There are schools and then there is Sheenway School and Culture Center, which is dedicated to creating well-rounded students.
Dolores Sheen is the executive director of the Sheenway school here in South Los Angeles and founder of its sibling campus in Ghana, West Africa. Founded in 1971 by Sheen and her father, Herbert A. Sheen, the school was created as an answer to turbulent times.
“I was in pre-med but then, after the Watts Riots, my father tried to help the community by giving no-interest loans hoping that entrepreneurism would empower the community to take more command,” said Sheen.
“When he decided education was the answer, I decided to drop out of school and I took a Montessori course so, I could be an educator.”
Sheen was born in St. Louis, MO receiving her early childhood education in a country school in Tyler, TX, where her father was a doctor. They moved to Los Angeles in 1945, where she attended grammar school at St. Agnes, for eight years and then attended Bishop Conaty High for four years. Sheen went to community colleges before attending UCLA and getting her teaching credentials at the Montessori Institute of America.
The Sheenway school has been operating for 54 years and is a nonprofit, private school. She described Sheenway as “a positive alternative and a hand-up to students that are suffering from the inequities. We’re open to everybody.”
Students are immersed into real world experiences and project-based teaching and learning. Sheen shared how the school has grown over the years, but the mission statement remains unchanged.
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“We started with a preschool and kindergarten and every couple of years, because of demand, we kept increasing with the classes until we got to the 12th grade,” said Sheen. “We offer a culturally enriched program.”
She continued, “We were the first private school that wasn’t religious or anything like that. We required the uniform and all the other things that the private schools include, but we’re a school and culture center.
“We’ve always included performing arts and martial arts—all of the classics, Latin and offering different languages — we have animals.”
Sheen shared that they individualized education for teachers and students and their classes are never over 10 students. Sheenway students get homecooked meals, they learn how to cook—and they have their own business, their own bakery business.
“We even have a mobile classroom and a bakery truck,” said Sheen. “They learn entrepreneurism through that.
“We focus on sweet breads because a lot of people are culturally ignorant on what sweet breads and tea cakes and all that are. Right now, we just do like pop-ups because when COVID hit, we had to stop going around like we used to, but they still have the bakery, they still learn not just how to bake.
“The main reason is to learn financial literacy; to learn marketing, we have the legal trademark, they have a separate business registration and they joined with the students in Ghana with an import/export business.
“We’re all about hands-on, not just teaching subjects for learning and passing tests, but how to execute and how to be practical with the knowledge and that’s what I think sets us apart.”
So, how did Sheen come to find another Sheenway school in Ghana, West Africa you ask, well, she shared that story too.
“Zora Neale Hurston, that was my father’s first wife,” said Sheen. “On his death bed, I had this strange dream and for some reason, when I woke up, something said tell your father about this dream.
“At the time he hadn’t come home for his last days, he was still in the hospital and so I called the hospital.”
She shared her dream with her father to which he replied, “Don’t forget that dream because one day, you’re going to know what it means.”
After her father passed and in going through his belongings, she found letters from Hurston.
“I started reading them and the second letter, she’s telling him about a recurring dream that she’s been having for some time and that she wanted to share with him.
“I almost fainted, the hairs on my arms — it was the same dream I had.”
In the mid ‘90s, Sheen received the opportunity to start a school in Ghana, which is also where Sheen has traced her familial roots. It was during her travels through Ghana, particularly an area called “the bush,” which was similar to her dream she had years ago. Little did she know, all was about to be revealed.
“When I came to this clearing of this big, large tree, which was in my dream, this man walks out,” said Sheen.
“I found out that he was not the chief, he was like the spokesperson, like you never really talked to the chief, you talk to him and he tells the chief.
“I made an appointment to meet him the next day. He invited me to come back. Come to find out, he had the same dream I had.
“Now you don’t tell me, 20 some years apart, somebody in Ghana, can’t speak English, not even in the city, in the bush, is going to have the same dream that I had? When it got to that point, he said, ‘Welcome home daughter of Africa.’ He gave me 55 acres – 55 acres!
Located in the Volta Region in Ghana, the second school is also private and nonprofit. It was the first registered school in that area.
“We have almost 600 students, we have the first computer lab,” said Sheen. “Now we can have an international curriculum with the two schools because we can, you know, hook up.”
Recently the Volta Region of Ghana celebrated the Hogbestsotso Festival of Thanks, which saw the Sheenway delegation there honor their Headmaster Grant G. McRichard. Sheen visited the campus to behold the new SheenLINK edu-tech lab and received another surprise.
“The most impressive thing about that trip to me was when I went this time, the other queen mothers in other villages got together, it seems they are impressed with the fact that I’m a woman that I can do all that has happened with Sheenway,” said Sheen. “So, they want, it’s like feminism, they want to be empowered.”
Sheen wants the community to know that Sheenway is a different educational system where parents, students and teachers work together.
“I want them to be proud of the families and the children, who are really striving to become the leaders of tomorrow,” said Sheen.
“I want the community to know that at Sheenway, we have books, we’re not a victim of banning books and teaching the real McCoy whether it’s history, math, philosophy, language — our children are engaged, fully, until they leave.”
For more on Sheenway School and Culture Center, visit www.sheenwayschools.org.
