Historically Responsive Literacy & ELA

First, last semester I had the wonderful opportunity to watch the talk with Dr. Gholdy Muhammad, Bettina Love, and Dena Simmons that the podcast host mentions, and it was eye-opening (if you haven't watched/listen to it already, I highly recommend it!). Knowing that this podcast featured Dr. Muhammad, I was so excited to hear what she had to say!

Looking at Dr. Muhammad’s critique of the education system, she is concerned with the Euro-centricity and whiteness of the system. As she says, “the systems, the structures, the standards, the curriculum, the teacher evaluations, the assessments were never designed fully with black and brown students in mind” (Muhammad 12:00). The system that’s been built isn’t designed for students of color, and the racism that’s within the structure of the system hasn’t been removed.  Instead, there have been things like adversity scores and other initiatives that, while they can be helpful, are band-aid fixes. These band-aids are not solving the systemic and structural issues within schools that advantage white students while disadvantaging students of color. 

Dr. Muhammad grounds her framework in the historical practices of black literary societies of the 18th and 19th centuries. These societies valued literacy and saw that “literacy was synonymous with education” (21:00). With their education, they focused on “reading and writing and thinking and speaking, listening, debating” along with “mathematics, their science, their history, and their language learning” (22:00). Dr. Muhammad places her framework in the larger conversations around culturally responsive educational practices and beliefs. While her framework works within the larger culturally responsive sphere, she focuses on the historical and making a “practical model to the theory” (25:00). 

Looking at each layer, there are many opportunities to make direct connections to ELA. Beginning with identity, Dr. Muhammad says that student identities should be “affirmed” in the classroom. Texts can be a great place to affirm student identities, and introducing texts where the protagonists have relatable identities or experiences to students could be a great opportunity to begin working on that identity piece. Using The Poet X, for example, with Latinx students could be highly impactful, as they have the opportunity to see themselves on the page and read about the experiences of someone like them. If students don’t identify themselves within the novel, it is still an opportunity to learn about others. Writing activities can also be affirming for student identities, especially if they are asked to write about their experiences that are closely connected to their identities. With this layer, students should have representation of their identities in the classroom, as this kind of representation is helpful in learning about not only themselves but others, too, in a genuine way. Students will be able to be more compassionate and there are opportunities to break stereotypes and harmful biases that students may hold about others. Affirming their own identities while learning about the identities of others can happen in the ELA classroom, and it is just one layer of Dr. Muhammad’s framework. 

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Speaking about the skills layer, Dr. Muhammad says that it becomes problematic when all we focus on is skills. Instead, she sees skills acting in conjunction with the other layers because “We want students to be able to do both, as they say, read the word and read the world” (44:00). With this in mind, I think a writing assignment where students write a narrative about an event in their life could be a great opportunity to focus on both identity and skills. There can be a specific component where students must include certain facets of a narrative within their writing, and this widens the focus to identity and skill-building. 

With the intellect layer, Dr. Muhammad proposes that “intellectualism is when you do something with… knowledge,” and it’s important to treat “young people as if they are scholars and intellectuals and thinkers” (46:00, 47:00). This is an important piece, especially because it feels like this can be lacking sometimes. When students are treated as intellectuals, as thinkers who are contributing and co-constructing knowledge, then they become agents of their own education and they are active in seeking and constructing knowledge. With particular activities, I think a Socratic seminar can be a great place in ELA to have students practice intellectualism. In the seminar, they can come with some prepared notes and the text or topic that we are discussing, and this is their chance to speak their minds and be heard. They are also able to actively listen and hear others, and it all works to create a community of learners. With Socratic seminars, too, they offer a space for students to be brave, and if they stumble, they are in an environment where stumbling is a learning experience. 

The final layer is criticality, and this is the major social justice piece of Dr. Muhammad’s framework. As Dr. Muhammad sees it, “criticality is deep and analytical thinking to understand power, equity, anti-racism and other other anti-oppressions” (52:00). ELA classrooms are uniquely positioned, I think, when it comes to having conversations centered around social justice because we have access to texts as ways to stimulate conversation, along with writing. Thinking about how criticality would be present in an ELA classroom, reading texts can be powerful. I can bring in a text that deals with structural racism, for example, and while reading the text, we can talk about how power and inequality are functioning in the text. With this discussion, we can practice making text-to-self and text-to-world connections where students can talk about issues of power, inequality, and inequity in society, and we can discuss how these problems can be addressed. 

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Of course, as Dr. Muhammad says, all of these layers are equally important, so when utilizing her framework, one layer cannot be taken out or ignored; all of it works together so that students become critically aware and are able to practice criticality in their lives. An educator who uses Dr. Muhammad's framework centers student experience and voice, reading texts that represent students and help them learn about others. An educator creates a community of learners that believes that each student is a thinker and an intellectual. This community of learners, then, critically examines the world around them, discussing issues of power and oppression. With this framework, though, it isn't just contained in a single unit of study. There are classrooms that are centered on social justice and activism, which are interesting to read about. This can extend to ELA where an educator centers Muhammad's framework to help students develop agency and approach ELA in a different and impactful way.

Note: I used approximate times to cite the particular quotes that I pulled from the podcast.