Reading about Dr. Gholdy Muhammad’s pedagogies is beneficial in making our teaching practices more reflective. This is because Dr. Muhammad offers a specific framework with key questions through her Historically Responsive Literacy Model as well as guides to culturally responsive curricula and teaching.

As educators we find the model and guides can further develop our metacognative processes. Dr. Muhammad offers very specific questions to reflect on, and we can use these questions to examine how our curricula, material and daily lesson plans serve the children in our classroom.

In a recent team discussion we allowed ourselves to share our personal stories, some were from childhood, some from our parenting journeys, others from our academic study, or practice as educators. To join our conversation add your thoughts below in the discussion!

“I have been the only black child growing up in classrooms, and I tell you I used to stress the singling out. I did not want… you [to] ask me for my perspective. I did not like, it was such a cringe every time we would get to this section of a history book when it came like black [Sic]. I would literally, my whole body would tense because I did not want to be singled out. And so the whole… layering of experiences, amplifying… and never put the weight of having a child share anything about their identity, especially if they’re the only one having that identity [in the classroom]. Now as you get to know the child, because some children shine in that… and they will take the stage — beautiful! But don’t ever assume, because every child does not want that.”

Ashley Causey-Golden, founder of Afrocentric Montessori and THENCE contributor

I was also in a  private school from 6 to 12th grade, a predominantly white school. It was almost identical, you know to that. So, that’s… that’s pretty common. So I’m even… I’m a first generation American, my parents are from Ethiopia. So there wasn’t even the concept of… and maybe this is controversial, like, Black American History Month: even the concept of Blackness outside of Blackness in America, you know? Yeah, and that goes back like you guys are talking about the terminology of Black vs. African-American and I’ve gone through that too. Like Identifying as African-American when we were young cause that was the trend, but now I really much prefer black because it encompasses all black Americans, you know black Africans, Caribbeans.

Helina Seyoum, Accessibility advocate, THENCE editor and administrator

You [Ashley] mentioned [George Washington] Carver before, and he was my guy, I was given him and it was great because we knew he worked with peanuts and… my family has a very strong connection to peanuts because of my father as a young young man went to work for food company that made peanut butter. So we were always talking about peanut butter and like the benefits of peanut butter; so it was wonderful when I was assigned Carver… let me put this into context. This is 1985, my family had recently arrived in the US, and I was in the 5th grade. [The fair for historical figures] theme was: Tell us why and how your person immigrated to the US and why they left their country, to seek opportunities in the “new world”. However, Carver was born into slavery in the United States! And it was totally out of their depth and there wasn’t even support from the teachers to you know… to navigate [slavery] in that school …an expressions in use into the 90’s was like “involuntary immigration”.

Dr. Katherine Schlatter, founder at THENCE

Folks are still like… and when I say folks, white families, black families still struggle with how do you speak truth to enslavement? Like, how do you… how do you use that word? And how do you support children to understand it because I felt as Americas, in general we still have not come to terms. No, to hold space to sit and be uncomfortable like we just, we still struggle with speaking truth to it and then being comfortable sitting in truth. Yep, and… and maybe I think that is, you know facing the discomfort or the fragility that’s what we talking about I think with the role of white educators, who have not been made to face the fragility growing up or in their training… oh my training didn’t even address it when I was studying in undergrad to be educator! I was certified in Elementary in Special Education and we had to of course go through the course of United States history and when that came up, literally my professor said we need to move past it. And this is university that is known for training teachers!

Ashley Causey-Golden, founder of Afrocentric Montessori and THENCE contributor

I think the way I get to the “How” is by… being authentic and hearing an experience like Katherine’s, like Helina’s or like Ashley’s. It gives me the ability to go back and… and reach further into a conversation I had about Marie Stewart with my 13 yo daughter. I learned that Marie Stewart was born free. That she wasn’t born enslaved, but was born in 1803… My daughter has just celebrated MLK Day through various programs and was now beginning black history month projects. I asked myself, what would it mean to talk about Marie Stewart in connection to Martin Luther King, Jr. Somehow it felt so relevant to connect the two. To literally talk about a black woman who was born in an area where she wasn’t born into enslavement. Then I asked myself, how can I or one of my daughters’ teachers make space for this overlap. By talking about a black woman [who] was born free and to discover that she in many ways influenced Dr King. I think what we’re doing is starting at a place where we are talking about free black people… I thought that was really interesting because though we were doing a Black History projects we weren’t talking about enslavement, and that was like, big, for me.

Andrea Patterson, Co-founder of THENCE and founder at Art of Living Collective