Author: Dr. Joy

Re-Membering US

I asked a group of children, Bb children, why Black History Month is celebrated during the month of February. None of them knew…then I realized, many do not know why. Our history and culture has been caricatured so much that the memes and messages about our heroes and contributions to societal strength are unknown.

I draw from a well that runs deep

Deep like the rivers

Of Mississippi, Hudson, Passaic, Raritan and Delaware

Emptied from the Senegal, the Congo or maybe the Nile

Whose soils and softened shores I have never known...

Uncertain and yet I care

To know and wonder.

I wrote an essay on February 2nd 2020 called Why We Need BHM in Times of BLM, unsuspectingly, days before the world shut down. I wrote it as a model for students to demonstrate how to tie “old texts” into new contexts and document important perspectives. Reflecting on it now, I still love it but I realize it is not enough.

This entry is a love letter to them…a reminder to the children of BB, Bb, and bb genotypic character who find themselves in an America that would be oddly familiar to our ancestors that we have a history and a heritage of excellence in the United States. To the Black and Brown children, adult and young, we have heroes, super and elegantly normal, who deserve to be celebrated and re-membered in our times and forever.

Look at what AI will do with a style guide and prompt…do you see us? In this moment, is this us?

Here are some of our heroes…now ancestors whose love for us shines brightly…

Frederick Douglass

Sojourner Truth

Ida B. Wells

Anna Julia Cooper

Charles Henry Turner

Percy Julian

George Washington Carver

James Weldon Johnson

Booker T. Washington

Madam C.J. Walker

W.E.B. DuBois

Pauli Murray

Thurghood Marshall

Walter White

Katherine Dunham

Josephine Baker

Barbara Jordan

Gwendolyn Brooks

Toni Morrison

Ralph Bunche

Bayard Rustin

Mary McLeod Bethune

Henrietta Lacks

John H. Johnson

Robert S. Abbott

Nikki Giovanni

Ella Baker

Septima Clark

Fannie Lou Hamer

Carter G. Woodson

This is who we are…in every shade of brown, our Black is beautiful. In every body, male, female and non-gendered, we are human and dignified. We are re-membered like pieces of a puzzle being put together…what you see is only part of the full tale.

These are just a few of my heroes, restoring their legacies in my memory and right-now consciousness. There are many people who have made US better; lifting every voice in this moment, I hear and see our past and celebrate how it made US, how it made me. Their stories help guide US in this moment because we have been here before. Their DNA is ours. Their stories are our own. We are not our ancestors, we are surely not better than them…we are them.

Imani Day

I have faith in us…the ones who believe in our greatness…

The ones who work on behalf of community…

The ones who live and love on behalf of children…

Faith and intention are like two interlocking hands

A muscle memory made stronger by a dark past giving birth to an expectant future.

It is a new year and I am grateful for lessons learned this past one,

Having courage to release things that are not for me

Approaching new opportunities with humility and grace…steady…joyfully.

Happy New Year.

Dear Nikki

Rest in Power Soror Nikki Giovanni (1943 – 2024)

I met you as a girl

Ego Tripping

In my youth…

I learned to admire your wisdom

As you knew to respect your elders, even when you wanted to challenge them.

Then I met you in person.

As a girl woman among my elders

As a sister

Soror Nikki

Your wisdom I admire

Because I learned so much from

You

Your words

Your life.

Rest in Power Queen.

Gemstones of Multicultural Education: Celebrating Milestones in Education Theory

Like this AI-generated geode, the layers of necessary discussion that we need to have in 2024 are both tragic and brilliant. Tragic because our abuse of the natural world is so profound that gems like this are rarely discovered anymore. Brilliant because at some point in human history, we have imagined this beauty…in all of its glory and intention…we can see it. The slow process that creates magnificently large crystals and the fast-pace of change that reveals the stones after a storm.

Image available online at https://www.freepik.com/premium-ai-image/closeup-shot-blue-gold-crystal-sapphire-geode-gemstone-with-selective-focus-depth-field_334373811.htm

This piece is a celebration of multicultural education’s past, present and future in the discourse about reform. In 1974, James A. Banks published an editorial in the ASCD journal that admonished educators to uphold a type of cultural pluralism that celebrates diversity as a strength and ideal product of democracy. Fifty years later and only days after a national election that has many people wondering ‘what’s next?’ our commitment as citizens must be to education…learning that empowers us to be better humans. In his editorial, he wrote:

…the school has a responsibility to teach a commitment to and respect for the core values such as justice, equality and human dignity expressed in [American] historical documents…

Written 50 years ago, these words have reached GOLDEN ANNIVERSARY status. In search of definitions and goals for multicultural education, James Banks’ works have formed an important foundation for generations of educators since.

Written 30 years ago, as a foreword to a brilliantly written book, Scholar John Henrik Clarke, gave us pearl statements about solidarity when he wrote:

What is the relationship between the dominant modes of European thought and the dominant modes of their behavior towards others? If the people in Africa and Asia and the former European colonies are to emerge into full independence, statehood and world responsibility, they will have to answer the above question creatively and in their favor. Then, in a collective sense, they will have to participate with others in a world that can be free, that can recognize European influence without accepting European dominance (p. xvii)

Thirty years is the PEARL ANNIVERSARY. We are Black pearls, unique and special, fabricated and precious.

Written 25 years ago, Geneva Gay first published her treatise on culturally responsive teaching. A guide for the field on theory, research and practice, the seminal work has served as a guide for so many…like flecks of silver embedded in native rock, the material left untouched is taken for granted. Chipping away at the outside though, you can see its simple brilliance, especially if you listen as it is excavated from the noise of rigid structure that only yields in disaster.

Twenty-five years is the SILVER ANNIVERSARY; a hard-fought victory of longevity for those who can achieve it.

How do we, in education, celebrate small milestones: one year or five? Education Week knows how…the PAPER ANNIVERSARY and the SAPPHIRE ANNIVERSARY are great opportunities to be reflective on where we have been and what we have done as teachers. Cultivating Genius (2020) and Unearthing Joy (2023) are right there! Gholdy Muhammad’s works are joining this beautiful mine of gems about multicultural education. Providing frameworks for equity, she challenges us to form cultivating genius and joy collectives…we can do it.

Happy Anniversary.

If you can write, you need a pencil

Early September has meant the conclusion of summer book club readings for at least the last 40 years for me…no longer are stamps, stickers and coupons for ice cream my reward. The gift of summer reading as an adult is the seeds for reflection that linger long past the turned pages, clicked on buttons, and quietly returned audiobooks.

This summer is no different. I am finally reading JAMES (by Percival Everett). The title for this post is a line from Young George spoken to the fugitive, whose sage words and deeds have inspired me to write here, for only the second or third time this year.

A few other lines in the book have pulled me back to this blog that I can’t stop thinking about

What do you mean, Young George? Tell my story? How do you suggest I tell my story? He looked at his feet, I did too. They were bare, his toes grabbing the wet grass. He looked at my face. ‘Use your ears,’ he said…’Tell the story with your ears. Listen.” (pp. 91 – 92)
With my pencil, I wrote myself into being. I wrote myself to here. (p. 93)
Young George found my face in the thicket. I had the pencil. It was in my pocket. He was struck again and I winced…He found my eyes and mouthed the word RUN. I did. (pp. 95 – 96)
…if someone pays you enough, its okay to abandon what you have claimed to understand as moral and right…(pp. 101-102)

As an educator, I recognize the complexity of this moment. Five school years of COVID education. We are still quaran-teaching. Because I am also grappling with health and wellness decisions, I can’t help but think in situational medical drama as a footprint for this journey…

2019 – 2020: School disruption six months into the school year (Emergency room)

2020 – 2021: Virtual whatever it was called–there were too many labels assigned to the task to give it any one description (Urgent care triage)

2021 – 2022: Return to “normal” (Doctor’s visit after the risk/threat of imminent danger)

2022 – 2023: Reality check (Surgery & stitch removal)

2023 – 2024: New normal (Post-ops follow-up & rehab)

2024 – 2025: Second round of review (alternative therapies and novel treatments)

I keep thinking about children in 4th through 7th grade, where were they during these years? How has our uncertainty and flawed thinking impacted them? I keep thinking about it: the children were the most vulnerable (and always have been)!

Seventh graders, were in 2nd grade–right at that educational place where wins in reading are typical and celebrated. Libraries were closed. Churches were closed. When did they LEARN to READ? I try to forget about all the other subjects…but I can’t. How were mysteries and adventures unlocked for them?

Sixth graders, were in 1st grade–finally trained for routines involving others outside of their family. Finally ready to sit at the “big kid” table with friends and having enough dexterity to clean up after making messes. They were at home. Comfortable and cared for (hopefully)…messes overlooked with doting others who expected, tolerated and lovingly corrected all their messes.

Fifth graders, were in kindergarten–independent from wearing diapers of any kind. They were encouraged to go to the bathroom whenever they needed to go, no permission needed, celebrations when successful. Zoom breaks and shortened school days with home visits and neighborhood clap-ins from friendly teachers and community members.

Fourth graders, were pre-school aged–the perfect opportunity for learning shapes and colors, the alphabet and singing songs, playing at the water table, sandbox or on the playground. How much happiness did they experience or see up close?

We told them to be ‘socially distant’ when what we needed them to be was ‘physically aware’. Why are we confused that they are anti-social and emotionally distant? We told them to wear masks and expect them not to be secretive. What sense does any of it make?

I am an educator and researcher who has been working on a book for five years…watching storylines in my own manuscript being published by others that I love and respect. I know it is time to pick up my pencil again…

Happy Heavenly Birthday

Losing anyone to eternal sleep is hard…but your best friend and first love is really hard. I still have this card, made for me, 35 years ago…man…I miss you.

A.E. Cosmo Whittaker | April 17, 1970

I Called Him Moses

In Memory of Allenly Ellis Cosmo Whittaker | 1970 – 2022

I found out you had passed from this to the next after the fourth non-response…that has never been like you…not to respond–no text, no call, no picture, no letter…

You were my best friend

Biggest fan

Most critical critic

Hardest fall…from the love train.

You were a son, a brother, a father, a friend to more than a few people.

You were a loner, a solitary spirit, whose private ways were more about pursuing peace than being alone…I get that.

You wanted us to love us…

Your style and your smile, coy and unique, were inseparable.

I am grateful that the

Pain and

Disappointment

Is over.

I love that I still have this card and this photo from 35 years ago…I guess is that this is why we will always need paper…to re-member the parts of us that would be lost in the physical world when our spiritual walk goes full circle…

Can you feel me loving you then as I see me now…looking back…remembering that day?

I love you Mr. Whittaker.

I will miss your cool in the heat of future days…

Say it loud: Reflections on Peace

May there be freedom, equality and brotherhood among all men. May there be morality in the relations among nations. May there be, in our time, at long last, a world at peace in which we, the people, may for once begin to make full use of the great good that is in us.

Ralph Bunche, 1950, Acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize

I grew up wondering who all the people were on the covers of the magazines that were spread on my grandmother’s coffee table.

A symbol of Black pride, they were all so beautiful. They were all so significant.

One in particular comes to mind, forty years beyond my recollections of the visits and 73 years beyond its original publication: Ralph Bunche. No…I don’t remember it on the table but instead on the wall. My grandfather made a wall collage of the covers dating back into the 1950s–overlapping excellence, draped over pegboard in the party space of the basement.

Ralph Bunche was on the cover in 1950 and 1955 (I have come to know)…I don’t remember everyone but I know they were there…lovingly set out for us to see ourselves…to learn of our progress and celebrate our success. Our history and our biography, tied together and photographed, printed on glossy paper and distributed throughout the world.

Ralph Bunche was the first (of only four) Black American Nobel laureates.

Ralph Bunche was one of the first to rally the world to pursue peace in Palestine.

Nobel Lecture: December 11, 1950

When paired with Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms speech (delivered almost a full decade before), World War and the chronic fight for civil rights, a Black American man became a global mouthpiece. So, I say it loud:

I am Black and I am proud…of Ralph Bunche and all the Freedom Fighters whose work outlines my own journey.

Excerpt from “Four Freedoms” speech of Pres. Roosevelt, January 6, 1941.

Ta-Nahesi Coates is among the generational voices who are willing to once again say it loudly.

Words mean something.

Justice. Peace. Liberty. Freedom.

These words mean everything.

“War is evil.” is what he said in 2023.

“There can be no moral equivalent to something so immoral a procedure as war”, she (Pearl Buck) said in 1949. This is an American argument that deserves our full attention.

It is lazy to say that it–war and competition–is inevitable.

Peace is worth pursuing.

Stop the murder. Cease war now.

Black joy unchanged

Something happened when we were forced to be apart

We longed to be…

To be with

Each

Other

Differently and the same

Peering in

Each

Other’s

Lives

To check in

To make sure

That We were alright…

The poems I write are not really poetic in the traditional sense. Rhyme and meter mean less to me than cadence and pulse. My poems are like dances—some short, some a slow drag…all designed to move me, away from harm and into myself, my thoughts and wonderings…my wanderings…my salvation and my strength. My poems save me because they often provide a way for me to talk about history that I am learning or willing to reveal.

I think I have always written this way…errant and pithy, like the flute I used to play.

Notes pushed out rather than strung together, staccato-like and sincere.

This poem is about Black joy unfolding like a dance or a choreopoem or a flower.

The outside

A recent movement

To the seed that still passes its DNA through time

Hundreds of years

No mutations

Nothing changed

But the size of the thorn

KNOWledges

“For a moment I wondered.” (Langston Hughes, 1956, Last line of I wonder as I wander)

I love summer

Because I get a chance to read in a way that in other seasons is more constrained.

I also get to write more freely than I get a chance in other seasons.

I have been working on this thing…for three years now…wandering through so many different playgrounds, forests and literary ecosystems…awe-filled and terrified to tell the stories I hear, see and feel.

Moving from what is “kool” to the kaleidoscopes that are revealed like fruit twisting in the wind on tree mirages
Looking for new things in novel ways with recently revealed tools.
Being careful for the obvious working not to obfuscate the phenomena I see as treasure on a field full of mines
Wondering as I wander

Believing the value over the edge of this learning…