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The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, one of The New York Public Library's renowned research libraries, is a world-leading cultural institution devoted to the research, preservation, and exhibition of materials focused on African American, African Diaspora, and African experiences.
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Though there are no guided tours at this time, we are working diligently to restore this key service to visitors in spring 2024. Please continue to check this page and the Schomburg Tours page for updates and more information.

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Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

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The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem is one of the world's leading cultural institutions devoted to the research, preservation, and exhibition of materials focused on African American, African Diaspora, and African experiences.

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Culturally Relevant Pedagogy: Asking a Different Question (Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies Series)

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Buy Culturally Relevant Pedagogy: Asking a Different Question (Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies Series): Read Kindle Store Reviews - Amazon.com

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Hammond distinguishes the differences between culturally responsive education, multicultural education and social justice education. Each is important, but without a focus on building students' brain power, they will experience learning loss.

When it comes to distance learning, applying culturally responsive teaching requires "remixing" education by borrowing from the best practices in how kids learn (Montessori, project-based learning, etc.) in a way that repositions the student as the leader of his own learning. By giving students more agency, the idea is to disrupt old routines around teaching and learning that make the student dependent on the teacher for receiving knowledge.

"It's going to stretch us a little out of our own comfort zones, but it's worth it in the long run if we can get students to continue to do that thinking," said Hammond.

She advises three strategies to help students gain that independence:

1. Deepen background knowledge

Many educators are understandably wondering whether they should teach new content or review familiar material. Hammond encourages educators to do the latter because cognitively dependent learners often have gaps in their background knowledge . "A lot of our students are compliant learners," she said. "They're having a hard time shifting right now [because] they're used to the worksheet, but that doesn't mean they're always processing information."

She advises teachers to help students connect new things they're learning to their brain's existing schema - also known as background knowledge - that comes from home, their community, their interests. Teachers can then give them authentic tasks that help them make meaning and connections. This helps turn new inert information into usable knowledge. "You cannot give another person background knowledge," she explained. "They have to acquire it, but as teachers we can help guide the process." This can be done by building upon student interest.

"Survey your students if you don't know what they like," said Hammond. Ask them what books they enjoy reading or what topics get them super excited. She said It doesn't matter if their interests are broad or narrow; it's important to learn what interests them so that you can use that information to:

Assign non-fiction books that build on student interests.

Create a "Netflix" playlist of documentaries, nature shows, historical events, etc.

Encourage kids and parents to do a walk-about, if that's possible in their community, following social distancing guidelines. Encourage parents and students to seek out community curiosities (landmarks or interesting sights) relevant to students' interest.

With each of these activities, it's important to give the students direction so they know what to look out for. "You have to tell the brain what to pay attention to," Hammond explains. She suggested questions like, "What was your biggest surprise from this book/show?" or thinking routine sentences like "I Used to Think ___. But, now I think ____."

She said to always make sure that students do something with the knowledge as well. She suggested having them share interesting facts they learned either during video conferences or via an audio/video clip. For those students with limited internet access, encourage them to share what they learned with their parents.

2. Cultivate cognitive routines

Growing students' brain power during distance learning starts with building cognitive routines. These routines are essential to processing and hardwiring information in the brain.

"Be the personal trainer of their cognitive development," Hammond said. To do this, she suggested having a routine set of prompts in each packet that become a regular part of the way students think. That way, students begin to think that way even when you're not in the classroom to reinforce that way of thinking.

One example is to ask students to connect the "unknown to the known" or across concepts by asking questions like, " What's the relationship or connection between these things?" or "How does this part fit into the whole? What are the parts of this whole?" These may seem simple, but these questions are critical when it comes to processing information so that students internalize these prompts until they become almost instinctual.

She said students should also be encouraged to sketchnote or doodle to actively process what they're learning as an alternative to note-taking. Sketchnoting can encourage people to make deeper connections to what they're hearing.

3. Build word wealth

Building a student's vocabulary is a key tool in equity strategies for schools. "Kids have different interests in words so find out where their energy is. You can have a differentiated assignment around word collecting, but the idea is to get them actively involved in word consciousness," said Hammond. She said there are many small but high-leverage ways to do this, such as introducing robust word study. A teacher can help students engage in wordplay, word consciousness and word knowledge. This should not happen through a worksheet assignment, but rather begin with building word consciousness of words in their community, home and home language.

Word games like Scrabble, Heads Up, Taboo or even word searches are small familiar but high-leverage activities because they're fun but also require a high cognitive load. You can create your own versions of these games and have students do this in any language. Students can also do word collecting activities like scavenger hunts, or make poetry using magnetic poetry. Students can also do a contrastive analysis, by comparing words they might find in Urban Dictionary to those they might find in a standard dictionary.

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How to Develop Culturally Responsive Teaching for Distance Learning | KQED

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Culturally responsive teaching is a powerful way to help students become independent learners, and it can be especially valuable during distance learning.

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Sponsored by Pear Deck and ISTE U

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For years teachers have been looking for ways to improve the academic performance of all students, especially students of color and those from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. While some of these efforts have been successful, many more have had lackluster results.

In the past, we've explored different approaches teachers can take to do a better job of reaching all students: interviews with Dena Simmons, Zaretta Hammond, Pedro Noguera, and Hedreich Nichols, to name a few. In these conversations, we looked at more effective ways of relating to students, strategies for working toward equity outside the classroom, and instructional methods that are more culturally responsive.

This post continues that work with a fresh response to the question of how to better serve diverse students. It's a framework that deals directly with the curriculum side of things, the standards, the actual content we teach in our classrooms. The framework is called Historically Responsive Literacy, and it was developed by Dr. Gholdy Muhammad, a professor, a former middle school educator, and the author of the book Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy, where she makes the case for this framework.

In short, Muhammad believes we're not reaching many of our students, especially Black students, because our curricula and standards are lacking. The emphasis in our current standards is mainly on skills-skills that can be measured easily on standardized tests-and not a whole lot else. Some teachers go beyond the tested material, pushing students to think critically, exploring social emotional competencies, and designing opportunities for inquiry-based learning; unfortunately, the standards themselves don't require those things.

But there was a time in history when a more complete, more human form of "curriculum" did exist, and it energized and inspired its students-all of them Black men and women-to read, write, speak, and publish with the kind of passion and dedication we would want all of our students to have about learning. This curriculum evolved within the Black literary societies of the 19th century. These groups met regularly to read, write about, and discuss a wide range of texts and ideas. Their goals were far loftier than basic skill development or scores on a test, and engagement-to borrow a term we use in modern education-was at an all-time high.

These societies were the inspiration for Muhammad's Historically Responsive Literacy framework, a four-layered pedagogical model that places skills on an equal plane with three other learning pursuits: identity, intellect, and criticality.

The framework was designed with Black students in mind, but it will benefit all students. Muhammad explains it this way: "If we start with Blackness (which we have not traditionally done in schooling) or the group of people who have uniquely survived the harshest oppressions in this country, then we begin to understand ways to get literacy education right for all" (p. 22).

In our interview, she unpacks all four layers of her framework and helps us understand what it looks like to implement them in the classroom. What follows is a summary of our conversation.

First, Two Clarifications

Is Historically Responsive Literacy Just for "Literacy" Teachers?

No. In the book, Muhammad explains that in the past, "literacy was synonymous with education, so although I name 'literacy,' these four pursuits can be used and layered with math, science, ELA, social studies, or physical education/health" (p. 57).

In other words, this is not just a framework for ELA teachers, and in the book, Muhammad explores how to implement HRL in many different subject areas.

Is HRL different from Culturally Responsive Teaching?

Think of HRL as living under the broader umbrella of Culturally Responsive Teaching, which includes relationship-building, instructional strategies, and curriculum. "My work is taking a more historic look back and putting a practical model to the theory," Muhammad says.

The Four Layers of Historically Responsive Literacy

Historically Responsive Literacy is built on four layers, four "learning pursuits" that Muhammad believes should receive equal priority

1. Identity

For students to be fully engaged in school they must first find it relevant, and that starts with identity.

"Identity is who you say you are, who others say you are... (and) who you desire to be," Muhammad says. "I feel like children are trying to make sense of all three areas, and the curriculum and the pedagogy should be an opportunity for students to know themselves."

Muhammad believes this is especially important for children of color because "when we look at representation in children's literature, in society oftentimes, and historically, they are invisible or represented in negative ways. So the classroom needs to be a space for students to affirm and celebrate and validate who they are, so that they know they are enough, so they know they are brilliant and excellent and beautiful. Because society doesn't tell us that all the time."

Along with self-knowledge, the learning pursuit of identity should also include knowledge of others who are different from ourselves. "When students learn about the lives of other people," Muhammad says, "they are less prone to hate, to treat them in harmful or hurtful ways."

What it looks like in the classroom: Start by asking yourself, "How does my teaching and learning help students to learn about themselves and about others?"

From there, plan instruction and write learning goals to satisfy that question. Muhammad gives an example from science. "Some teachers have written it (in language like) Students will understand their environmental identity and their roles and responsibilities regarding the planet. Then in the lesson or unit there are opportunities for students to deeply reflect about how they recycle or (whether) they take care of the earth and the planet and the environment."

Finally, be sure to assess for it. "Kids know that if my teacher values it that she or he or they are going to test it," Muhammad says. "You can assess it in discussion, in a quiz, or a summative kind of test at the end: What are five things you can do to take care of the planet? Or Name five roles that humans play on climate change. So it could be a qualitative or a quantitative assessment, but if you value it enough, you can assess it."

2. Skills

So much of our current curricula and standards already focus on skills, so this part of the framework is nothing new; what's important is to not throw it out when the other three layers are added.

Muhammad explains that this abandonment of skills is a common problem when new approaches to schooling are introduced. "That's a way of thinking that we have to dismantle," she says. "Sometimes we think that when we add identity or when we add voice and freedom of expression, that somehow we don't focus on skills at all. But that's just simply not true. You can have it all. You can have voice and fun and engagement and skills."

What it looks like in the classroom: Teaching skills is more or less what you'd expect typical school content to be, what our current standards are already prescribing. "In math it can be learning equations. In ELA it can be citing textual evidence. In social studies, it can be questioning the source. In physical education it can be learning to play basketball."

So the skills themselves may be taught in whatever way works best for your students. The difference now is that in terms of class time and assessment, their weight will be equal to that of the other three layers.

3. Intellect

Along with identifying the skills students need to acquire, Muhammad urges us to ask What do we want our students to become smarter about?

Because our recent standards have been so skills-driven, knowledge has fallen by the wayside in a lot of schools, and that can strip away the joy that comes from simply learning new things about the world. But the Black Literary Societies of the 19th century valued knowledge as a vital part of a person's development. "So I'm pushing this idea of intellectualism," Muhammad says, "of treating young people as if they are scholars and intellectuals and thinkers."

She sees the loss of intellectualism even in how we prepare and treat teachers. "It's like we're sucking the power out of them by telling them to read a script in a curriculum. We need to go back to teacher as intellectual, teacher as scholar, reserving the field for the brightest among us who are knowledge-seekers."

And Muhammad's definition of intellectualism goes beyond simply gathering facts. "Intellectualism is when you do something with that knowledge, where you apply it somehow, in your discussion, in your activism, in your actions."

What it looks like in the classroom: When developing lessons and units, ask yourself, "How does my teaching and learning help to teach students new knowledge and concepts? New histories, new people, places, and things?"

Muhammad cautions teachers not to confuse skills for knowledge. "You shouldn't say they became smarter about equations or citing textual evidence," she says. "That's not intellect. Those are skills."

4. Criticality

"Criticality is helping students to read, write and think in active ways," Muhammad explains, "as opposed to passive-when you ask a question and there's one correct answer, and you just take it in. We don't want them to be passive consumers of knowledge. We want them to question what they hear on the news."

"We see the word critical and sometimes our minds can go to critical thinking," she continues. "But it's more than just deep and analytical thinking. Criticality is deep and analytical thinking to understand power, equity, anti-racism and other anti-oppressions. This is where we help students to be woke."

This fourth layer is essential "because oppression exists in the world. Period. We want students to leave our schools not contributing to more oppression or wrongdoing and hurt in their relationships and with strangers. We also don't want them to be silent. If they see oppression, we want them to actively respond to it."

What it looks like in the classroom: "With criticality," Muhammad says, "the teacher is asking, How does my teaching and learning help students to understand power, equity, anti-racism and anti-oppression? So (students are) reading, writing, thinking in active ways to understand power, inequality, equity, oppression. They're investigating different standpoints, especially the marginalized point of view, and reading between the lines. In other words, reading for what's not being said and for what's not there.

The brilliance of the framework is revealed when Muhammad explains that the four layers are not separate, but progressive, each one building on the layers that came before it, starting with identity: "They see themselves, they validate themselves, they're learning about other people, which creates a safe space to learn the skills. If you learn the skills, you can learn the intellect. You cannot learn the intellectualism without first having those skills to do so. If you have the intellectualism and that knowledge, you can critique the knowledge. Because of all the layers that came before it, you now have the capacity to disrupt and to dismantle. If you're just woke without the identity and the skills and the intellect, you're not going to be able to make change in ways that you could with those things."

Tough, but Possible

Making this kind of shift-especially if our standards still don't reflect these four layers-will not be an easy task to take on. This concern has been expressed when Muhammad presents her framework to teachers. But despite its challenges, she feels this type of curriculum is exactly what any parent would want for their child.

"It's not a matter or a question of if it's tough," she says. "The question is, is it possible? Everything is tough. And if you had your own child, if you're a parent, parents are going to equally value the beautiful ways that their child loves themselves: identity, the skills they have, the intellect they have, and the social consciousness they have. I don't see parents saying No, let's just talk about my child's reading skills. They talk about their emotional intelligence, they talk about the whole child."

"And that's what we're trying to get to," she says. "This is humanizing work."

Come back for more.
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Historically Responsive Literacy: A More Complete Education for All Students

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Based on the work of 19th century Black literary societies, this fresh approach to curriculum focuses on identity, skills, intellect, and criticality.

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Our goal for the Dare to Lead #daringclassrooms hub is, first and foremost, to provide educators with free courage-building resources to help them develop their own skills, and to deepen connection and trust with their teams.

Our secondary goal emerged from requests from teachers: How can I bring more of these learnings into the classroom? When we first launched, we offered a set of integration plans for some of the main concepts that were divided by primary and secondary education. It wasn't a curriculum, but rather a loose set of lesson plans based on specific topics.

We received immediate feedback that the integration plans were missing the context and container building that are foundational in our other training and certification programs. We were grateful for that feedback - we live by the belief that getting it right is so much more important than being right. Through several rumbles we realized that, when we decided to give these resources away for free rather than create another training and certification program, we didn't think through how to maintain the foundation piece outside of a controlled program. As you'll see on the updated site, we've integrated our approach to creating safe and brave spaces into our new Integration Ideas.

Additionally, we believe that teachers know their students and what is developmentally appropriate and relevant better than we do, so rather than giving you new lesson plans, we're going to share our list of integration ideas - specific concepts and tools that are being used in schools and have the potential to create braver, safer classrooms and build courage skills. We are also providing free assets that support the integration ideas available to all educators.

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Our goal for the Dare to Lead #daringclassrooms hub is, first and foremost, to provide educators with free courage-building resources to help them develop their own skills, and to deepen connection and trust with their teams. Our secondary goal emerged from requests from teachers: How can I bring more of these learnings into the classroom?

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"I believe in the power of Facing History."

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"I went to a Facing History workshop and it opened my eyes."

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Facing History & Ourselves
uses lessons of history
to challenge teachers
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to stand up to bigotry and hate.

Facing History & Ourselves is more than our name. It is an active and continuous process that calls on each of us to connect the choices of the past to those we face today. To build a more just and equitable future, we must face our history in all its complexity, Are you ready to face history with us?

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Facing History & Ourselves uses lessons of history to challenge teachers and their students to stand up to bigotry and hate.

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Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies raises fundamental questions about the purpose of schooling in changing societies. Bringing together an intergenerational group of prominent educators and researchers, this volume engages and extends the concept of culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP)-teaching that perpetuates and fosters linguistic, literate, and cultural pluralism as part of schooling for positive social transformation. The authors propose that schooling should be a site for sustaining the cultural practices of communities of color, rather than eradicating them. Chapters present theoretically grounded examples of how educators and scholars can support Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian/Pacific Islander, South African, and immigrant students as part of a collective movement towards educational justice in a changing world.

Book Features:

A definitive resource on culturally sustaining pedagogies, including what they look like in the classroom and how they differ from deficit-model approaches.Examples of teaching that sustain the languages, literacies, and cultural practices of students and communities of color.Contributions from the founders of such lasting educational frameworks as culturally relevant pedagogy, funds of knowledge, cultural modeling, and third space.

Contributors: H. Samy Alim, Mary Bucholtz, Dolores Inés Casillas, Michael Domínguez, Nelson Flores, Norma Gonzalez, Kris D. Gutiérrez, Adam Haupt, Amanda Holmes, Jason G. Irizarry, Patrick Johnson, Valerie Kinloch, Gloria Ladson-Billings, Carol D. Lee, Stacey J. Lee, Tiffany S. Lee, Jin Sook Lee, Teresa L. McCarty, Django Paris, Courtney Peña, Jonathan Rosa, Timothy J. San Pedro, Daniel Walsh, Casey Wong

"All teachers committed to justice and equity in our schools and society will cherish this book."
-Sonia Nieto, professor emerita, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

"This book is for educators who are unafraid of using education to make a difference in the lives of the most vulnerable."
-Pedro Noguera, University of California, Los Angeles

"This book calls for deep, effective practices and understanding that centers on our youths' assets."
-Prudence L. Carter, dean, Graduate School of Education, UC Berkeley

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Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies raises fundamental questions about the purpose of schooling in changing societies. Bringing together an intergenerational group of prominent educators and researchers, this volume engages and extends the concept of culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP)-teaching that perpetuates and fosters linguistic, literate, and cultural pluralism as part of schooling for positive social transformation.

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Zaretta Hammond is a former classroom English teacher who has been doing instructional design, school coaching, and professional development around the issues of equity, literacy, and culturally responsive teaching for the past 18 years. She teaches as a lecturer at St. Mary's College's Kalmanovitz School of in Moraga, California.

In addition to consulting and professional development, she has been on staff at national education reform organizations, including the National Equity Project and the former Bay Area School Reform Collaborative (BASRC). She has trained instructional coaches in reading development, especially targeted at students of color and English learners. She has also designed national seminars such as the three-day Teaching with A Cultural Eye series for teachers and school leaders. She is regularly invited to present at regional and national conferences. She has authored articles that have appeared in publications such as Phi Delta Kappan.

Along with a focus on culturally responsive teaching, Ms. Hammond has a strong research agenda around literacy, vocabulary development, and equity. She has designed culturally responsive tutor training programs aimed at volunteer reading tutors for a variety of non-profit organizations. She currently designing a literacy program to accelerate low reading skills among high school students. She holds a Masters in Secondary English Education.

She also writes the popular ready4rigor.com blog. Zaretta is the proud parent of two young adult children, both of whom she taught to read before they went to school. She resides in Berkeley, CA with her husband and family.

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Culturally Responsive Teaching and The Brain

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A bold, brain-based teaching approach to culturally responsive instruction To close the achievement gap, diverse classrooms need a proven framework for optimizing student engagement. Culturally responsive instruction has shown promise, but many teachers have struggled with its implementation-until now.

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The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education

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A new study by Ranita Ray, an associate professor of sociology, and Maxine Baca-Zinn, an endowed professor at the University of New Mexico, finds that Black and immigrant girls of color often face indifference and even cruelty in the classroom.

The authors studied one middle and one elementary school in a large metropolitan school district, following a cohort of 80 students from fourth through sixth grade inside classrooms, school corridors, and playgrounds. The majority of the faculty at these schools were White.

In the elementary and middle schools studied, Black and immigrant girls of color experienced gendered racial harassment, erasure of intellect, and estrangement within their communities. The authors conceptualized gendered racial harassment as bullying ̶ defined as repeated emotional or physical violence contextualized by a power imbalance ̶ of gender and racially oppressed people. This included the verbal abuse of Black and immigrant girls of color by teachers.

The erasure of intellect was defined as the overlooking of intellectual contributions made by girls of color, inside the classroom, because of their gender and race. Estrangement within their communities refers to how cleavages and divisions were created among girls of color through school practices such as academic tracking.

Dr. Ray stated that "for Black and recent immigrant girls of color the classroom is a psychologically traumatizing, alienating, and emotionally violent place where they face gendered-racial harassment from teachers, their intellectual contributions are erased, and they become estranged from their communities inside schools. Further, I found that immigrant girls are denigrated and simultaneously used to perpetuate harm on Black girls. Most importantly, the gains of some racially marginalized girls in school are used to justify hostility against all of them."

"My position as a South Asian immigrant woman had implications for data collection and analyses," Dr. Ray added. "Given that teachers were aware of my position as a brown immigrant, their remarks were likely tempered rather than exaggerated in my presence. As such, my findings are likely an attenuated version, and the classroom was perhaps a more hostile space for Black and recent immigrant girls of color in my absence."

Dr. Ray joined the faculty at the University of New Mexico this year after teaching at the University of Nevada Las Vegas since 2013. She holds bachelor's and master's degrees from Presidency College in India. She earned a Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Connecticut.

Related: University of New Mexico

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Study Finds Black Girls Are Treated With Indifference and Cruelty in Urban Classrooms

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A new study by Ranita Ray, an associate professor of sociology, and Maxine Baca-Zinn, an endowed professor at the University of New Mexico, finds that Black and immigrant girls of color often face indifference and even cruelty in the classroom.

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A Look at Implicit Bias and Microaggressions

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A primer on the impact of implicit biases in schools and how they can be expressed by students and faculty.

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Over the past few decades, students, their experiences, upbringings, and backgrounds have changed. Classrooms now reflect families of varying races, cultures, and socioeconomic statuses. As a result, the way teachers educate these students must change, too, says Cherese Childers-McKee, assistant teaching professor in Northeastern University's College of Professional Studies. One of these shifting approaches to education is known as culturally responsive teaching.

Below, we explore the concept of culturally responsive teaching, compare it against traditional teaching models, and offer a number of strategies that you can use to incorporate the approach into your own methods.

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What is culturally responsive teaching?

Culturally responsive teaching, also called culturally relevant teaching, is a pedagogy that recognizes the importance of including students' cultural references in all aspects of learning. Traditional teaching strategies emphasize the teacher-student dynamic: The teacher is the expert and adheres strictly to the curriculum that supports standardized tests while the student receives the knowledge. This teaching method is outdated, Childers-McKee says.

"Teachers have more diverse classrooms today. We don't have students sitting in front of us with the same background or experience, so instruction has to be different," she says. "It needs to build on individual and cultural experiences and their prior knowledge. It needs to be justice-oriented and reflect the social context we're in now. That's what we mean when we talk about culturally responsive teaching."

Culturally Responsive vs. Traditional Teaching Methods

Culturally responsive teaching can manifest in a number of ways. Using traditional teaching methods, educators may default to teaching literature by widely accepted classic authors: William Shakespeare, J.D. Salinger, and Charles Dickens, for example, adhering to widely accepted interpretations of the text.

Culturally responsive teaching, on the other hand, acknowledges that there's nothing wrong with traditional texts, Childers-McKee says, but strives to include literature from other cultures, parts of the world, and by diverse authors. It also focuses on finding a "hook and anchor" to help draw students into the content using their past experiences.

"This way, students can see themselves in some of what they're reading and not just the white, western world. The learning is more experimental, more hands-on," she says. "Instead, you're showing them a worldwide, multicultural community and looking for different interpretations while relating it to what it means for society today."

Why is culturally responsive teaching important?

Culturally responsive teaching is especially pertinent today because the traditional education path from school to college to a career and life in the suburbs isn't a reality-or desire-for everyone, Childers-McKee says. Educators' approaches to teaching need to reflect these differences.

"That typical, mainstream education is not addressing the realities of today's students. Culturally responsive teaching isn't just for those students who don't come from white, middle-class, English-speaking families-it's an important teaching strategy for everyone. When done the right way, it can be transformative."

When integrated into classroom instruction, culturally responsive strategies can have important benefits such as:

Strengthening students' sense of identity

Promoting equity and inclusivity in the classroom

Engaging students in the course material

Supporting critical thinking

Here's a look at five culturally responsive teaching strategies all educators can employ in their classrooms.

5 Culturally Responsive Teaching Strategies for Educators

1. Activate students' prior knowledge.

Students are not blank slates, Childers-McKee says; they enter the classroom with diverse experiences. Teachers should encourage students to draw on their prior knowledge in order to contribute to group discussions, which provides an anchor to learning. Taking a different approach to the literature that's taught in classrooms is one example of this.

2. Make learning contextual.

Tie lessons from the curriculum to the students' social communities to make it more contextual and relevant, Childers-McKee advises. "If you're reading a chapter in history class, for example, discuss why it matters today, in your school, or in your community," she says. "Take the concept you're learning about and create a project that enables them to draw parallels."

3. Encourage students to leverage their cultural capital.

Because not all students come from the same background, it's important to encourage those who don't to have a voice. Say, for example, you teach an English class that contains ESL students. It's important to find ways to activate the experiences they do have-their cultural capital, Childers-McKee says.

The teacher may choose a book for the class to read in which the ESL students could relate and feel like they could be the expert, for instance. As a teacher, Childers-Mckee's once chose a book that told the story of a child of migrant workers because some of her students came from an agricultural background.

"When you have a mixed classroom, you want those in the minority to feel like they are an expert. You want to draw from their experiences," she says. "I do caution that you don't want to cross a line and make 'Johnny' feel like he needs to speak for all Mexican people by putting them on the spot, for example. That's a line you need to walk."

4. Reconsider your classroom setup.

Take inventory of the books in your classroom library: Do they include authors of diverse races? Is the LGBTQ community represented? Do the books include urban families or only suburban families? Beyond your classroom library, consider the posters you display on your walls and your bulletin boards, too. "These are all small changes you can make to your classroom more culturally responsive," Childers-McKee says.

5. Build relationships.

Not all students want to learn from all teachers because the teachers may not make them feel like they're valued, Childers-McKee says. Teachers need to work to build relationships with their students to ensure they feel respected, valued, and seen for who they are. Building those relationships helps them build community within the classroom and with each other, which is extremely important, she says.

"When we think about culture and diversity, people often automatically think about black students, but people need to think broader than that, now," Childers-McKee says. "Some teachers whose students are all white and middle-class struggle with how culturally responsive teaching strategies apply to them. It's equally important for them to teach students about diversity. These aren't just teaching strategies for minorities, they're good teaching strategies for everyone."

Educating for the Future

Educators have the unique power to impact the lives of their learners. Making use of thoughtful, inclusive instruction can have positive effects on students that last far beyond their time in the classroom.

Employing culturally responsive teaching strategies is a small step toward enacting meaningful change in education. If you're interested in leading your organization toward positive change on a larger scale, earning an advanced degree is one way to gain the necessary knowledge and skills to do so.

Pursuing a degree, such as a Doctor of Education , will empower you to address the challenges currently facing education and improve the learning experience. Students of the program work with industry-aligned faculty on real-world organizational issues, allowing them to have an immediate impact on their professional environments.
To learn more about how an EdD can further your career while improving students' educational experiences, explore Northeastern's Doctor of Education program page, or download our free guide below.

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Culturally Responsive Teaching: 5 Strategies for Educators

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Culturally responsive teaching values students' cultural references in all aspects of learning. Here are five strategies to bring to the classroom.

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As Black History Month kicked off, I was reflecting on my time as a student. My experience all those years ago was similar to that of most Black children today: mostly White teachers teaching Black history primarily in February.

I was told of Martin Luther King Jr., Harriet Tubman, and Frederick Douglass. I heard very little of Malcolm X, the FBI's campaign against civil rights leaders, the Rainbow Coalition put together by the Black Panther Party's Fred Hampton, or Hampton's assassination. I learned about the struggles of my enslaved ancestors, but not about Gabriel Prosser, Denmark Vesey, or Nat Turner.

I was taught about the marches and firehoses in Alabama, but I had to teach myself about the acts of terrorism committed against Black people in Rosewood, Florida; Tulsa, Oklahoma; and Wilmington, North Carolina.

Today, teachers continue that tradition, telling students about Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Beyoncé, and LeBron James, as well as King, Tubman, Douglass, and other inspirational figures. These folks are to be honored for their accomplishments-but we should not ignore lessons that explore the impact of racism in the Black experience. It's imperative that teachers not reinforce a milquetoast version of Black history that is anti-Black because of its erasure of painful truths.

No matter what subject you teach, there are ways you can infuse Black history into your daily lessons in a way that is prophetic and purposeful.

Black History Is American History

Infuse Black history into the curriculum year-round: Tom Joyner, the recently retired syndicated radio host, used the phrase "Black history 365 days a year" to mean that Black history isn't a gimmick meant for one month out of the year, with a student assembly or a potluck dinner with traditional Black foods. Black history is American history. Students should learn throughout the year and throughout all disciplines about the accomplishments, experiences, and perspectives of Black people.

How can teachers infuse Black history into their teaching? Here are some simple examples for core content areas:

English: Provide students with texts-poetry and fiction, and nonfiction as well-written by Black people. Teach students about the Africanisms in American English when discussing or teaching grammar.

Mathematics and science: Refer students to famous Black scientists and mathematicians throughout your course. Discuss how Black people showed an understanding of agricultural science in how they used soil in both West Africa and South Carolina to grow rice. Also, you can study the mathematical patterns of African art, and reference the rich history of math in sub-Saharan Africa in the areas of geometry, graphs, and numerical systems-you can engage students by playing African games like mancala that have a strong math component.

Social studies: Incorporate primary and secondary source documents by or about Black people into student reading lists. Create an assignment in which students interview Black history scholars to discuss the Black experience in America throughout a social studies course.

Use texts by Black authors, in every discipline: In history class, I learned from textbooks written by White scholars. I read the works of Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, and William Shakespeare in English class, but never Langston Hughes, Maya Angelou, or Toni Morrison. According to a recent report, more than eight of every 10 books that New York City students are likely to see in class from preschool to eighth grade are written by White authors. Students should be introduced to texts by Black authors that speak to Black experiences, Black perspectives, and Black accomplishments. These authors remind children and adults that Black excellence is not confined to athletics and entertainment. How can we promote the academic excellence of Black children without introducing them to Black intellectuals-individuals they can see themselves someday becoming?

Teach students about important Black figures-especially local ones: Teaching about Obama and King is a good start, but you can introduce students to hidden figures as you work through your content during the school year.

If you're a middle school science teacher and your students are interested in cultivating a community food garden, teach them about scientists like George Washington Carver, who developed methods to prevent soil depletion. If you're an elementary teacher teaching students how to tell time, introduce them to Benjamin Banneker, who created the first American clock. Teaching students about important people is a great thing-even better is doing it in the context of your lessons, rather than in a set-aside month.

And if you teach students about the history of slavery in America, remember to include two topics in particular: the economics of slavery, and acts of resistance and rebellion by Black people. The enslavement of Africans built this nation's economic foundation, and the entire nation benefited, so resistance and rebellion were met with brute force. Nevertheless, enslaved Africans and their enslaved descendants resisted through sabotage, running away, and outright rebellion and revolt- hundreds of revolts happened during African enslavement. Communities of formerly enslaved Black people along the East Coast fought to maintain their freedom and to free other enslaved people.

One task of teachers in the classroom is to acknowledge and honor students' humanity-and that means acknowledging and honoring Black humanity. That starts with acknowledging the good, the bad, and the ugly of our history as a nation.

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Teaching Black History in Culturally Responsive Ways

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Black history is American history and should be taught throughout the year across the curriculum-not confined to a single month.

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Culturally Responsive Teaching: Examples, Strategies & Activities for Success

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Need to engage your diverse classroom? Try using these 15 culturally-responsive teaching strategies and examples, complete with a downloadable list.

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Interview

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Gholdy Muhammad agreed to answer a few questions about her new book, Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy.

By the way, this is the 100th book-related column published in this blog, including 96 interviews with authors and a handful of book reviews and lists of book recommendations by teachers. You can see them all here.
Dr. Gholdy Muhammad is an associate professor of language and literacy at Georgia State University. LF: You propose a four-part "equity framework" for literacy instruction including: "1) identity development; 2) skill development; 3) intellectual development; and 4) criticality." Could you describe these elements, particularly "identity development" and "criticality" since it seems that teachers might be more familiar with the middle two? Dr. Gholdy Muhammad:
The historically responsive equity framework is not just for literacy instruction or literacy educators per se but for all teachers across the disciplines. The framework does bring diverse texts and literacies into all content areas in K-12 classrooms. In my research, I take up the ways in which literacy was defined historically within black communities, particularly in black literary societies. And I found that literacy was synonymous with education. Literacy was also defined within the four frames of identity, skills, intellectualism, and criticality, the four-part equity model. In other words, as black people were learning, they were cultivating each of those four areas of their lives. If we compare these four areas to schools today, I find that most educators are teaching skills only, or their state learning standards. Yet, our students need more.

The four-part equity model was derived from examining archives and historical artifacts during the 19th century. I studied black literary societies to understand their literacy practices and learning. I asked questions such as, What types of texts did they read? What were some of their goals for learning? What factors contributed to their personal and academic success? I found that members of literary societies read diverse texts written by diverse authors. They were highly collaborative and believed in the collective responsibility for one another's learning. But importantly, they did not seek to just advance their skills in language, history, math, or science. Instead, they had wider goals for learning, which resulted in the Historically Responsive Model for teaching and learning. Collectively teaching these four goals or standards helps to cultivate students who are socio-conscious beings, who deeply have a strong sense of self and others, and who are academically successful.

Identity is made up of who we say we are, who others say we are, and the people we desire to be. Students are constantly making sense of who they are, and, I argue, classroom instruction needs to be responsive to their identities. Because we are complex beings, we have racial, cultural, gender, environmental, and community identities, to name a few. Not only is it important to teach youths who they are, but educators should also teach students about the identities and cultures of others different from them. When we have true, clear, and complete understandings about people different from us, we are less inclined to hate, show bias, or hold false views of others. When youths have a strong sense of their own histories and identities, it becomes a refuge or a protection. When they don't know themselves, others may tell them, and sometimes that may not be positive. With each lesson or unit plan, teachers should ask, How does our curriculum and instruction help students to learn about themselves or others?

Criticality is the capacity and ability to read, write, think, and speak in ways to understand power and equity in order to understand and promote anti-oppression. I define oppression simply as any wrongdoing, hurt, or harm. This can be racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism, or any other oppression. In my work, I discuss the difference between lower case "c" critical, which is just deep and analytical thinking. But Critical with a capital "c" is related to power, equity, and anti-oppression. It is helping youths to be "woke" socio-politically. Criticality calls for teachers to connect their teaching to the human condition and to frame their teaching practices in response to the social and uneven times in which we live. This means helping students understand content from marginalized perspectives. As long as oppression is present, students need spaces to name, interrogate, resist, agitate, and work toward social change. This will support students toward being critical consumers and producers of information. It will also help to build a better humanity for all. With each lesson or unit plan, teachers should ask, How does our curriculum and instruction help us understand power, equity, and anti-oppression?

These four learning standards connect with Gloria Ladson Billings' definition of culturally relevant education as she pushed for academic success (skills and intellect), cultural competence (identity), and socio-political consciousness (criticality) in classrooms. The Historically Responsive Model or the four learning standards I discuss returns the excellence of black educative spaces and uses this history as a blueprint to improve classrooms today. There is not one child who does not need to advance identity development, skill development, intellectualism, or criticality. Collectively teaching and learning toward these four pursuits helps to teach the whole child to be successful for a full and quality life.
LF: You give this four-part framework the name of "Historically Responsive Literacy," connecting it back to 19th century black literacy societies which, I, embarrassingly, had never heard of prior to reading your book. Could you talk about that historical connection? Dr. Gholdy Muhammad:
Actually, many people have not heard of this American history. The author of the prominent book that fully captures the history, Elizabeth McHenry, entitled her book, Forgotten Readers, because our ancestors' stories and histories have been forgotten and left out. I would also add that these histories are not taught in K-12 schools. When I engaged in historical research to better understand these learning spaces, I wanted to know: How can we take the teachings from black historical excellence to advance educational achievement for all youths today? When I study state standards, curriculum programs, state assessments, and teacher evaluations, I don't find that they largely focus on identity and criticality, which is why we don't see this type of teaching in all classrooms. These four critical parts of the system lack culturally responsiveness. Across the nation, we have frameworks, textbooks, and literature that are oftentimes not written by people of color. Nor do these largely represent the fullness of people of color.

I learned that black literary societies were developed by black males in 1828 in the urban Northern cities like Boston, Philadelphia, and New York City. Membership was from 10-100 people. They were also called reading rooms, lyceums, literary institutions, and writing clubs. They met regularly in basements of churches, classrooms, homes, or anywhere where they could be in community with one another. They paid membership fees, and many of their funds went to texts and cultivating their libraries. Often, they would check out a book, read it, and present a short lecture on the content of the book upon returning it. They read across topics of mathematics, science, history, and English. But literacy was central to all their content learning. They did not just come together to read and enjoy literature (like many book clubs today), but they also had goals of using knowledge to benefit other black people and the conditions of society at large.

Black literary societies' members left meticulous records for our learning today. They recorded and published their activities and other writings in newspapers, books, and pamphlets. I use their practices as a roadmap and plan for reimagining and redesigning curriculum and instruction for students. In Cultivating Genius, I give a fuller list of examples showing how I took teachings from history and applied them to today's classrooms, but a few ideas include how:

Libraries were essential to all achievement, so teachers today can cultivate their classroom libraries to include diverse authorship and international texts.

Literacy was the foundation to all disciplinary learning, so teachers today can bring in opportunities for youths to read and study from multimodal texts in different genres.

Learning was highly collaborative, so teachers today can create opportunities where individualism and competition aren't privileged over collectivism.

When we use the theories and teachings of black historic thinkers, we will have different and more advanced schools and classrooms. We have so long prescribed what youths need, all along leaving black history, black excellence, and black frameworks out of the picture. But when we "return" to and look back on history, we can advance in unique and exciting ways. Black Literary Societies are the blueprint.
LF: "Deficit" thinking and perspectives come up several times in your book. Can you talk about what you mean, how they can impact students, and what teachers can do to change those mindsets? Dr. Gholdy Muhammad:
Yes, "deficit thinking" comes up quite often in the book because deficit perspectives and thinking lead to poor and basic instructional practices. Deficit thinking can be viewed in different ways. First, it is any thinking, perspectives, or ideologies that are negative, false, incomplete, or destructive. It can also be defined as capturing someone's story as a single narrative or starting one's story in false, damaging, or incomplete ways. Deficit thinking is a type of oppression and leads to racism or other forms of harm. Sadly, we have a history of misrepresentation of certain groups using ads, literature, and other media. This type of propagation has conditioned the minds and hearts of people to have deficit views. The conditioning is then perpetuated in homes, communities, and schools.

The consequence of deficit thinking creates trauma and harms our young people. We talk a lot about emotional trauma or trauma from childhood but we talk less about the effects of racial trauma in schools for our students. What happens when teachers think less about other people who share the same race or identity of their students? Do teachers think this type of thinking never manifests or makes its way into classrooms? We don't leave our racism, biases, political agendas, or ideologies at home when we enter classroom spaces. When deficit thinking leads to trauma, our students may be affected for the rest of their lives. Our young people may feel like they don't belong; they may feel worthless or that they are not good enough. Their academics and engagement are negatively affected as a result. This can follow them throughout their lives and disrupt their joy.

When I ask teachers to tell me about their black and brown students, sometimes I hear comments such as, they are unmotivated, they can't read, or they have discipline problems. I follow this question by asking if they would introduce their own children in the same way. Oftentimes, parents would not. They would find something positive to say about their own child. This is why I returned to black historical excellence and named the book Cultivating Genius. I am proclaiming that we start our children's stories with genius, especially black children's, because the nation has struggled to get it right with us the most. We must disrupt deficit ways of thinking and being. Our youths are genius. They are not all those things that systemic oppression has created. And young people deserve to be taught by geniuses, those who seek knowledge and deeply love the students in their classes.

To change the mindset, teachers must do their self-work or find another profession. Just as a person has to heal from abuse in order to be whole, happy, and productive, if teachers have deficit perspectives, they must recognize them, name them, and work toward disrupting and dissolving this type of thinking. That may come from proper education, therapy, or exercises that lead toward anti-racism, anti-bias, and anti-oppression.
LF: Can you share summaries of specific lessons that you think might reflect your recommendations for what literacy instruction could look like? Dr. Gholdy Muhammad:
Usually, when I develop lesson or unit plans, I try to connect the learning around the human condition or a social issue. For example, Flint, Mich., has a water crisis with a lack of clean water. This issue became the impetus for a science and math lesson I was working on for students in Atlanta and New York, but it is an issue that can be explored across different content areas. In this math example, the students learned about the percentages of lead content found in water and graphed equations. In the science class, they defined environmental justice and water quality, which was connected to Next Generation Science Standards. I started this lesson by showing a photo essay by real residents of Flint with captions depicting experiences. This led to the discussion of water and our personal use and dependency. We read political cartoons, youth-spoken word poetry, a timeline, a short news article, photographs, and statistical data of lead content. I layered these short, powerful, and engaging texts as a way for my students to access and engage in learning. We read and discussed the texts together, and the students worked collaboratively in groups. We also had textbooks available to support learning. The lesson plan went across multiple days. What I learned is that identity and criticality became great points of entry for students who struggled with math and science skills. They connected the water crisis in Flint to their local communities. One science teacher in New York followed up by testing the lead content in water near their school. Students also learned vocabulary such as Legionnaires' disease, marginalization, and water crisis.

The students benefited from the unit plan and found the lessons engaging. Units like this prepare students for life and teach them not to be passive consumers of information and news. Instead, lessons like this one teach them to interrogate, critique, and agitate toward social change, especially in their own communities.

This historically responsive unit shifted traditional ways of teaching science and math. First, it brought more literacies and texts into these content areas. Students were taught to read the word and the world. Students read from diverse texts and even read poetry in their STEM classroom. The model also restored intellectualism into the learning, and students learned new knowledge in addition to skills. I assessed each learning standard using discussion, collaborative group worksheets, exit slips, and a summative assessment. This lesson plan can even be extended by setting learning goals in English/language arts or social studies classrooms, too. Here is a breakdown of how the lesson fits into the Historically Responsive Literacy Framework outlined in Cultivating Genius:

1.Identity: Students will understand their personal dependency on water.

2. Skill: (Math) Students will learn to examine percentages of lead content found in water. They will also learn how to create equations with two or more variables to represent relations between quantities as well as graph equations on coordinate axes with labels and scales.

Skill: (Science) Students will define environmental justice and name the importance of water quality for humans.

3. Intellect: Students will learn about the water crisis in Flint, Mich.

4. Criticality: Students will learn to consider how the government prioritizes community needs based on socioeconomic status and/or race and understand the media's role in the government's response to a crisis.

More units like this are offered in the book. This is one example, but I have observed the pure genius of teachers designing learning around the model. In doing so, they keep a few questions in mind as they plan:

What issue is most urgent for students' learning? How does this issue connect to the world? How can I connect content-learning skills to this issue?

What multimodal text can layer in my lesson or unit plan to teach this topic/issue? Teachers think about print and nonprint texts.

What creative and engaging exercises will I engage students in to teach this topic/issue?

How can I assess each of the four learning standards?

LF: Is there anything I haven't asked you about that you'd like to share?
Dr. Gholdy Muhammad:

Cultivating Genius and the historically responsive model offered in the book is for all teachers K-12 across all discipline areas, even physical and health education. I also use the model to frame my college courses and syllabi at Georgia State University. The four learning standards of identity, skills, intellect, and criticality are areas of growth that EVERY child needs in every class.

I am reminded by many wonderful teachers with whom I work that some of the greatest anti-oppressive leaders and change agents in the world have held a strong sense of self and knowledge of other people (identity), skills, intellect, and criticality. We want to help cultivate students who will not be neutral on oppression or students who would contribute to more oppression in the world. Instead, we want to cultivate young people who, across the course of their lifetimes, will disrupt, disquiet, or unhinge oppression.

This means we must teach beyond sanctioned curriculum and standards such as the Common Core. We must evaluate and interrogate the curriculum we are given to teach. We must hold publishers accountable for the lack of diverse and critical content they produce. We must stop trying to make something culturally responsive when it wasn't designed that way in the first place. We have to stop putting fresh coats of paint on the same debilitating structures of education. We must start fresh with a curriculum that was designed with black and brown youths in mind and written by black and brown people, too. We have a growing population of culturally, racially, and linguistically diverse youths and families. It's time for the course of education to change. Indeed, the genius for this transformation is at hand. We need only to properly respond.
LF: Thank you, Dr. Muhammad!

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Author Interview With Dr. Gholdy Muhammad: 'Cultivating Genius' (Opinion)

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For the 100th book-related post in this blog, Gholdy Muhammad agreed to answer a few questions about her new book, "Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy."