Dr. Gholdy Muhammad’s Critique on the education system:
Dr. Gholdy Muhammad says that teachers often solely focus on teaching “skills” measured on standardized tests in the classroom. She says that, while teaching skills is important, students are not going to be engaged and curious about their learning unless we make it a point to teach identity, intelect, and criticality as well. Dr. Goldy Muhammad points out that CHR is especially important for students of color because they have oftentimes been misrepresented or underrepresented in their own schools and classrooms. She says that we are not reaching black students, and in order to do so, she insists that “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.” This is the starting point. She says that the system is “grounded in whiteness” and in racism, and we need to rebuild it.
I especially appreciate how Muhammad uses teacher modeling as an example of how to teach the four layers of her framework. Jennifer Gonzalez says that "If you’re a teacher who is modeling just a curiosity about the world, a love of learning, an appreciation for just new facts to learn about. That’s going to bleed over, particularly if the students already respect you and admire you as a person. Then they’re going to see that joy that you get just from learning and knowing things about the world, and then applying that in different ways." I currently work with preschool aged children, and I can say that this rings true for all age levels. I model behavior for my preschoolers. I model respect, empathy, listening and sincerity. Modeling gives our students the opportunity and the confidence to be successful.
How an educator might teach ELA using Muhammad’s Framework:
In order for students to be fully engaged in the classroom, they must find it relevant. If students do not see THEMSELVES in the curriculum, they may check out and find it difficult to find true meaning to what they are expected to learn. Muhammad says that we should start with Identity. Muhammad says that identity is a combination of who you are, who you want to be, and how others perceive you. We can learn about ourselves and each other through community building exercises. Students need to feel that their voice is being heard in order to participate in authentic learning. Learning content skills is close to impossible if we are not teaching the other three layers because they will hold little to no meaning to students if they are not relating to the content. When we talk about intellect, we are talking about what we want our students to become smarter about. This does not mean memorization or what facts they can spit out. It means that students are learning how to apply what they know to the real world. This means that we must bring the community and students’ real life experiences into the classroom. Criticality helps students understand how power, privilege and oppression function in society and history. Muhammad says that “criticality is helping students to read, write and think in active ways as opposed to passive.” Students need to be taught how to look at different texts from different lenses and make decisions for themselves. We do not want to just feed students information, we want to teach them the skills to read in between the lines and question what is being presented to them.
