Cultivating Genius Quotes

“The last question "What do humanizing practices look like in and outside of the classroom?" is also essential, because it speaks to those "social justice" educators who leave the school and don't live in anti-racist, anti-sexist, and other anti-oppressive ways in their daily lives. This is why we must not just be non-racist or non-oppressive but also work with passion and diligence to actively disrupt oppression in and outside of the classroom. Simple good intentions aren't enough. The intentions must be deliberately connected to actions.”
― Gholdy Muhammad, Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy

“As long as oppression is present in the world, young people need pedagogy that nurtures criticality.”
― Gholdy Muhammad, Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy

“The need to agitate for criticality historically spoke to the social unrest at the time, and I argue that the need to agitate is still necessary and pressing in classrooms today.”
― Gholdy Muhammad, Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy

“Literacy was not just for self-enjoyment of fulfillment, it was tied to action and efforts to shape the sociopolitical landscape of a country that was founded on oppression.”
― Gholdy Muhammad, Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy

“literacy serves as a form of protection in this world and is rightly guided by both imagination and reason—two constructs that are often dichotomous, especially in current public education.”
― Gholdy Muhammad, Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy

“Perhaps the people who need criticality the most become those who share identities with the greatest oppressors of the world.”
― Gholdy Muhammad, Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy

“We live in a period where there's no time for "urgent-free pedagogy." Our instructional pursuits must be honest, bold, raw, unapologetic, and responsive to the social times.”
― Gholdy Muhammad, Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy

“Structure opportunities for critiquing and evaluating what students read and write about within the instruction.”
― Gholdy Muhammad, Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy

“Literacy was to be developed in a socially constructed environment so that new ideas and information learned from texts could be shared and spread among one another and those in the community. Members of all ages and experiences with reading would assemble to teach one another. Although individual literacy was valued, these societies were highly collaborative and prompted social responsibility to share knowledge gained from acts of literacy rather than keep education to one’s self. This collaboration for literacy learning built the foundation of the “chain letter of instruction” model, which embodied a shared accountability for knowledge (Fisher, 2004). If one person, for example, acquired knowledge, it was then his or her responsibility to pass it on to others to create a flame-like effect. To keep knowledge to one’s self was seen as a selfish act, and each person therefore was responsible to elevate others through education in the immediate and larger community. This ideal of collectivism is in direct conflict with schools today, as schools are largely grounded in competition and individualism. This is perhaps one major reason why students of color often do not reach their full potential in schools—because schools are in disharmony with their histories and identities.”
― Gholdy Muhammad, Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy

“When we frame the stories of people of color as narratives steeped in pain or even smallness, this becomes the dominant or sole representation.”
― Gholdy Muhammad, Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy

“There have been too many data meetings, curriculum meetings, or problem-solving meetings without students’ voices at the table.”
― Gholdy Muhammad, Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy

“This ideal of collectivism is in direct conflict with schools today, as schools are largely grounded in competition and individualism. This is perhaps one major reason why students of color often do not reach their full potential in schools—because schools are in disharmony with their histories and identities.”
― -Scholastic-, Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy

“If we aim to get it right with all youth, a productive starting point is to design teaching and learning to the group (s) of students who have been marginalized the most in society and within schools. Thus, we need frameworks that have been written by people of color and designed for children of color.”
― Gholdy Muhammad, Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy

“Engage students with texts that create social action and cause them to think differently as a result of what they read. 2. Create an environment that affords students the opportunity to shape their own ideas through acts of literacy.”
― Gholdy Muhammad, Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy