First Friday Art Walk: Ida Rose Florez

Date and Time

• Friday, Mar 6, 2026  5pm - 7pm

Location

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Details

Join us during First Friday Art Walk, Flagstaff’s monthly celebration of local art, culture, and community. As part of the evening, Bright Side Bookshop will host a local author book signing in-store.

Stop by to meet local writer, Ida Rose Florez, browse their work, and enjoy the downtown Art Walk atmosphere. To learn more about Art Walk and check out other happenings for the night, please visit https://downtownflagstaff.org/events/first-friday-art-walk

This event is free and open to the public. Come enjoy First Friday with us!

About The Book: It's time for a whole new way of doing school

People are born systems-thinkers. Education has the power to encourage our innate connection with the complex world, yet instead our schools focus on creating a workforce educated just enough to feed the capitalist pipeline. Reminiscent of and building further on John Taylor Gatto's education critiques, The End of Education as We Know It is for people who want to create schools that teach how to live in harmony with each other, with Earth, and with all the Earth holds.

Readers will understand when and how to engage in disruptive actions, manage system tensions, support child and adult learning, and use these skills to design whole new approaches to school- ing. Far more than a call to education-reform-as-usual, Ida Rose Florez's inspiring critique:

Provides tools to explore patterns in education, and influence new patterns that lead to change
Gives readers specific skills for working in complex systems, whether with a group of children, a contentious school board, or state or provincial governments
Helps readers reimagine schools as places where communities learn together in a whole new way.
This clarion call to action rings a bell for teachers, parents, grandparents, educators, and policy- makers to challenge the outdated paradigm of coercion and exploitation that shapes our current schools. It's time to build a new educational model based on a resilient and regenerative future.

Author Bio: Ida Rose Florez, Ph.D. is a learning scientist, systems-change expert, and educational psychologist who is passionate about revitalizing regenerative practices in schools. A sought-after thought leader, she helps educational decision-makers reimagine learning amid unpredictable complexity and engages audiences through workshops and keynote speeches across the US and internationally. Ida Rose served as vice president of the National Association for the Education of Young Children, principal investigator on a US National Science Foundation STEM ecosystem grant, and led statewide educational initiatives in California and Arizona. A published author, her work has appeared in a multitude of parenting and women's magazines, education trade magazines, and peer-reviewed academic journals. She is a Certified Warm Data Host through Nora Bateson and the Bateson Institute, a Certified Human Systems Dynamics Professional, a certified master gardener, and a permaculture designer. Ida Rose lives in Williams, AZ.