🌳Takeaways: Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally & Historically Responsive Literacy
About the Author
Dr. Gholnecsar (Gholdy) Muhammad is an Associate Professor of Language and Literacy at Georgia State University. She also serves as the director of the GSU Urban Literacy Collaborative and Clinic. Dr. Muhammad's scholarship has appeared in leading educational journals and books. Some of her recognitions include the 2014 recipient of the National Council of Teachers of English, Promising New Researcher Award, the 2015 NCTE Alan C. Purves Award (honorable mention), the 2016 NCTE CEE Janet Emig awardee, the 2017 Georgia State University Urban Education Research Awardee, the 2018 UIC College of Education Researcher of the Year and the 2018 Emerald Literati Award.
Table of Contents
⭐ The Book in 3 Sentences
🎨 Impressions
🤔 Who Should Read It?
💡 How the Book Changed Me
✍🏾 My Top 3 Quotes
📘 Summary + Notes
⭐ The Book in 3 Sentences
Muhammad ascertains that implementing the equity framework of Historically Responsive Literacy (HRL) addresses and resolves the purported literacy gap traditionally ascribed to students of color.
Honoring student and teacher identities within the classroom and challenging them to engage in the critical analysis of literature, campus life, and society at-large will cultivate intellectualism across both groups.
With respect to identity-centered, contextually-informed instructional practices, Muhammad challenges readers with the probing questions needed to implement these practices in their schools and supports the implementation with ideas and sample planning documents.
🎨 Impressions
As a secondary educator who actively engaged in the pedagogical belief structure that Cultivating Genius centers, it was difficult to fully immerse into this text when I started reading it in June of 2021. However, as an instructional leader at a predominantly Black and Brown elementary campus, I found myself returning to this book at the end of the year to better inform my leadership practices. What I discovered during the revisit of this book is that it was easier to connect to its content while serving in a new cultural environment and in a capacity that requires me to be even more conscious of the ways in which literacy instruction, curriculum development, and assessment practices can be discriminatory and damaging to BIPOC youth.
🤔 Who Should Read It?
I believe that every educator who is associated with the dynamics of curriculum and instruction should be challenged to read this book. Literacy specialists and curriculum writers for English Language Arts, particularly for predominantly Black and Brown school district communities, should be required to read it.
💡 How the Book Changed Me
How my life / behaviors / thoughts / ideas have changed as a result of reading the book
While I have always been pretty cognizant of the lack representation within curriculum, it had not fully dawned on me that it was an actively intentional decision finishing some of the final chapters. I now recognize that is a greater danger on the horizon for literacy instruction within the state of Texas as scripted curriculum is swiftly becoming the staple of public education.
In reference to the above, I now feel that I have to do what I can to preserve access and implementation to authentic texts that are authored and by BIPOC identities.
Looking back to the historical evolutions of Black and Brown literacy movements within the United States is paramount to not only understanding where we are as country of readers, but where we aspire to go next.
✍🏾 My Top 3 Quotes
“Our instructional pursuits must be honest, bold, raw, unapologetic, and responsive to the social times” (p. 54).
“Hope alone is not enough. We need to be designers in curriculum, instruction, and leadership to get it right with those who need it the most. They depend on us” (p. 88).
“We must stop implementing curriculum and literacy models that were not designed for or by people of color, expecting that these models will advance the educational advancement of children of color” (p. 60).
