What is Black Liberatory pedagogy?
BTC’s Black Liberatory Pedagogy is a comprehensive set of mindsets, knowledge, instructional strategies, and classroom culture practices that intentionally cultivate a positive racial identity in Black students while deepening their academic knowledge and skills. Black Liberatory Pedagogy intends to rearrange power by reconceptualizing and centering Black children’s and Black teachers’ ways of knowing. We seek to maximize the unique opportunities for increased impact on Black children’s educational experiences in classrooms led by Black teachers.
BTC’S PEDAGOGICAL FRAMEWORK
SRILE an acronym for Shared Racial Identity Learning Environments which BTC defines as schools where the majority of the teaching staff and the majority of the student population share the same racial identity. BTC’s work focuses on Black SRILE spaces. There is an ever increasing body of research that suggest Black students benefit from having Black teachers including a recent report from Johns Hopkins University Black Teachers Make a Difference.
Source: www.edweek.org
The pedagogical framework includes:
Five educational goals that Black liberation based teachers have when teaching Black students
• Love of Learning and Intellectual Excellence
• Strong Racial Identity
• Sociopolitical Consciousness
• Healing
• Collective Responsibility
Two core pathways that excellent Black teachers use to reach those goals
• Culturally Compatible and Community Connected Praxis
• High Expectations (academic, social, behavioral) of students, their families and their communities
One core foundational mindset/belief that drives all of excellent Black teachers work
• An ethic of critical care and love from which all other actions and choices grow
Elements of Black Liberatory Pedagogy
Critical Care & Love
Creates classroom cultures in which Black students feel loved & known (as measured by student self-reports)
BELIEFS
- Black children are beautiful, creative, unique, and full of natural genius to be awakened
- Loving black children is personal, human and political (i.e. love is a weapon against oppression)
KNOWLEDGE
- Critical Care & Love is the foundation of student learning (i.e. students don’t care what you know until they know that you care)
IN PRACTICE
- Building systems and rituals that communicate to all black children in class that they are special and loved
- Creating routines for building individual personal connections with each student as a part of the classroom structure
Strong Racial Identity
Creates classroom cultures in which Black cultural customs & patterns appropriate/aligned to students are highlighted and embraced
BELIEFS
- Being Black is central to the everyday experiences of my students
- Given our existence in a racist society, my students and myself are subjected to negative messages about Blackness and therefore need to consistently mine for internalized racism
- Black teachers are responsible for building a strong racial identity in Black students as a critical pathway to liberation and academic success
KNOWLEDGE
- A positive racial identity is empirically linked to academic excellence and success for Black children
- Examples (historical and contemporary) of excellent Black teachers and how they have used racial identity to move students towards achievement and liberation
IN PRACTICE
- Drawing on students’ cultural customs to create classroom routines and rituals that appropriately reflect student’s racial/ethnic identities.
- Responding to and disrupting student to student and student to self internalized racism
High Expectations
Creates classroom cultures where students and teachers collectively engage in social, emotional and academic support system, routines and strategies for students striving to meet high expectations.
BELIEFS
- All of my students are inherently genius and can achieve academic excellence
- It is my duty to hold and support Black students in meeting high social and academic expectations
KNOWLEDGE
- Historical narratives and examples that highlights the rich reservoir of Black resilience, capability and perseverance (i.e someone to fill in)
- Historical and contemporary data that highlights the long history of the United States creating and maintaining a narrative of Black intellectual inferiority
- The impact on Black students’ and Black adults’ efficacy and mental psyche of receiving and internalizing messages of Black intellectual and social inferiority
- Empirical evidence on the relationship between expectations and academic excellence
IN PRACTICE
- Warmly and clearly communicating high expectations using multiple culturally congruent strategies
- Skillfully scaffolding milestones leading toward students’ successfully meeting expectations
Sociopolitical Consciousness
Creates classroom cultures in which Black students are comfortable with and skillful at engaging in sociopolitical discourse with their peers and confidently and skillfully challenge the status quo using content area knowledge and skills
BELIEFS
- All of my students are inherently genius and can achieve academic excellence
KNOWLEDGE
- Pedagogical stances and instructional practices of Black liberatory pedagogical tradition
- Location of current teaching practice in relation to Black liberatory pedagogy
IN PRACTICE
- Approaching lesson planning, delivery and building a classroom environment with the belief that what we learn can be utilized to improve the sociopolitical conditions of Black people
- Approaching lesson planning, delivery and classroom environment with the belief that each aspect should be relevant to sociopolitical conditions of Black people
- Helping students comfortably, confidently and skillfully engage in subject area related sociopolitical discourse
Healing
Creates classroom cultures in which a “many hands make the work light” approach is taken to building a classroom culture and there is structured time for lament, disappointment and grief
BELIEFS
- Black Children and Black Teachers exist with wounds from oppression and have what they need to recover from societal assaults to their humanity
KNOWLEDGE
- The significance of “ being”, “belonging” and “becoming” in the healing of relationships
IN PRACTICE
- Extending problem solving activities to community wellness along with inserting and adopting vocabulary of mutual benefit in the learning environment.
Collective Responsibility
Creates classroom cultures in which intentional actions bring attention (without diminishing personhood) to the importance of full participation and community problem solving is promoted to emphasize the classroom space as a learning space in which problems are solved collectively
BELIEFS
- Success/Achievement is tied to/contingent upon the success achievement of the whole
- The purpose of learning is to pragmatically put to use to uplift the race (learnt uplift strengthens you morally; not just about help the disadvantage, it strengthens one character)
- Shared responsibility increases group effort and group achievement
KNOWLEDGE
- The characteristics of collaborative learning as a learning model (versus a learning exercise)
- How to gain from/access/ construct upon what learners already know increases learner receptivity for new information (formative assessment beyond new information)
IN PRACTICE
- Revisiting classifications of types of instruction to inventory, assess and evaluate them as modes of collective work and responsibility
- Communicating measures of proficiency that include collective progress/deficiencies
Love of Learning & Intellectual Excellence
Creates classroom cultures in which resilience in learning and excellence as a way of Being is cultivated, and black students’ confidence in the “How” and the “Why” is developed
BELIEFS
- Black teachers seek out ways to give Black children the deeper meaning of learning beyond recall of information
- Black teachers recognize the merit of meaningful connections to real life purposes.
- Excellence is evidenced in one’s standard of personal best
KNOWLEDGE
- How to associate the stages of learning in context of the learning activity (developmental appropriateness)
- The application of human qualities of engagement to foster positive feelings about learning
IN PRACTICE
- Using differentiating instruction to reinforce learner’s cognitive assets
- Effectively communicating obstacles and deficiencies in ways that invoke resilience and persistence
- Routinely “humanizing” all information as it shows up in the lived experiences and the larger social context
Culturally Compatible & Community Connected Praxis
Creates classroom cultures that models community obligation to cultivate in students’ community obligation and demonstrates the success of each learner to the success of the community
BELIEFS
- Students cultural knowledge and expressions are valuable and should be central to the learning process
- Students’ families and communities have unique value and strengths as core members of their village
KNOWLEDGE
- Culturally centered pedagogies are counter-cultural to the modus operandi of U.S. public schooling
- Diasporic and Heritage knowledge must be integrated into learning environments in meaningful ways
IN PRACTICE
- Integrating experiential learning and multiple intelligences into instruction, and diasporic and heritage knowledge into the curriculum