Ka-Lo Academy is named for Kató Lomb, an audodidact who taught herself 17 languages. Like Lomb, we believe that we learn what we care about and what we dedicate ourselves to knowing or mastering.
Our name also echoes that of another beloved audodidact, Frida Kahlo, the extraordinary self-taught artist.
Our Team
Ka-Lo is led by a multi-racial team of women who are passionate about supporting youth and families. We bring warmth, patience, and inventiveness to every step of this journey. We are equity-focused, race-conscious, and we share leadership between ourselves and the youth and families we serve. We! Anti-racism is a fundamental part of our work at Ka-Lo Academy We are very influenced by and indebted to the work of Black Freedom Schools and their direct influence on modern homeschooling and alternative education. Our work continues the legacy of education as a path to personal liberation, to meaningful, rooted, lifelong learning, and to self-determination for families and communities.
Alanya Snyder (she/her) is a credentialed teacher, trained mediator, community activist, and homeschooling mother. She has taught in public and independent study programs for over 25 years and has been active in the community-based self-directed education movement as an organizer and a homeschooling parent since 2009. She specializes in supporting youth to build meaningful, personalized educations, as well as in using the opportunity of self-directed education to improve the health of entire family systems. Alanya is a member of the Oakland group Neighbors for Racial Justice and brings her learnings from there to inform her anti-racism work at Ka-Lo.
Michlene Cotter (she/her) is a grassroots educator who combines out-of-the-box thinking with extensive research in educational paradigms. She has a passion for seeing youth transform their inner and outer worlds through mindful self-discovery. Michlene has been a self-directed learning/homeschool parent/facilitator for over 17 years, teaching numerous community-based classes and mentoring families. She has also served as an AERO (Alternative Education Resource Organization) Representative.She has also been a childbirth doula and educator since 2000. She has a BA in Social Science from New School University, NYC. In addition to practicing mindfulness and meditation, Michlene also enjoys reading and nurturing her various creative projects.
Lori Fernando (she/her) is a corporate professional turned educational consultant and coach. She is proud to work with Ka-Lo, delivering innovation and self-directed learning solutions to families in the Bay Area and beyond. She is a certified coach and provides deschooling support for to parents transitioning from traditional school to homeschool or alternative education. Lori received a bachelors degree from UC Berkeley. Before that, she only attended full time traditional school for a year and a half. Otherwise, she was unschooled or used a hybrid of school and an independent study program.
Our Roots
Our work at Ka-Lo is grounded in a long history of community-based, mentor-supported, self-directed education.
Until the 19th Century it was common for children throughout the world to learn within their families or communities. They typically worked alone or in small multi-age groups with chosen mentors, apprentice supervisors, or other teachers.
The revival of community-based education was led by Black activists with the creation of the Civil Rights Movement Freedom Schools. These temporary schools created spaces to not only teach African-American heritage and citizenship rights, but also to encourage critical thinking and activism. Much of the creative and progressive educational trends that have surfaced since the 1960s owe a debt to the Black Liberation Movement, under the leadership of Septima Clark, Charles Cobb, and Staughton Lynd, among many others.
Important writers who furthered the discussion of the type of educations that feel meaningful and useful to learners include Ivan Illich, Paul Goodman, and John Holt, and later, Grace Llewellyn, who wrote extensively and persuasively about the ability of children and families to create their own educations.
Based on the resurfacing of homeschooling in the 1980s, there is now a large body of data supporting the success of self-directed learning. Our experience at Ka-Lo is based on the founders’ combined 30 years of experience with personalized education, as well as their deep and vigorous study of thousands of other independent youth who find joy and meaning through the empowering process of directing their own learning.
Our Values
Contact Us for more information.