02/18/2026
Black History Month: Chicago Women Edition ❤️💚🖤
Today I present to you Marva Collins, an educator who started Westside Preparatory School at the top floor of her home. She was also inventor of the “Marva Collin’s Approach” for teaching, which was about the importance of critical thinking and raising questions to reach understanding rather than memorization or rote learning. According to Collins, Collins’s student body consisted of children labeled problem or learning disabled, but by the end of the first year every child had surpassed his or her expectations.
In 2004, she was awarded the National Humanity Medal by President George W. Bush. Her ways of teaching turned into a book and a movie, both titled “The Marva Collins Way” and she wrote a second book titled “Ordinary Children, Exceptional Teachers.” Collins also opened schools in Milwaukee which is still open today & Cincinnati which closed in 2008 with the Chicago location.
Info Taken From: Afriwarebooks.com, National Endowment for the Humanities
