We Are Who We're Waiting For: Transformative Change in Early Childhood Education

We Are Who We’re Waiting For is a revelation, inviting me to sit in my discomfort with its many provocative ideas and perspectives. It is a call to action, inviting me to confront my blind spots, biases, and white tendencies toward neutrality and complacency. It leaves me feeling hopeful—liberated. In an all-too-weary world like ours, Kisa’s unique brand of hope for the future is the elixir we all need. One thing I know for sure: with Kisa, the children are well. 

—Richard Cohen, associate professor of early childhood education and development, Connecticut State 

Kisa Marx’s We Are Who We’re Waiting For is a revolutionary text that defies easy categorization. Part memoir, part pedagogical manifesto, part unapologetic love letter to Black children, this work weaves together personal narrative, critical theory, and practical wisdom into what can only be described as an instrumental autobiographical text for educators. Marx has created something rare in educational literature: a book that not only espouses transformative practices but models them in its very structure and voice. 

—Gregory V. Larnell, PhD, University of Illinois Chicago, Department of Education

The book I’ve been waiting for. In graduate school, I was introduced to liberatory pedagogy and education as the practice of freedom, but those concepts were exclusively used to describe educating adolescents and adults. I’ve spent the past ten years searching for texts that discuss what liberatory education means for young children. And now, with this book, Kisa Marx has delivered an accessible guide for early childhood educators to embrace liberatory pedagogy in the early years. 

—Denisha Jones, PhD, JD, Executive Director, Defending the Early Years 

Kisa Marx is a child advocate and anti-oppression educator with over two decades in the field of early childhood development. In late 2023, she founded The Play Lab Foundation, her nonprofit organization committed to providing humanity-centered, self-affirming, high-quality care for every child. Kisa continues her advocacy with Rethinking Weapon Play: How to Encourage Imagination, Kindness, and Consent in Your Classroom, which she co-wrote with Samuel Broaden, and through information dissemination as an anti-bias curriculum developer, workshop facilitator, and national advisor for Defending the Early Years.