Cultivating Genius

What can we learn about literacy from our nation’s past?

Dr. Gholdy Muhammad, author of Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy, shares her findings from her dissertation work on black literary societies and their relevance for today’s educators.

In my conversation with Gholdy, we discussed:

* her professional learning journey researching this important topic,

* the four pursuits of this pedagogical framework teachers can follow, and

* how to be a culturally responsive teacher in these challenging times.

This is an episode you won’t want to miss!

Relevant Resources

* Buy Gholdy’s book

* Read our book club contributions around Cultivating Genius from this summer

* Learn more about Gholdy’s work on her website

* Follow Gholdy on Twitter (@GholdyM)

* Listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts (and give a rating!)

Full Transcript

Matt Renwick (00:07):

It's nice to meet you Gholdy. Dr. Gholdy Muhammad is the author of Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy through Scholastic. She has her PhD in Literacy, Language and Culture at the University of Illinois, Chicago where she's also an associate professor. I came across your book actually through Lois Bridges. She was your editor, I believe on your book.

Gholdy Muhammad (00:41):

Yes, she was my extraordinary editor. I really enjoyed working with Lois.

Matt Renwick (00:46):

And I worked with Lois on a project, Bring Me a Book. I said, I'm looking for some titles for the summer book club and I mentioned yours as one. And she's like, "Oh, it's phenomenal. It's transformational. You have to do that one." And that was it. If Lois says read it. I read it. But yeah, it's such a unique book. What drew you into that study?

Gholdy Muhammad (01:11):

Yeah, I was at the time I was in graduate school and studying for my PhD in Language, Literacy and Culture at UI-C. And, you know, like a lot of people I'm always searching for solutions, answers, better ways in education. And I was really interested in the collaborative literacy spaces that are created, like book clubs and writing groups. And that's what my research was on: these literacy collaboratives and a professor pointed me in the direction of this rich history of literary societies. And I came upon the work of Elizabeth McHenry who wrote the book Forgotten Readers, and she captures these literary societiies throughout this history of the 19th street. Dorothy Porter, who was a librarian for Howard University, was also one of the first people to write about these literary organizations. But when I was reading them, I was reading them like a K-12 teacher. Elizabeth McHenry, her scholarship has less of carry over into education and library studies and things like that.

Gholdy Muhammad (02:35):

And English studies and humanities and things. But I was reading it like a teacher and I would read and come upon artifacts after artifacts. I would read something, then it would direct me toward another archive and then another one and another one. And it was like this beautiful sort of scavenger hunt of knowledge and information. And as I was reading about our ancestors, it was helping me to become a better teacher, a better scholar, a better thinker. I'm a better doer of my research, you know, instead of just writing about it, helping to show action, right. To improve communities. And so that's kind of how it came about. When I started reading, I just couldn't stop. I couldn't stop reading about it, writing around it and studying these spaces.

Matt Renwick (03:27):

The framework that you create for this, around culturally and historically responsive literacy, it's a curriculum framework, right? How do you take some of these ideas and put them into action in the classroom?

Gholdy Muhammad (03:40):

Yeah, it's a pedagogical framework, and it's focused on creating curricular pursuits, teaching and learning pursuits. And I think even if we think about pedagogical and teaching and learning, it can be used across different grade levels in spaces, right? It depends on where one is teaching and where one is learning. So, you know, even though this is initially designed for K-12 education, I've seen it with three-year-olds and pre-K, I've seen it with higher education, adult education have adopted using it, companies using it to think about their internal work around diversity, equity and inclusion. So I also think it has some wider manifestations, in addition to how we use it as teachers and leaders in schools.

Matt Renwick (04:34):

I shared with you before: I saw that it's sold over a hundred thousand copies, which in the educational publishing world is huge. So you've definitely offered something that people are looking for, and just reading some of the examples too, it feels like it just couldn't have come at a better time. People are overwhelmed and stressed, as well as societal, civil unrest too. Just the, kind of the simplicity of it, it doesn't feel overwhelming when I read some of your examples. Some of the lessons and units you've designed, are you finding that when you work with teachers that they're finding this refreshing?

Gholdy Muhammad (05:16):

And leaders, because I want principals to write a sample read-aloud lesson plan or unit plan with the model and try it out too, because they are teacher leaders. And I feel like that's a big part of it. But what I find is, I think anytime we introduced a new model or a framework, as you know Matt, teachers may feel like, "Oh, wait, something else, how am I supposed to do something else in addition to everything else I'm doing?" And they're absolutely right. You know, we have introduced a lot of models, frameworks, strategies, theories to them. But a lot of these models have never sort of captured cognition with social cultural news, with critical theory, with equity, with justice. But also with reading skills and math skills and STEM and all of these things that my model does.

Gholdy Muhammad (06:17):

And so I think at first, it may feel overwhelming, but then when I'm with teachers and I have them practice with it, what they create is such genius because our teachers are geniuses too. And they create these learning experiences, not activities, but experiences with children that are so enriching and meaningful. I mean, things that I think children will remember for the rest of their lives. And they're like, "Oh yeah, this is doable." Like you were saying, I could do this. And in many ways I've been already doing this part of it. There are lots of teachers who have centered identity in the learning, but they have not gone as far as assess it oftentimes. So I think this has been elevating the pedagogical practices of teachers across the nation and in other parts of the world that I've been able to work with.

Matt Renwick (07:16):

So you're blending different philosophies of education that have come through historically and to allow teachers to be empowered, and our kids. There was one term in there that was pretty new to me. It was criticality. Can you describe that term? You do a nice job in the book, but I think so everyone's aware of the importance of criticality when you're creating curriculum and instruction.

Gholdy Muhammad (07:49):

Yeah, criticality...Like the root word critical. And I talk about critical, like as upper case C critical, not just deep and thoughtful, analytical thinking, but deep, thoughtful, analytical thinking as it relates to justice, equities, inequities, representations, conscious power. That's what criticality is; to have criticality means that you have an understanding of oppression, anti-oppression. Sometimes people send messages out and they said, "How can I be a disruptor of oppression? That's just horrible. And we're going to let everybody know." And I said, "Oh, oppression is hurt, pain and harm. If you're not a disruptor of oppression, what would you like me to be? You either want me to be silent on someone else's or my own hurt, or you want me to contribute to it." And so I talk about oppression in that way, because I think you can oppress or hurt the land and the air by polluting and littering.

Gholdy Muhammad (09:01):

I think we should be teaching students about that. I think you can oppress living organisms like animals and plants. I think we should be teaching students about that because if we don't teach them how to disrupt it, we may not have a planet for them to live on, right? I teach them about the hurt, pain, and harm, where we can often inflict to ourselves, like saying negative things to ourselves. Like "I'm not good enough. I'm not smart enough." And then I think people can hurt and harm other people like through racism, sexism, ableism, religious discrimination, classism, and things like that. So criticality the way that I use it and take it up in my work, it is the naming, the understanding, the questioning, the disruption of hurt and harm in the world and humanity to understand it and name it enough and disrupted enough that you're working everyday to make the world better, to make our lives better and the lives of others better. And that's what criticality is. It pushes for a better humanity for all, not just for black children or white children or brown children, but for all of us, because we have to be in this together in harmony. And so that is my short, maybe longer, but shorter description of criticality.

Matt Renwick (10:29):

That's perfect. It's broad enough that you can apply it to just about any unit of study, whether it's history or whether it's the current reality, like you said. So it seemed like an entry point I think that teachers are looking for. I want to talk about some of these issues, but I feel like I can't, because I'm going to get, you know, blasted by someone in the community or I'm even at risk of losing my job. And so they've been there, maybe they're feeling like they're stuck and they don't know where to start. I feel like, I feel like your work would allow them to do that.

Gholdy Muhammad (11:05):

And you know, sometimes I have to, we have to think about ourselves, but we should not have systems and structures that make teachers think about losing their jobs. If they are trying to teach in equitable ways that should make you keep your job. But our system has been a little bit reversed in that sense.

Matt Renwick (11:28):

And if in some ways it can avoid some issues where we end up being insensitive to a group or around a topic, because we're just not, maybe we're not versed in it or just don't feel confident in it. So it just feels like the framework really does help. Can you quickly walk through your four steps to develop the unit?

Gholdy Muhammad (11:53):

So I call these steps more so like pursuits, right, and criticality is one of them. So I like to start with an intellectual prism. What are students becoming smarter about, and pushing back against practices that have only taught skills in isolated ways? Like we teach children how to read that are devoid of texts, sometimes of texts connected to their lives, to the world. Sometimes we teach mathematics decontextualized to students' identities and to the world. So it's kind of pushing back on that notion where I think, what do I want my students to be smarter about? I'll give you an example. Maybe last week I wanted my students to learn about sugar and the history of sugar: where it's grown, the history of sugar and freedom. There's like a rich history in Louisiana of sugar, among communities in color.

Gholdy Muhammad (12:52):

And that was the starting point. And then I go to identity: what does sugar have to do with the identity of my students? Well, a lot of children consume sugar, but do they sort of monitor their conception and know what they're putting in their bodies? And so to me, I made a goal of that students will consider their daily and weekly intake of sugar and compare it to what doctors say are norms of what children that age need. And then I go to identity matters because we should for the reason of authentic purpose, children want to know what does this have to do with my life? And we should be creating spaces where students get to understand who they are and who they are destined to be. They might grow up and say, "You know what, I need to cut back on my sugar intake."

Gholdy Muhammad (13:47):

The third pursuit that our ancestors gave us are skills. So I went to the skills goal and I said, "Well, what does sugar have to do with skills?" So I used two different skills. One was a science skill of studying the molecule and being able to learn how to dissolve sugar through experimentation. That was the science goal. And then I'm at literacy. I mean, I'm always bringing more literacy in. So I also would want students to learn how to read and write a lab report that one would do as a scientific expert. The fourth pursuit, which we already mentioned, is criticality. And what does sugar have to do with harm and hurt? I won't say oppression, but sometimes I feel like sugar oppresses our body because it does: it can harm the body, certain sugars, right? So I would have students look at unhealthy forms of sugar.

Gholdy Muhammad (14:52):

Sometimes doctors call them bad sugars versus good sugars. Those that are, you know, in processed foods and things like that. And they will look at the harms of what it does to the body. You know, I'm thinking about, sometimes they show these images of pouring sugar in these containers and how much sugar is in this and this and this. I think it was like a Parks and Rec episode where they had this sugar, this fast food place. I was like, oh, there's sugar in it. But you know, we would think about the harms of the sugar, of the body, of certain sugars. And then for a joy, I added a fifth element to the model. I know it would be written about in my next book. It's joy: what's the beauty, the aesthetics and the topics we're teaching children need? Joy. Teachers need joy, parents need joy.

Gholdy Muhammad (15:47):

We all do. And so I would maybe then focus on the healthy sugars like fruits and vegetables. A lot of children don't know that there's sugar in certain vegetables. And so collectively, it just started with sugar, but we're able to teach intellectualism, skills, identity, criticality and joy. So now I'm teaching the whole child and I'm taking sugar. I could have easily just taught them, "Hey, this is sugar. We're going to dissolve it." But look, now I'm giving them a richness of history of sugar, where it comes from. I'm intellectualizing it because they are scholars, the children.

Matt Renwick (16:30):

It's a relevant topic. And it's like you said, it's so much more than "This is what sugar is. Don't eat too much." And of course they're going to go home and do it, a lot of kids do it, and I have myself. There are so many other...I'm just, as you were talking, I'm thinking other, so many other pathways you could take. You can look at the history of where sugar came from, is currently coming from. And as the kids get older, right, taking a critical look at the working conditions, of how it gets to your store. So yeah, just very interesting. It was great to hear that joy is an added piece to it. When is the book coming out?

Gholdy Muhammad (17:23):

I don't know. You know, I didn't know when Cultivating Genius was going to come out. You know, I have learned to move in the world to just feel like when it's time, it will happen. And that's what happened. You know, I've been training and doing work with cultivating genius for 12 years, even though the book is almost two years old. And so, you know, the way I write, the way my art is, when it comes, whatever my mind tells me, it's time to write, then it'll probably just pour out. But I'm hoping sometime next year, in 2022, that would be lovely, if not sometime after. But focus on unearthing genius, enjoy more connection on joy and how to take now the model that teachers are learning and go deeper into it, but also give leaders the tools to support teachers in doing this work as well.

Matt Renwick (18:28):

That's key. I know for me to know we're going in the right direction, because just like you said, there are so many initiatives that we have to be careful. Gholdy, where can they find more about your work and to learn more about you?

Gholdy Muhammad (18:47):

Social media is a good place like on Twitter and Instagram, it's @GHOLDYM. And like my sugar unit draft, I just posted teachers too. They're just doing amazing things with the model. So I like to share their lessons and units and ideas. I'm at the University of Illinois at Chicago and I'm always inviting people to come study with us, I have amazing colleagues doing such great work there, so they can also reach out to me that way.

Matt Renwick (19:28):

Awesome. Well, this was a treat for you to join me today and thank you for doing the work that you do.

Gholdy Muhammad (19:36):

No problem. Thank you for the invitation and thank you for your work. We need this kind of work to come together, to give our educators more tools and more understanding and do it in collaboration. And that's what I feel, when I see the work that's happening. So I just want to say, thank you.

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