October 19th: Intellectual Tradition and Legacy III

Facilitator Biographies

Dr. Gholdy Muhammad

Currently an Associate Professor of Literacy, Language, and Culture at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Dr. Gholnecsar (Gholdy) Muhammad is a leader who strives to shape the national conversation for educating youth that have been underserved. Her career also includes having served as a school district curriculum director responsible for K-12 literacy instruction, assessments, and professional development, and as a reading, language arts, and social studies middle school teacher.

Having received her PhD in Literacy, Language and Culture at the University of Illinois at Chicago, her research interests are situated in the historical foundations of literacy development and the writing practices among Black communities.

Additionally, she works with teachers and young people across the United States and South Africa in best practices in equity, anti-racism and culturally and historically responsive instruction. She served as a literacy coach and school board president. She has received numerous national awards and is the author of the best-selling book, Cultivating Genius: An Equity Model for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy.

Dr. Angela Valenzuela

Angela Valenzuela is a professor in both the Educational Policy and Planning Program within the Department of Educational Administration at the University of Texas at Austin and holds a courtesy appointment in the Cultural Studies in Education Program within the Department of Curriculum & Instruction. She also serves as the director of the University of Texas Center for Education Policy.

A Stanford University graduate, her previous teaching positions were in Sociology at Rice University in Houston, Texas (1990-98), as well as a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Mexican American Studies at the University of Houston (1998-99). She is also the author of award-winning Subtractive Schooling: U.S. Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring (1999) Leaving Children Behind: How "Texas-style" Accountability Fails Latino Youth (2005), and Growing Critically Conscious Teachers: A Social Justice Curriculum for Educators of Latino/a Youth (Teachers College Press, 2016). She also founded and operates an education blog titled, Educational Equity, Politics, and Policy in Texas.

She served as co-editor of the Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, as well as the Anthropology and Education Quarterly. A previous Fulbright Scholar, Valenzuela spent her 2007-08 academic year in Mexico where she taught in the College of Law at the University of Guanajuato in Guanajuato, Guanajuato and conducted research in the areas of immigration, human rights, and binational relations. Most recently, she was honored to have been selected to be a scholar in residence in the School of Education at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Valenzuela's research and teaching interests are in the sociology of education, minority youth in schools, educational policy, urban education reform, culturally relevant curriculum, Ethnic Studies, and indigenous education.

Valenzuela also directs the National Latino Education Research and Policy Project (NLERAP) that aims to create a teacher education pathways for Latino/a youth, nationally. With prior funding support from grants from both the Ford and Kellogg Foundations, this work builds on the efforts and advocacy of Latino/a education and business leaders nationwide. NLERAP has been housed at the University of Texas at Austin since November 6, 2009. Locally, she directs Academia Cuauhtli, a partnership-based, community-anchored Saturday school with district-wide Impacts in Austin, Texas.

This session is designed to build from the learning we did during cohort retreat last May about Intellectual Tradition and Legacy grounded in Dr. Theresa Perry and Dr. Francesca López's scholarship.

Consider:

Ground in LLA Mindframes: Leadership for Equity in Schools (in particular the 4th and 6th bullets) to support your meaning making and weaving as you engage with the texts for the session. For all reading for this day, please consider the following questions:

• What is the core argument or idea advanced in each text? How does it relate to intellectual tradition and legacy?

• To what extent and in what ways do the ideas intersect with or add nuance to the LLA Mindframes? to Dr. Perry's scholarship? to Dr. López's? Where are these ideas resonant or dissonant with one another?

• What implications does it have (explicitly or implicitly) for planning, instruction, and/or adult learning in schools in general? in your school in particular?

Bring with You:

You will receive an email asking you to bring certain curriculum materials with you, or have access to them, for the session.

Read:

[AM Session]

Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy by Gholdy Muhammad (All Fellows should have received a hard copy or link to a digital copy of the text. If you have not yet, please reach out to Steph Riccardi at riccarst@bc.edu to ensure you have your hard copy or link to your text.)

[PM Session] Please read the three articles linked below.