a system. I’m an Aries, and my visions are rarely grounded. Now, that I’m living more of my vision and divine purpose, I see the need to have systems that support me attaining and maintaining it.
And attaining it, she is.
As an educator for over 20 years, she has taught and learned from thousands of children, as well as designed Afrikan-centered curriculums, critical educational tools, resources, children's events, and conferences globally. Also, Queen Taese is the editor and a writer for the best-selling Liberated Minds Black Homeschool & Education Magazine, which is the first of it's kind.
The Liberated Minds Black Homeschool & Education Institute serves as a pillar that provides culturally relevant resources, training, and vast options of everyday support for those who have taken on the enormous responsibility of "Educating Our Own.
It gives us great pleasure to award her with AYA Educational Institute’s 2019 Community - Builder-Love award.
Please let her know how much you appreciate her building-love and join us tonight - Saturday, Feb. 9th, 2019 www.blacklovedinner.com
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